Rumors of Revolution - (Writing the Early Americas) by Jennifer Tsien

About the Book

"This book examines the exercise of royal power over colonial Louisiana in the eighteenth century, revealing the abuses that the French government could exert on its people against their will, ultimately establishing an overlooked implicit connection between histories of settler colonialism in the Americas and the fate of absolutism in Europe. Although the Louisiana colony is not traditionally considered a site of revolution, its mismanagement inspired increasing distrust and revolutionary sentiments against the ancien râegime until its collapse. Afterward, the threat of revolution in the colony itself played a role in Spanish and French strategies in the Americas that resulted in the end of Napoleon's claims to this part of North America"--

Book Synopsis

In 1682 the French explorer René-Robert Cavelier de La Salle claimed the Mississippi River basin for France, naming the region Louisiana to honor his king, Louis XIV. Until the United States acquired the territory in the Louisiana Purchase more than a century later, there had never been a revolution, per se, in Louisiana. However, as Jennifer Tsien highlights in this groundbreaking work, revolutionary sentiment clearly surfaced in the literature and discourse both in the Louisiana colony and in France with dramatic and far-reaching consequences.

In Rumors of Revolution, Tsien analyzes documented observations made in Paris and in New Orleans about the exercise of royal power over French subjects and colonial Louisiana stories that laid bare the arbitrary powers and abuses that the government could exert on its people against their will. Ultimately, Tsien establishes an implicit connection between histories of settler colonialism in the Americas and the fate of absolutism in Europe that has been largely overlooked in scholarship to date.

Review Quotes

Clearly and concisely executed, Rumors of Revolution makes an important contribution to the study of French writing about the Louisiana colony in the 1700s. There has not been a book like this published for more than fifty years.

--Gordon Sayre, University of Oregon, co-editor of The Memoir of Lieutenant Dumont

In a well-researched and well-written book that should appeal to specialists and general readers, Tsien . . . eloquently reminds us that Louisianians tend to know their history because they must frequently relive it.--Eighteenth-Century Studies

About the Author

Jennifer Tsien is Associate Professor of French at the University of Virginia and author of The Bad Taste of Others: Judging Literary Value in Eighteenth-Century France.