Independent Louisiana

How could Louisiana have avoided being purchased and annexed by the United States?


The biggest issue is population: Americans will simply move in and outnumber folks in Louisiana.

I think holding on to all of Louisiana is unlikely. At the very least, the north of the territory would have to be sold to the United States (Missouri River Boundary + 40th parallel perhaps?).

Inviting freedmen, runaway slaves, and anti-US Native Americans would be one good way to boost population.
Using Louisiana as a penal colony is another means.

Rather than attempting to reconquer and reenslave Haiti, maybe Napoleon opts to recompense slave owners via providing them with lands in Louisiana. Meanwhile the French try to resettle Haitians and Dominicans in Louisiana by saying that if they live in Hispanola they have to pay taxes but if they relocate to Louisiana they do not (for the first few years).
 
French Louisiana had a lot of missed opportunities. I think the biggest one was with La Salle. He sailed down the Mississippi in 1682 to the gulf of Mexico. He then convinced Louis XIV to sponsor an expedition with 300 men to the mouth of the river. But he sailed too far west and ended up in Texas and it all fell apart. Then Louis lost interest and was focused on warfare for most of the rest of his reign. The first permanent settlement in Louisiana did not happen until 1699, and not much else was done during Louis XIV's reign. That was a lot of lost time for growth. Have La Salle arrive in 1684 and establish a successful colony and you can get some momentum and eventually a sizeable population.

Another POD is to have the Mississippi bubble not burst around 1720. Have Law's scheme work out and thousands more decide to settle instead of the small number that did.
 
The obvious way to avoid getting Louisiana absorbed by the US would be to have more French immigration during the 18th century. Maybe the French government could be worried about overpopulation (which was a problem, IIRC), and use Louisiana as a dumping-ground for its surplus population. Or maybe they could settle more people there as a move to help keep the British colonies penned up against the eastern seaboard.
 
The Duke of Orleans, if I recall correctly, was touring the U.S. in the 1790's. Maybe he throws in with Burr and company for a slightly different conspiracy, one in which they seize New Orleans, wherein the Duke is crowned King of Louisiana?
 
Another issue is that a lot of effort went into settling the mouth of the Mississippi, where casualty rates were high. A redirection of the settling efforts further inland would have been mildly more costly but would have returned much more in terms of raw population.
Considering demographic strength is what Louisiana needs...
Furthermore, if you can have Louis XIV deport the Huguenots to the New World instead of making them flee to England and stuff, you could get a much higher French population in Canada, which could then populate Louisiana from the North instead of from the South.
 
You would need earlier and more extensive French settlement from a relatively early date, ideally creating a French population base at least comparable to that of the Canadiens further north.

Why would any French monarch send the Huguenots to settle a distant colonial frontier? What makes them so appealing as migrants, given their understandable hostility towards the French monarchy and their willingness to ally with foreign powers? Did any colonial power actually do this? A Huguenot Louisiana sounds like a mere step on the way towards an independent Louisiana at an early date.
 
It seems to me that the Huguenots were not so much hostile to France/Crown as they were to religious prosecution. Given a measure of equality in a foreign colony, I don't see any reason they would become rebellious in the short term. Long term, the OP is looking for someone to take the colony independent, but sans religious persecution, they quite likely would be as content as any other settler. The question becomes why would they go to the new world? Even with all the persecution, it was hard to pry them from their homeland. Those that would leave would likely see it better to go to a civilized European country welcoming them than to a barren wilderness filled with disease and native hostility. Still, they are a pool of immigration resource to be tapped.

Canada would be a bad place to send them. It was more rabidly Catholic than the motherland.
 
Here is an alternate idea for an independent Louisiana. Napoleon doesn't take Louisiana from Spain and there is no Peninsular War, resulting in a stable Spanish Empire. After multiple failed attempts by American filibusters to take over Luisiana, Spain offers massive incentives much like those they placed in the Caribbean IOTL for Catholics to move to Luisiana, though they largely settle the lower part. Many of these Catholics come from other parts of Spanish America, avoiding the climate issue. This results in the population growing much larger. Eventually, Americans settle into Upper Louisiana and figuring they can at least get money for this area, Spain sells it off, resulting in Spanish Luisiana being reduced to the lower part. Down the line, the Spanish colony wins its independence through a war or simply due to Spain giving it more and more autonomy, resulting in an independent state of Luisiana. This country would have a bizarre cross between French and Spanish culture, with the south being French-speaking and the north being Spanish-speaking, and the French spoken would be immensely Hispanicized.
 
It seems to me that the Huguenots were not so much hostile to France/Crown as they were to religious prosecution. Given a measure of equality in a foreign colony, I don't see any reason they would become rebellious in the short term.

The timeline of the establishment of the French territory of Louisiana sees this territory only come about after generations of religious conflict, culminating in the Edict of Nantes. The B Bourbon monarchy that is forcing the Huguenots to convert or seek refuge elsewhere is certainly not going to send them as settlers to a French colony. One might as well imagine the English of the Commonwealth populating the frontier regions of New England with Irish Catholics.
 
Top