Building the Devil's Empire : French Colonial New Orleans
by: Dawdy, Shannon Lee

Hardcover. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1st, 2008, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 320 pages, b&w illustrations. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket. Building the Devil's Empire is the first comprehensive history of New Orleans's early years, tracing the town's development from its origins in 1718 to its revolt against Spanish rule in 1768. Shannon Lee Dawdy's picaresque account of New Orleans's wild youth features a cast of strong-willed captives, thin-skinned nobles, sharp-tongued women, and carousing travelers. But she also widens her lens to reveal the port city's global significance, examining its role in the French Empire and the Caribbean, and she concludes that by exemplifying a kind of rogue colonialism--where governments, outlaws, and capitalism become entwined--New Orleans should prompt us to reconsider our notions of how colonialism works.