Waterways and Ethnicity

First, an 1845 map of New Orleans:

Then, let's take another look at our ongoing Google Map and consider the effects of artificial waterways on the growth and settlement of the city.


View Geographic Places of New Orleans in a larger map

We are also going to have a lot of material about ethnicity today, including the contentious term "creole," a look at the Irish, Germans, French, and others who made the city a polyglot metropolis in the antebellum period.

Lastly, we will look at the rise and importance to New Orleans of plantation agriculture, the business of slavery, and the business of supplying and transhipping the goods of the Mississippi Valley.