“Everybody Wants to Be a Merchant”

Abstract

This chapter claims that commerce contributed more than any other activity to alleviating the racial divide in French New Orleans. On the one hand, participation in the market was to a large extent determined by status, race, class, and gender; on the other, the surge in commercial exchanges provided a set of circumstances in which social and racial boundaries were more easily negotiated. Yet whites were the ones who benefited the most from this situation: by the end of the French period a powerful corporate body of self-identified merchants and traders of European descent had emerged, and they were able to challenge the traditional conception of commerce as an infamous occupation. In contrast, whereas a few slaves managed to purchase their freedom thanks to their participation in an informal economy, they were unable to weaken the long-lasting association whites made between slavery and dishonor.