UC Irvine

This dissertation argues multiple processes in the Delta during the early to mid-nineteenth-century were significantly influenced by the local, national, and international community of merchants and contributed to its early integration into European markets. My central argument is that between the 1790s and 1820s the increased flow of Anglo-American credit and capital created legal issues centered on liability that in turn, made the Delta more open to foreign influence and capital, primarily metropolitan centers in Great Britain and the eastern coasts of the United States. Commercial and legal interests merged throughout the courtrooms of the early republic, and sparked a need to rid the Delta of older Spanish laws and customs. Older routines linked mercantile networks and kept frontier merchants within a tie web of obligation to distant Anglo creditors. “Insider” lending was strengthened, both locally and over great distances, obviating many of the Jeffersonian ideals that aimed for the proliferation of small farms, at least along the prime lands of the Mississippi River.

Mercantile custom and state laws concerning trade and insolvency, were used in the service of commercial republicanism, privileged Anglo-American merchants. In this context, the redeployment of slave labor in the creation of new productive spaces augmented and inflated property prices. The turn was affected by frequent experiences of economic downturns and war but also by legal struggle over issues of credit between groups that saw Americanization in different cultural and economic terms.