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Having lost Canada (New France), King Louis XV of France proposed to King Charles III of Spain that France should give Spain "the country known as Louisiana, as well as New Orleans and the island in which the city is situated." [1] Charles ratified the treaty on November 13 and Louis ratified it on November 23, 1762.
De Soto claiming the Mississippi, as depicted in the United States Capitol rotunda. Louisiana (Spanish: La Luisiana, [la lwiˈsjana]), [1] or the Province of Louisiana (Provincia de La Luisiana), was a province of New Spain from 1762 to 1801 primarily located in the center of North America encompassing the western basin of the Mississippi River plus New Orleans.
According to Monroe, France never dismembered Louisiana while it was in her possession (as he regarded November 3, 1762, as the termination date of French possession). After 1783 Spain reunited West Florida to Louisiana, thus completing the province as France possessed it, with the exception of those portions controlled by the United States.
In December 1801, 30,000 veteran French troops landed on Saint-Domingue; shortly after, Spain confirmed the transfer of Louisiana to France. [ 13 ] The presence of French troops in the Caribbean caused great concern in the US, but by October 1802, it was clear the expedition was a catastrophic failure; its leader, General Charles Leclerc died ...
During the Seven Years' War in 1756, Spain was allied with France; they re-captured Menorca but lost Havana and Manila in 1762. As part of the Treaty of Paris (1763) that ended the war, Britain exchanged these for Spanish Florida, while France compensated Spain by transferring ownership of Louisiana (see Map).
In 1800, France's Napoleon Bonaparte reacquired Louisiana from Spain in the Treaty of San Ildefonso, an arrangement kept secret for some two years. Documents have revealed that he harbored secret ambitions to reconstruct a large colonial empire in the Americas .
France also ceded the eastern half of French Louisiana to Britain; that is, the area from the Mississippi River to the Appalachian Mountains. [8] France had already secretly given Louisiana to Spain three months earlier in the Treaty of Fontainebleau, but Spain did not take possession until 1769. Spain ceded Florida to Britain. [6]
France took formal control of Louisiana from Spain on November 30, 1803, and turned over New Orleans to the United States on December 20, 1803. The U.S. took over the rest of the territory on March 10, 1804. The Louisiana Purchase doubled the size of the United States and opened U.S. expansion west to the Pacific Ocean and the Gulf Coast.