This is the story of a city that shouldn't exist. In the
seventeenth century, what is now America's most beguiling
metropolis was nothing more than a swamp: prone to flooding,
infested with snakes, battered by hurricanes. But through the
intense imperial rivalries of Spain, France, and England, and the
ambitious, entrepreneurial merchants and settlers from four
continents who risked their lives to succeed in colonial America,
this unpromising site became a crossroads for the whole Atlantic
world. Lawrence N. Powell, a decades-long resident and observer of
New Orleans, gives us the full sweep of the city's history from its
founding through Louisiana statehood in 1812. We see the Crescent
City evolve from a French village, to an African market town, to a
Spanish fortress, and finally to an Anglo-American center of trade
and commerce. We hear and feel the mix of peoples, religions, and
languages from four continents that make the place electric-and
always on the verge of unraveling. The Accidental City is the story
of land-jobbing schemes, stock market crashes, and nonstop
squabbles over status, power, and position, with enough rogues,
smugglers, and self-fashioners to fill a picaresque novel. Powell's
tale underscores the fluidity and contingency of the past,
revealing a place where people made their own history. This is a
city, and a history, marked by challenges and perpetual shifts in
shape and direction, like the sinuous river on which it is perched.
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