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Mutinous Women: How French Convicts Became Founding Mothers of the Gulf Coast Spiral-Bound | April 19, 2022

Joan DeJean

★★★☆☆+ from 101 to 500 ratings

$33.07 - Free Shipping

The secret history of the rebellious Frenchwomen who were exiled to colonial Louisiana and found power in the Mississippi Valley

In 1719, a ship named La Mutine (the mutinous woman), sailed from the French port of Le Havre, bound for the Mississippi. It was loaded with urgently needed goods for the fledgling French colony, but its principal commodity was a new kind of export: women.

Falsely accused of sex crimes, these women were prisoners, shackled in the ship’s hold. Of the 132 women who were sent this way, only 62 survived. But these women carved out a place for themselves in the colonies that would have been impossible in France, making advantageous marriages and accumulating property. Many were instrumental in the building of New Orleans and in settling Louisiana, Alabama, Arkansas, Illinois, and Mississippi.

Drawing on an impressive range of sources to restore the voices of these women to the historical record, Mutinous Women introduces us to the Gulf South’s Founding Mothers.

Publisher: Hachette Book Group
Original Binding: Hardcover
Pages: 448 pages
ISBN-10: 1541600584
Item Weight: 1.5 lbs
Dimensions: 6.4 x 1.7 x 9.6 inches
Customer Reviews: 3 out of 5 stars 101 to 500 ratings
“Gripping from its opening scene of a corpse discovered on a Paris side street, Joan DeJean’s Mutinous Women tells the stories of these French women, deported as unwanted criminals to what would become, less than a century later, part of the United States… Through astounding research in French and Louisiana archives… Ms. DeJean uses her knowledge as a scholar of early modern France to great effect. … a fascinating history and a reminder that all kinds of people helped to build what became the United States.”—Wall Street Journal

Joan DeJean is trustee professor at the University of Pennsylvania. She is the author of twelve books on seventeenth- and eighteenth-century France, including How Paris Became Paris and The Essence of Style. She was born in southwest Louisiana, and now lives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and Paris, France.