Overview

In 1719, Jean-Francois-Benjamin Dumont de Montigny, son of a Paris lawyer, set sail for Louisiana with a commission as a lieutenant after a year in Quebec. During his peregrinations over the next eighteen years, Dumont came to challenge corrupt officials, found himself in jail, eked out a living as a colonial subsistence farmer, survived life-threatening storms and epidemics, encountered pirates, witnessed the 1719 battle for Pensacola, described the 1729 Natchez Uprising, and gave account of the 1739–1740 French expedition against the Chickasaw. Dumont's adventures, as recorded in his 1747 memoir conserved at the Newberry Library, underscore the complexity of the expanding French Atlantic world, offering a singular perspective on early colonialism in Louisiana. His life story also provides detailed descriptions and illustrations of the peoples and environment of the lower Mississippi Valley. This English translation of the unabridged memoir features a new introduction, maps, and a biographical dictionary to enhance the text. Dumont emerges here as an important colonial voice and brings to vivid life the French Atlantic.

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9780807837221

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Reviews

The editors have done the growing field of French Atlantic studies a great service with this outstanding volume. -- Journal of Southern History

Dodging death and success from La Rochelle to Biloxi and back, with some gardening in between, Dumont de Montigny survived to put quill to paper. His restless memoir, now briskly translated, offers a stereotype-shattering window onto eighteenth-century transatlantic life and writing. --Catherine Desbarats, McGill University<br>

Author Information

Gordon M. Sayre is associate professor and director of graduate studies in English at the University of Oregon. He is author of Les Sauvages Am©ricains: Representations of Native Americans in French and English Colonial Literature and editor of American Captivity Narratives.||Carla Zecher is director of the Center for Renaissance Studies at the Newberry Library and author of Sounding Objects: Musical Instruments, Poetry, and Art in Renaissance France.|Gordon M. Sayre is associate professor and director of graduate studies in English at the University of Oregon. He is author of Les Sauvages Am©ricains: Representations of Native Americans in French and English Colonial Literature and editor of American Captivity Narratives.

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