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Pulling a Fast One
History Study Center
When is empty land not empty? When there are people in it.
Why, Zinn asked in his NCSS address, do we continue to teach the Louisiana Purchase as a benign acquisition of empty land? It makes no sense, he suggested, because the land was not "empty" (there were a hundred thousand people already living there), and its acquisition was not "benign" (not for thousands of Africans and Native Americans at any rate).
In this new activity from ProQuest's History Study Center, decide for yourself how history should view the Louisiana Purchase.
Here are a few uncontested facts:
- In April 1803, U.S. president Thomas Jefferson sent two officials to France to negotiate the purchase of the city of New Orleans.
- In an attempt to raise money for war with England, French leader Napoleon Bonaparte offered to sell a much larger territory—which included not just the entire modern state of Louisiana but 12 other modern states, too—for $15 million.
- Jefferson's emissaries accepted Napoleon's offer, thereby doubling the size of the United States and adding 100,000 new people to a population of approximately 5 million.
Map showing land acquired in Louisiana Purchase
(© Helicon Publishing)
In U.S. history textbooks, the Louisiana Purchase is typically celebrated as a deft piece of U.S. statesmanship—France's loss and America's gain. But, Zinn would have us ask, was it America's gain?
If you equate America with the U.S. government, white easterners, and even the French-descended Louisianan residents automatically granted U.S. citizenship, probably so. But if your definition of America encompasses African slaves, free blacks, and Native Americans, perhaps not.
Many non-whites in Louisiana lost the autonomy to which they had grown accustomed, while Native Americans living east of the Mississippi were—as part of a policy described by President Jefferson in a letter to one of his generals—pressured to leave their homes and move west.
Activity
With reference to at least two scholarly articles from the History Study Center, discuss how greater understanding of the experiences of either Native Americans or African slaves might alter traditional textbook accounts of the Louisiana Purchase.
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