Laura Kilcer VanHuss, ed. Charting the Plantation Landscape from Natchez to New Orleans.

Abstract

Charting the Plantation Landscape from Natchez to New Orleans examines the plantation landscape of the Lower Mississippi Valley. This region was perhaps the most important center of cotton and sugar production; had the greatest concentration of enslaved Africans; and was home to what is reputed to be the greatest concentration of millionaires in the antebellum United States. The organizing framework for the book is Norman’s Chart of the Lower Mississippi River, an iconic and frequently reproduced map of the plantations located along the Mississippi River between Natchez, Mississippi and New Orleans before the Civil War. The map was made by Adrian Marie Persac—a surveyor, painter, and photographer who surveyed the river and collected information on the plantations, largely from parish records—and was published by B. M. Norman of New Orleans in 1858. Persac’s map is a cartographic representation of the economic geography of the Lower Mississippi Valley at the height of its prosperity. It provides important documentation about the cotton and sugar plantations along the river, including their locations and boundaries, the names of their owners, and their principal crops. However, like all maps, Norman’s Chart is an abstraction. It freezes space in time and provides only selected information. It conceals even as it discloses. The strategy of the book is to elaborate on Norman’s chart by successively remapping selected aspects of the plantation landscape omitted from the map in order to provide a more comprehensive, multilayered understanding of the historical geography of the Lower Mississippi Valley and the forces that created and recreated it. The book offers a successful blend of public and academic history. Its authors include museologists, architectural historians, and academic historians. The chapters are thoughtful, well researched, and clearly presented. They have much to offer both the general reader and the specialist.