Joan E. DeJean

"On December 12, 1719, a ship named La Mutine, or the Mutinous Woman, sailed from the French port of Le Havre, bound for the vast North American territory then referred to as "the Mississippi." La Mutine was loaded with goods that the fledgling French colony urgently required for its survival, basic foodstuffs such as flour and lard. But its principal commodity was a new kind of French export: women. The women who arrived in the New World from that...