Tulane’s enduring focus on Latin America is deeply rooted in New Orleans’s history. Founded in 1718 by Jean Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville, la Nouvelle Orléans became a vital French foothold in the Americas with its strategic location along the lower Mississippi River Valley. Prior to European contact, it was a gathering spot for local Indigenous peoples to hunt, forage, and trade. In 1763, the French ceded control of the settlement to Spain. Under Spanish rule, la Nueva Orleans became an important node in the maritime networks connecting the Gulf South with the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico that have lasted for more than 300 years.
After annexation to the United States in 1803, New Orleans thrived as one of the largest and wealthiest cities in the country, a transit portal for goods, people, and cultures. Beginning with the Civil War, its fortunes declined as the railroad diminished the city’s strategic importance.
On the eve of the 20th century, city leaders reinvented New Orleans as a hub for lucrative north-south commerce. In the years preceding the opening of the Panama Canal (1914), a concerted effort was mounted to promote the city as the ideal location or “Logical Point” to spur a more robust hemispheric trade environment. A re-imagined New Orleans was poised for a comeback.