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Chapter 1 - Swamp City

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 August 2019

T. R. Johnson
Affiliation:
Tulane University, Louisiana
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Summary

The location of New Orleans constitutes a paradox, for a city on this site is both inevitable and impossible, the boundaries between land and water ever changeful, and human settlement always understood as unsettled – that is, provisional and an ongoing project of problem solving. The settlers’ attitudes toward swamps in general determined their understanding of the particular city that sprang up among them. The swamps, they thought, were a source of deadly disease, an endless hiding place for smugglers and runaway slaves, and it thus carried moral, political and even racial overtones, as reflected in the writing of the first historian of New Orleans, Charles Gayarré and in other early commentary on the city.

Type
Chapter
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New Orleans
A Literary History
, pp. 1 - 13
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2019

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  • Swamp City
  • Edited by T. R. Johnson, Tulane University, Louisiana
  • Book: New Orleans
  • Online publication: 23 August 2019
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108632690.002
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  • Swamp City
  • Edited by T. R. Johnson, Tulane University, Louisiana
  • Book: New Orleans
  • Online publication: 23 August 2019
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108632690.002
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Swamp City
  • Edited by T. R. Johnson, Tulane University, Louisiana
  • Book: New Orleans
  • Online publication: 23 August 2019
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108632690.002
Available formats
×