“Everybody Wants to Be a Merchant”

This chapter claims that commerce contributed more than any other activity to alleviating the racial divide in French New Orleans. On the one hand, participation in the market was to a large extent determined by status, race, class, and gender; on the other, the surge in commercial exchanges provided a set of circumstances in which social and racial boundaries were more easily negotiated. Yet whites were the ones who benefited the most from this situation: by the end of the French period a powerful corporate body of self-identified merchants and traders of European descent had emerged, and they were able to challenge the traditional conception of commerce as an infamous occupation. In contrast, whereas a few slaves managed to purchase their freedom thanks to their participation in an informal economy, they were unable to weaken the long-lasting association whites made between slavery and dishonor.