A gateway to the West and an outpost for eastern capital and culture, St. Louis straddled not only geographical and political divides but also cultural, racial, and sectional ones. At the same time, it connected a vast region as a gathering place of peoples, cultures, and goods. The essays in this collection contextualize St. Louis, exploring French-Native relations, the agency of empire in the Illinois Country, the role of women in "mapping" the French colonial world, fashion and identity, and commodities and exchange in St. Louis as part of a broader politics of consumption in colonial America. The collection also provides a comparative perspective on America's two great Creole cities, St. Louis and New Orleans. Lastly, it looks at the Frenchness of St. Louis in the nineteenth century and the present.
French St. Louis recasts the history of St. Louis and reimagines regional development in the early American republic, shedding light on its francophone history.
Jay Gitlin is a senior lecturer in history at Yale University. He is the author of The Bourgeois Frontier: French Towns, French Traders, and American Expansion. Robert Michael Morrissey is an associate professor of history at the University of Illinois. He is the author of Empire by Collaboration: Indians, Colonists, and Governments in Colonial Illinois Country. Peter J. Kastor is Samuel K. Eddy Professor and a professor of history at Washington University in St. Louis. He is the author of William Clark's World: Describing America in an Age of Unknowns.
