St. Louis rising : the French regime of Louis St. Ange de Bellerive / Carl J. Ekberg, Sharon K. Person.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Ekberg, Carl J., author.

Person, Sharon K., 1956- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

French.

History.

Frontier and pioneer life.

Illinois--History--To 1778.

Illinois.

Saint Louis (Mo.)--History--18th century.

Saint Louis (Mo.).

Saint-Ange de Bellerive, Louis Groston de.

Frontier and pioneer life--Illinois.

Frontier and pioneer life--Missouri--Saint Louis.

French--Illinois--History--18th century.

Missouri--Saint Louis.

Genre:

History.

Physical Description:

xv, 326 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates ; 24 cm

Other Title:

Saint Louis rising

Place of Publication:

Urbana ; Chicago ; Springfield : University of Illinois Press, [2015]

Summary:

In most tellings, the story of St. Louis's early days features the fur traders Pierre Laclède and Auguste Chouteau hacking a city out of wilderness with irresistible élan. St. Louis Rising overturns such gauzy myths with the contrarian thesis that French government officials and institutions shaped and structured early village society. Of such officials, none did more than Louis St. Ange de Bellerive. As Carl J. Ekberg and Sharon K. Person show, St. Ange's commitment to the Bourbon monarchy and to civil tranquility made him the prime mover as St. Louis emerged during the tumult that followed the French and Indian War. Drawing on a wealth of new source materials, Ekberg and Person reexamine the complexities of politics, Indian affairs, marriage customs, slavery, and material culture that characterized the 1760s. Their alternative version of the oft-told tale of St. Louis's founding places the event within the context of Illinois Country society. Vividly depicting life in a colonial outpost, St. Louis Rising provides a trove of new information on everything from the fur trade to the arrival of the British and Spanish in the aftermath of the Seven Years' War-and explodes the many histories that rely on Chouteau's self-aggrandizing recollections. Book jacket.

Contents:

Introduction: beyond the Laclede-Chouteau legend

Part I. St. Ange de Bellerive and the Illinois Country

Fort d'Orleans and the Grotton-St. Ange family

The rise of Louis St. Ange de Bellerive

The Illinois Country in transition, 1763-1765

Commandant St. Ange de Bellerive

The village emerges

Part II. Contours of village life

Logs and stones: early St. Louis buildings

The Coutume de Paris rules

Slaves: African and Indian

In small things forgotten

Foundations of the St. Louis fur trade

End of an era

Conclusion: St. Louis and the wider world.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780252038976

0252038975

9780252080616

0252080610

OCLC:

893454382