Bonapartists in the Borderlands

“In March 1817, the US Congress granted 144 square miles of land near the confluence of the Tombigbee and Black Warrior rivers to the Society for the Cultivation of the Vine and Olive, a group of French refugees who claimed that they wanted to practice viticulture in the region. By focusing on the local story of the Vine and Olive experience, Blaufarb illustrates how this venture became part of the much larger national and transatlantic geopolitical upheaval that defined the gulf borderlands. Recommended.”
—CHOICE

“This meticulously researched and well-written volume gives additional dimension and historical understanding to the complexities of the antebellum South.”
—The Journal of Southern History

[. . .} Blaufarb’s book skillfully distinguishes groups of French migrants made visi ble by conventions post-Reconstructino mythmaking from other, more invisible groups of francophone immigrants who resided in the United States during the first quarter of the nineteenth century. The range of interpretive horizons opened by this ambitiously conceived monograph is stunning.”
—American Historical Review
 

This is an ambitious, very well written, extensively researched book. . . .The author situates it at the intersection of public land policy, western expansionism, and the Latin American independence movement.”
—Michael A. Morrison, author of Slavery and the American West

“A well researched and intriguing book. . . . Professor Blaufarb focuses the reader’s attention to the flight of Bonapartists from France and combines the development of the Vine and Olive Colony with the struggle between Spain and the United States for control of the borderlands of the Southeast and the revolt of Spain’s colonies in Latin and South America.”
—Joe B. Wilkins, University of West Alabama