The Louisiana Purchase (History Channel)
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DVD details
Artist: Artist Not ProvidedBrand: A and E Home Video
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language)
Format: Color, DVD, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 50 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2006-03-28
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: A&E Home Video
Product features:
- On April 30, 1803, President Thomas Jefferson completed one of the greatest real estate deals in history when he signed the Louisiana Purchase, buying more than 900,000 square miles west of the Mississippi from France for $15 million. The product of an unlikely chain of events born of mishap, backroom bargaining, and the whims of a few colorful personalities, this monumental deal heralded Napoleon
DVD Reviews of The Louisiana Purchase (History Channel)
DVD Review: A good treatment of a most significant event
Summary: 5 Stars
This 50 minute History Channel dvd gets a full five stars from me because it effectively and entertainingly explains one of the most significant yet complex set of events in American History.
The fledgling U.S. fought for independence from 1775 to 1781 and in the resulting Treaty of Paris of 1783 gained not only independence but a vast national domain west to the Mississippi. In the 1846-1848 Mexican-American War, the U.S. took roughly the northern half of the Mexican Republic at a cost of 13,000-plus American lives, 25,000-plus Mexican lives and $15 million. This "first-third" and "third-third" (fractions not exact, of course) of the continental land mass of the United States were wrested away from other nations through the expenditure of years of bloodshed and millions of national treasure. In between, in 1803, the United States acquired the very significant "second-third" of the puzzle with nary a drop of blood spilled and by means of political intrigue and diplomatic negotiation.
To say that the U.S.'s acquisition of the 800,000 mile-plus tract that was the Louisiana Territory by accident and plain good luck is not an exaggeration. Americans tend to look back at this transaction as an inevitability and because accomplished so easily, as sort of a footnote to the national narrative. Nothing could be further from the truth.
The intricacies of the interplay of seemingly random developments are clearly illustrated in this video--quite an accomplishment, really, for a 50 minute program. Spain acquired Louisiana from France in the wake of France's loss to England in the French and Indian wars. The United States, after independence, finally obtained from Spain the right to navigate the Mississippi River and deposit goods for trade on New Orkeans docks--the 1795 Pinckney Treaty. That agreement was rendered meaningless when Napoleon regained the territory from Spain in the secret Treaty of San Ildefonso. Napoleon planned to re-conquer Haiti--San Domingue, as they called it--which had successfully revolted from France led by the brilliant leader Toussaint L'Overture, the "Haitian George Washington"; the "Black Napoleon." Napoleon, irked at this effrontery by a black ex-slave and desirous of re-acquiring the former gem of the French Empire sent an army headed by his brother-in-law General Chearles LeClerc to re-conquer Haiti and from there move on to occupy Louisiana, which would serve as a bread-basket for France and Haiti both. But LeClerc and thousands of his men died of Yellow Fever and the Haitians were never subdued, Louisiana was never occupied. Moreover, renewed war with England loomed, and Napoleon decided to turn the vast Louisiana Territory into fast cash. President Jefferson, un-nerved that the expansive French and not the somnolent Spanish controlled the Mississippi, sent envoys to regain the right of navigation and deposit or to acquire some small strip of land for American use. The envoys were flabbergasted when the French minister Talleyrand instead offered the entire vast territory. With no directive from Jefferson and no explicit constitutional power to do so, they agreed to pay $15 million for the territory--more than the minimum Napoleon would have been willing to accept, the dvd points out.
All these players and all this intrigue are well-developed in the 50 minute dvd. It is, therefore, well worth a history teacher's use of all or part of it to explain to American History classes, in a mostly very interesting way, this signal event in the creation of the "sea to sea" continental U.S. Empire. The taliking-head historians do a very good job of explaining these complexities in broad strokes that do not, however, distort by over-simplification. I have used the dvd for high school classes, but the general adult audience, if interested in great events of American History also will be both informed and entertained by this dvd.
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