New Orleans and the Ghosts of French Colonialism
By Becca Newman
While English and Spanish colonial expansion shaped much of North America, the French also played a part in the continent’s history. One of the most prominent symbols of French influence in the New World is New Orleans, a city whose unique culture, architecture, language, and traditions remain tied to its past. Originally part of New France, a territory stretching from Hudson Bay in Canada to the Gulf of Mexico, Louisiana was central to France’s imperialism. Today, despite centuries of political change, the French legacy continues in New Orleans, visible in everything from its street names and cuisine to its festivals and language (Babbel).
New Orleans was not just another colony in France’s growing empire, but rather it was a strategic asset in the competition between France, Britain, and Spain. In 1682, French explorer René-Robert Cavelier de La Salle journeyed down the Mississippi River and claimed its entire drainage basin for France, naming it La Louisiane in honor of King Louis XIV (History.com). This immense territory, stretching from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico, was home to numerous Indigenous nations, including the Bayougoula, Chitimacha, Choctaw, Houma, and Tunica. The Mississippi River’s strategic importance made Louisiana an essential part of France’s colonial network. The river allowed easy access to the interior of the continent, facilitating the fur trade, agriculture, and military defense. However, despite its promise, Louisiana’s early development was slow and difficult. The swampy landscape, mosquito-borne diseases, and a lack of financial investment from France made it a challenging place to settle (64 Parishes).
In 1699, French explorers Pierre Le Moyne d’Iberville and Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville officially established the colony of Louisiana, securing France’s hold on the Mississippi River (History.com). Settlements sprang up along major waterways, including Little Rock, Arkansas, and St. Louis, Missouri. However, Louisiana remained a harsh environment, plagued by conflicts with Indigenous nations, hurricanes, floods, and disease. Many settlers saw the region as a place to avoid, and attracting European migrants proved difficult. Recognizing the need for a central hub to manage trade and administration, Bienville founded New Orleans in 1718 (Babbel). Located near the Mississippi Delta, the city was ideally positioned to control river commerce. French engineers designed a walled village with 66 squares, forming what is today the French Quarter. Unlike the Puritans of New England, Louisiana’s French settlers were Catholic and known for their indulgent lifestyle, an attitude that continues to shape New Orleans' festive culture (64 Parishes).
From its earliest years, Louisiana’s economy relied heavily on enslaved labor. Initially, enslaved Indigenous people were forced to work in the colony, often serving as guides and laborers. However, by 1719, French traders began importing enslaved Africans, introducing a system of plantation agriculture that would define Louisiana’s economy for over a century. The arrival of African slaves also contributed to Louisiana’s cultural diversity, influencing its music, food, and language. Meanwhile, corruption and nepotism plagued the colony’s administration. French officials and Canadian officers governed Louisiana on behalf of the king, but France’s lack of interest in the colony meant that it was poorly managed and underfunded. Louisiana was never a profitable venture for France, and its European settlers often struggled to survive (The Canadian Encyclopedia).
In 1800, under the Treaty of San Ildefonso, Spain returned Louisiana to France, marking a brief period of French control. However, France’s return was short-lived. Napoleon Bonaparte, preoccupied with European wars and facing a slave rebellion in Saint-Domingue (modern-day Haiti and the Dominican Republic), realized that maintaining control of Louisiana would be difficult. Instead of defending the territory against British threats, he opted to sell Louisiana to the United States in 1803 in what became known as the Louisiana Purchase (History.com). For just $15 million, the U.S. acquired 828,000 square miles of land, including New Orleans and the Mississippi River Valley. This transaction was the beginning of Louisiana’s transition from a French colony to an American territory.
By the mid-18th century, France’s colonial ambitions were collapsing. Following the Seven Years’ War (1756–1763), France ceded Louisiana to Spain under the Treaty of Fontainebleau (1762) to prevent the British from seizing it. The Spanish government took three years to establish control, and when the new Spanish governor arrived in 1766, many French settlers resisted Spanish rule. In 1768, a group of French Creoles briefly overthrew the Spanish governor, but the rebellion was quickly crushed (64 Parishes). Although Spain controlled Louisiana for nearly 40 years, French culture remained dominant. Unlike British colonial rulers, the Spanish did not enforce strict cultural assimilation, allowing French and Louisiana Creole languages to flourish. The most visible Spanish influence in New Orleans came after the Great Fires of 1788 and 1794, when much of the city had to be rebuilt in the Spanish architectural style. Despite Spanish governance, French-speaking settlers continued to arrive, including Acadians (Cajuns), Swiss, Walloons, and Francophone Caribbean immigrants. This period helped solidify Louisiana’s Creole identity, a mix of French, Spanish, African, and Indigenous influences (The Canadian Encyclopedia).
The Civil War (1861–1865) and the subsequent period of Reconstruction further weakened French-speaking institutions in Louisiana. As the United States strengthened its control over the South, Americanization efforts intensified. The use of French in government, education, and public life diminished, and English became the official language of law and administration. In 1864, Louisiana’s new state constitution removed French as an official language, further accelerating its decline. By the late 19th century, deliberate efforts to suppress French in schools took hold, particularly in public education. French was no longer taught in public schools, except for some private Catholic institutions (64 Parishes). This change began a strong cultural stigma against speaking French, particularly among younger generations. Despite these pressures, French-language newspapers continued to be published, including L’Abeille de la Nouvelle-Orléans, La Sentinelle de Thibodaux, Le Meschacébé, and Le Messager (The Canadian Encyclopedia). Some of these, like La Tribune de la Nouvelle-Orléans, were published by Creoles of color, showing the continued cultural resilience of French-speaking communities. However, by the early 20th century, these publications began to disappear as French lost its place as Louisiana’s dominant language.
At the turn of the 20th century, Louisiana’s French and Creole-speaking communities still maintained their linguistic traditions, even though English had gained dominance in business and politics. However, a shift in economic priorities and educational policies accelerated the erosion of French language and culture. Between 1920 and 1960, South Louisiana experienced rapid industrialization and economic diversification, particularly with the discovery of oil and natural gas reserves. As the region became more integrated into the national economy, English was increasingly seen as a necessity for success. The completion of railways in the 1920s further connected South Louisiana to the rest of the United States, bringing an influx of English-speaking workers, merchants, and business leaders who reinforced the dominance of English.
Although New Orleans remained predominantly French-speaking in the years following the Louisiana Purchase, the process of Americanization had begun. While the city continued to attract Francophone immigrants, including refugees from Haiti, political power now rested in the hands of the English-speaking American government (Babbel).
One of the most devastating blows to Louisiana’s Francophone identity came through government-enforced language policies. In an effort to modernize and Americanize the state, Louisiana adopted English-only laws in public schools, effectively eliminating the use of French and Creole in education. Students who spoke French or Creole in classrooms were often punished, sometimes forced to write lines such as “I will not speak French on school grounds” hundreds of times. Many young Louisianians grew up associating their ancestral language with shame, backwardness, and ignorance. As a result, entire generations stopped passing the language on to their children, believing that speaking English was the key to social and economic mobility. Alongside language suppression, cultural distinctions between Cajuns, Creoles, and other French-speaking groups began to blur in the eyes of English-speaking Americans. Many Anglo-Americans incorrectly categorized all French speakers in Louisiana as "Cajuns," regardless of their actual ancestry. This oversimplification erased the rich heritage of Francophone Louisiana, which included Acadian descendants, Creoles of African and Caribbean descent, and various European French-speaking communities. The term "Cajun" became synonymous with rural poverty and a lack of formal education, further discouraging younger generations from embracing their French heritage. By the late 1960s, only a fraction of Louisiana’s population remained fluent in French, and Creole had become even more endangered. However, just as Louisiana’s French heritage seemed destined for extinction, a cultural renaissance began to take shape.
The Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s reshaped American society, challenging racial segregation, cultural discrimination, and linguistic suppression. While much of the movement focused on African American rights, it also inspired other marginalized groups, including Louisiana’s French-speaking communities, to reclaim their identity. The post-segregation era brought in a growing recognition of ethnic and cultural diversity in the United States. This newfound acceptance created an opportunity for Louisiana’s Francophone heritage to be revived and redefined. In 1968, responding to the rapid decline of the French language in Louisiana, the state legislature created the Council for the Development of French in Louisiana (CODOFIL). Louisiana Governor John J. McKeithen appointed James “Jimmy” Domengeaux, a Lafayette native and self-identified Cajun, as the organization’s first president. Domengeaux was passionate about restoring French in Louisiana, seeing it as an essential part of the state’s cultural and economic identity. CODOFIL was tasked with reviving the French language through education, tourism, and cultural programming, and it quickly began implementing policies to reintroduce French instruction in schools. One of CODOFIL’s most significant strategies was to import native French-speaking teachers from France, Quebec, and Belgium to teach in Louisiana’s newly established French immersion programs. While this effort helped bring French back into classrooms, it also sparked controversy among local communities. Many Louisianians, who had grown up speaking Louisiana French or Creole, resented the arrival of European French speakers who often dismissed local dialects as inferior or incorrect. This tension between standard French and Louisiana’s unique French heritage became a defining challenge for the movement.
While CODOFIL worked to reintroduce French into schools, the Louisiana government saw an economic opportunity in branding Cajun culture as a tourist attraction. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Louisiana’s joie de vivre, music, food, and rural landscapes were heavily promoted in national and international tourism campaigns. The state officially adopted the Cajun flag in 1974, reinforcing a distinct Cajun identity that was marketed as authentic, exotic, and uniquely Louisiana. Restaurants, music festivals, and commercial businesses capitalized on the growing interest in Cajun culture, turning it into a powerful economic asset. However, this commercialization had unintended consequences. Cajun identity became racialized, increasingly associated only with white descendants of Acadian settlers. Louisiana’s Creole population, which included people of African, Caribbean, and Indigenous descent, found itself largely excluded from the mainstream revival movement. In 1987, Creole activists created the Louisiana Creole Heritage Center (LCHC) and introduced the Louisiana Creole flag to reclaim their distinct identity. Despite these efforts, much of Louisiana’s French-language revival remained focused on Cajun heritage, leaving Creole language and culture on the margins of the movement.
By the 1990s, Louisiana’s French-language revival gained international support. The rise of French immersion schools, backed by Francophone nations, created a new generation of bilingual Louisianians. Universities such as Louisiana State University and the University of Louisiana at Lafayette established Cajun and Creole studies programs, further legitimizing French as part of Louisiana’s cultural identity.
Today, Louisiana’s French heritage is celebrated through festivals, music, and tourism, though only a small percentage of the population still speaks French fluently (Babbel). Events such as the French Quarter Festival, Bastille Day celebrations, and Festival International de Louisiane continue to reinforce Louisiana’s ties to the Francophone world. While English remains dominant, French influence is still experienced in the cuisine, music, and traditions of Louisiana, ensuring that its history endures.
Babbel. "French Language in New Orleans." Babbel Magazine, Babbel, www.babbel.com/en/magazine/new-orleans-language.
"French-speaking Louisiana and Canada." The Canadian Encyclopedia, Historica Canada, www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/french-speaking-louisiana-and-canada.
"Francophone Louisiana." 64 Parishes, Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities, 64parishes.org/francophone-louisiana.
"The French in New Orleans." History.com, A&E Television Networks, www.history.com/topics/immigration/the-french-in-new-orleans.
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