AskBiography Logo   Latest News  Follow Us on Twitter  Follow Us on Google Buzz  Became Fan - Facebook  Subscribe to RSSRSS   Bookmark and Share

Louisiana (New France)

Louisiana (New France)
Common NameNew France
Native NameLa Louisiane
La Louisiane française
Conventional Long NameLouisiana / French Louisiana
NationNew France
SubdivisionDivision
Image FlagPavillon LouisXIV.svg
Flag AltFlag of New France
Flag TypeFlag of New France
FlagFlag of France#History
Image Map Caption1682-1763
CapitalMobile (1702 � 1720)
New Orleans (after 1723)
S1Louisiana (New Spain)
Flag S1Flag of New Spain.svg
S2Indian Reserve (1763)
Flag S2British-Red-Ensign-1707.svg
S3Louisiana Purchase
Flag S3US flag 15 stars.svg
Life Span1682 � 1764


1803 � 04
Year Start1682
Year End1804
Date End10 March 1804
Event EndTransfer to USA
Date Event11763
Event1Split east to Great Britain
Date Event21764
Event2Split west to Spain
Date Event330 April 1803
Event3Louisiana Purchase
Date Event430 November 1803
Event4Returned from Spain
Political SubdivUpper Louisiana
Lower Louisiana

     Home | Former Subdivision | Louisiana (New France)





Louisiana ( ) or French Louisiana was an administrative district of New France. Under French control from 1682 � 1763 and 1800 � 03, the area was named in honor of Louis XIV, by French explorer René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de la Salle. It originally covered an expansive territory that included most of the drainage basin of the Mississippi River and stretched from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico and from the Appalachian Mountains to the Rocky Mountains. Louisiana was divided into two regions, known as Upper Louisiana (French: Haute-Louisiane), which began north of the Arkansas River, and Lower Louisiana (French: Basse-Louisiane). The present-day U.S. state of Louisiana is named for the historical region, although it occupies only a small portion of the territory claimed by the French.

French exploration of the area began during the reign of Louis XIV, while French Louisiana was not greatly developed, due to a lack of human and financial resources. As a result of its defeat, in the Seven Years' War, France was forced to cede the eastern part of the territory in 1763 to the victorious British, and the western part to Spain as compensation for that country's loss of Florida. France regained sovereignty of the western territory in the secret Treaty of San Ildefonso of 1800. But, strained by obligations in Europe, Napoleon Bonaparte decided to sell the territory to the United States in the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, ending France's presence in Louisiana.

The United States ceded part of the Louisiana Purchase to Great Britain in the Treaty of 1818, following the War of 1812. This section lies above the 49th parallel north in a portion of present-day Alberta and Saskatchewan.


Warning: simplexml_load_file(http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/videos/-/Louisiana/(New/France)?orderby=viewCount&max-results=10) [function.simplexml-load-file]: failed to open stream: HTTP request failed! HTTP/1.0 410 Gone in /home/askbio/public_html/index_bio.php on line 257

Warning: simplexml_load_file() [function.simplexml-load-file]: I/O warning : failed to load external entity "http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/videos/-/Louisiana/(New/France)?orderby=viewCount&max-results=10" in /home/askbio/public_html/index_bio.php on line 257

Fatal error: Call to a member function children() on a non-object in /home/askbio/public_html/index_bio.php on line 260