re: Why did Napoleon sell Louisiana?

Draw a circle around that small spot that surrounds the word Louisiana.

That’s all the French had really settled.

Crack money

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Didnt he understand the resources and land he was giving up? Also, Spain , UK, and France helped create a superpower that would rival them one day. Why didnt the Europeans attack the US ?

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Because the British ruled the waves and French had no shot at holding onto it, especially during the Napoleonic Wars.

Also the Continental System would have come into play eventually as well.

What happened when Napoleon went to Mount Olive?












Popeye got pissed.

Napoleon realized that in the Grand Strategic scheme of things, an expanding USA with a great port at the mouth of the Miss River would be a strong counter-weight to the British domination of Sea Power in the New World.

Napoleon knew that France could never challenge British sea power in the New World, but, the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA certainly might be able to do just that.

Napoleon also knew that if he DID NOT sell to the USA that the British Empire may have just conquered the Louisiana Territory and New Orleans and occupied it forever. He knew that he was not likely to be able to defend it from British attack, but he figured that the USA could.

In 1815, had the British won the Battle of New Orleans and conquered New Orleans, it is highly unlikely that they would have surrendered these military conquests back to the USA, the Treaty of Ghent notwithstanding.

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Why did Napoleon sell Louisiana?

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Simple......mosquitos.

$$$ and Haiti.

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Draw a circle around that small spot that surrounds the word Louisiana. That’s all the French had really settled.

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People up the (now) Mississippi and Missouri beg to differ.
You'll recognize architectural styles in St. Genevive and other river towns.

You'll see family names that harken back to France. The farm we bought in east Tennessee was first bought in the late 1700s by a family who arrived in New Orleans and came up river; their family name is very close to the city they came from and their early grave stones are flat to the ground and always were (?New Orleans influence).

Was Andrew Michaux a botanical explorer or a spy or both?

I've looked for books about Haiti in that time period and haven't found any in English. Suggestions?

For Napoleon, Louisiana was just a breadbasket to feed his sugar colonies in the Caribbean. Once he lost control of Haiti, he no longer had a sugar colony to feed. Thus, the costs of protecting Louisiana from the encroaching Americans and Spanish outweighed the benefits. Unlike America and Great Britain, France did not have a massive population boom that needed to go somewhere. Napoleon was at war with everyone and needed his soldiers everywhere. He couldn’t defend Louisiana if he wanted to (could not even hold down Haiti) so he might as well get some money for it rather than watch it get stolen. It’s like a team trading a star player late in the last year of his contract for some draft picks because they know they can’t afford the cost of resigning him.

Cuz he knew y'all were comin'.