Founding of New Orleans (1718): Bienville's French Colonial City

The founding of New Orleans took place in 1718, when Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville began building a settlement on a bend of the Mississippi River, about 160 kilometres from its mouth. Named La Nouvelle-Orléans after the regent of France, it was a project of John Law’s Company of the West, which then held a monopoly over French Louisiana. The struggling outpost became the capital of the colony within five years and grew into one of North America’s most distinctive cities.

Background

France had claimed the Mississippi basin since La Salle’s expedition of 1682. In 1699 the brothers Pierre Le Moyne d’Iberville and Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville, born in Montreal, established the first French bases on the Gulf coast, at Biloxi and later Mobile. The colony was small, poor and costly to the crown.

In 1717 the regent, Philippe II, Duke of Orléans, handed Louisiana to the Company of the West (Compagnie d’Occident), organised by the Scottish financier John Law. The company received a trading monopoly for 25 years and promised to send thousands of settlers and enslaved Africans. In 1719 it was merged into the larger Company of the Indies.

Founding the city

Bienville had long wanted a settlement on the river itself. He chose a site on a crescent-shaped bend where a short portage led to Bayou St John and Lake Pontchartrain, giving a route to the Gulf that avoided the shifting, silted mouth of the Mississippi. The ground near the river, a natural levee, was slightly higher than the swamps around it.

Work began in 1718, traditionally dated to the spring, with a small party clearing cane and building simple huts. The name honoured the regent. Many company officials and engineers thought the site was unhealthy and prone to floods and hurricanes, and the choice of a permanent capital was disputed for several years.

In 1721 the engineer Adrien de Pauger, following plans by Louis-Pierre Le Blond de La Tour, laid out a regular grid of streets around a central square, the Place d’Armes, facing the river. That grid survives today as the French Quarter, or Vieux Carré, and the square as Jackson Square. A hurricane in September 1722 levelled many early buildings, which allowed the plan to be imposed more fully.

The Mississippi Company and its collapse

John Law promoted Louisiana as a land of riches to sell shares in his company in Paris. The resulting speculation, known as the Mississippi Bubble, sent share prices soaring in 1719 and collapsing in 1720, at the same time as Britain’s South Sea Bubble. Law fled France and his financial system collapsed.

Settlers recruited by the company, including German farmers, poor migrants, deported convicts and forced migrants from France, often arrived to find disease and hunger. Many died. Despite the crash, the company remained in charge of Louisiana until 1731, when it returned the colony to the crown.

Early colonial society

From 1719 the company shipped thousands of enslaved Africans to Louisiana, mostly from Senegambia, and slavery shaped the city from the start. The Code Noir of 1724 laid down rules for slavery in the colony. A population of free people of colour also developed over the 18th century.

Ursuline nuns arrived in 1727 and founded a convent school and hospital. The Natchez uprising of 1729, in which hundreds of French colonists upriver were killed, caused panic in the town and fierce French reprisals. New Orleans remained a small frontier capital, with a population of a few thousand by mid-century. Its economy depended on river trade in furs, timber, indigo and tobacco, and on supplies shipped from France and the Caribbean.

Later history

By the Treaty of Fontainebleau of 1762 France ceded Louisiana west of the Mississippi, including New Orleans, to Spain. Great fires in 1788 and 1794 destroyed much of the old French town, so most surviving buildings of the French Quarter date from the Spanish period or later. The city returned briefly to France and passed to the United States in the Louisiana Purchase of 1803.

Timeline

• 1699: Iberville and Bienville establish a French base at Biloxi.
• 1717, August: The Company of the West receives control of Louisiana.
• 1718: Bienville begins building La Nouvelle-Orléans on the Mississippi.
• 1720: The Mississippi Bubble collapses in France.
• 1721: Adrien de Pauger lays out the street grid of today’s French Quarter.
• 1722, September: A hurricane destroys much of the new town.
• 1722–1723: The capital of Louisiana moves from Biloxi to New Orleans.
• 1731: The Company of the Indies returns Louisiana to the French crown.

Why it matters

The founding of New Orleans gave France a gateway to the Mississippi valley and created the city that would control trade for the whole river system. Its French street plan, its Catholic and African heritage and its vulnerable, low-lying site all trace back to decisions made in its first five years.