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Scarce map of the Gulf Coast, Texas and the Rio Grande (Riviere de San Marco ou de Colorado) to West Florida and the Rio des Apalaches, from Berquin-Duvallon's Vue de la Colonie Espagnole du Mississippi, ou des Provinces de Louisiane et Floride Occidentale, en l'année 1802, published in Paris in 1803. The map is one of only a few maps of the period to focus in on this region and unique in its topographical style. Settlements are shown at Baton Rouge, New Orleans, Plaquemine, Mobile, and Pensacola.
Pierre Louis Berquin-Duvallon, a San Domingo planter and writer, lived in Louisiana from 1799 until 1802. He was one of the French colonialists who fled San Domingo in 1803, after the Haitian Revolution, which resulted in the abolition of slavery on Haiti. The author gives a general survey of the area, with special attention to the Mississippi river and New Orleans, and deals with the climate, soil, flora and fauna, production of sugar, cotton, indigo, tobacco, rice and wood of the area, as well as with its trade and commerce, law, and government.
Louisiana, discovered by Spanish explorers in 1519, was claimed for France in 1682 by Sieur de La Salle, who named the area Louisiana, after Louis XIV. In 1792, France ceded the Louisiana region west of the Mississippi and New Orleans to Spain, the remaining land east of the river having been given to the British in the Treaty of Paris in 1763. In 1800, however, Spain was forced by Napoleon Bonaparte to give back the Louisiana Territory and New Orleans to France. Because of the passing of the region from Spanish to French hands, there was a renewed interest in the Colony. Louisiana, however, turned out not to be as profitable for the French as expected. In 1803, Louisiana finally was sold to the United States by the Louisiana Purchase, for the sum of $ 15.000.000.
