Colony of Louisiana

In the 1690s the policy of the government of Louis XIV became openly expansionist, and it aimed at hemming in the British east of the Appalachians. The French hoped that by extending French interests beyond the St Lawrence valley and the basin of the Great Lakes, to include the whole Mississippi basin to the Gulf of Mexico, English settlement might be contained within a narrow strip along the Atlantic seaboard. In 1699 French merchant Pierre Le Moyne D’Iberville recommended immediate colonization and exploitation of Louisiana. He based his recommendations less on natural resources, which alone would hardly have warranted a generous effort, than on the urgent need to counter the threat of imminent English expansion from the Carolinas.