User:Tetsujin/Port Manteau, LA
Port Manteau, Louisiana (IPA pronunciation: [pɔːtˈ mantəʊ]) is an historic city on the northern edge of Louisiana's Vermillion Bay. Founded in 1690, it enjoyed a brief period of immense prosperity as a shipping port and manufacturing town before New Orleans and the area around the mouth of the Mississippi river was settled. The small town might have been lost to history if not for its cultural legacy, which has since led to a thriving tourism industry and a return to economic vitality.
History[edit | edit source]
Beginnings in the 17th Century[edit | edit source]
Port Manteau was founded by the then-prosperous French Overseas Company in 1690. Named by in honor of the company's founder, Pierre Manteau, the port enjoyed almost thirty years of prosperity before the competing French Mississippi Company founded another town at the mouth of the Mississippi. The French Mississippi Company then enjoyed almost exclusive access to the Mississippi river and all of the inland trading made possible by access to it. Port Manteau could not compete economically after the Mississippi was exploited, and so fell into decline.
The Mississippi River Era[edit | edit source]
Realizing their economy was in a slump, the people of Port Manteau sought to find other ways of bringing business to their port. They enjoyed brief periods of prosperity through their local luggage manufacture industries and from prostitution, but by 1733 most sea travellers already had a suitcase, and the French Mississippi Company was quick to introduce prostitution in their towns, too. As the slump continued, it began to seem as though Port Manteau would be deserted.
The Spanish Empire Period[edit | edit source]
When Louisiana was ceded to the Spanish in 1763, Port Manteau found a new market for its manufacturing industries and new clientèle for its prostitutes. As a result, the city's economy gradually began to recover. Additionally, the increase in slave trading gave the port new life, as ships of slaves from nearby Cuba would invariably miss their target of the Mississippi River and stop to ask for directions. During this period, however, the predominantly French population of the city became increasingly dissatisfied with the Spanish government and with the ever-increasing numbers of Spanish citizens. This conflict led to the Port Manteau Riots of 1800, in which eight Spaniards were killed before the rioters surrendered. Disgust with the incident led the Spanish government to abandon the town, and it briefly reverted to French control before being sold to the United States by Napoleon.
Port Manteau, the Great Melting Pot[edit | edit source]
As part of the Louisiana Territory sold to the United States, Port Manteau faced a significant new influx of people, many of whom were not French. This led to greater dissatisfaction among the French residents, as they were quickly becoming outnumbered. However, new generations of French in Port Manteau in this period embraced this change, and the Port Manteau youth of 1810 made it fashionable to combine all the cultural influences of the time - combining French, Spanish, and English words, along with a few vaguely-understood African words learned from slaves - forming new words to create their own style of language. This style of "Port Manteau speech" even gained some degree of popularity elsewhere - though those with a less broad base of linguistic knowledge would most often combine words from their own language. People even began combining the words "Port" and the name "Manteau" to form a new word to describe this: "portmanteau". Artists in Port Manteau in the mid-ninteenth century adopted similar techniques in their works - fusing divergent media, themes and styles to create the Port Manteau Movement. Eduard Garcia-Douche de Manteau, one of the best-known Port Manteau artists, was especially known for his particular style of Port Manteau Neoclassical Russian Avant-Garde Pontillism, usually rendered in wood-block print and cross-stitch on carved marble.
Civil War[edit | edit source]
Port Manteau was a major ship-building port for the Confederate army throughout the Civil War. However, as the Union army captured various other key ports in Louisiana early in the war, Port Manteau became famous for never having built a ship of war that lasted more than two weeks in service. In fact, the record of the Port Manteau ships was not so poor as popular opinion held, but it was still widely believed that any ship of war launched from Port Manteau would sail no more than 100 miles east before being intercepted by Union ships and destroyed. Despite this, the Confederate army, pleased with Port Manteau's efficient construction schedules and the economy of building ships there, continued commissioning new ships to be built at Port Manteau until the end of the war.
Twentieth Century[edit | edit source]
Emerging unscathed from the Civil War, Port Manteau went on to enjoy a new period of considerable economic prosperity. And while the Port Manteau movement had declined in favor of other styles, Port Manteau's artist community continued to play a major role in the world of art, and some of Port Manteau's most famous artists of the period continued to draw upon Port Manteau's heritage: for instance, Andrew Jacques Marquez's Dadaist cubism photography, or Sengbe Picard Ruiz's Socio-Realist Abstract Expressionism paintings. Likewise, the cultural history of Port Manteau has made it an attractive destination for tourism.