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hoped for a tropical version of the temperate-zone model of yeoman colonization à la
canadienne . Colonists would provide not only security but the opportunity for an En-
lightenment community on the balmy shores of the equatorial Atlantic. Choiseul and his
agents were maintaining a useful network of spies throughout the region, and his in-
terests in colonization were both military and economic. 44 Choiseul and Pombal were
both interested in white colonization for strategic reasons, due to the requirements of uti
possedetis that inhered in the Madrid Treaty (whites would have a “reliable” national-
ity,unlikeIndiansorslaves)andconcernwhetherslaves(whowerechattel, notcitizens)
would be suitably loyal in this realm of uncertain sovereignty. Choiseul, who brooded
over his loss of Canada, took his defeat there as an object lesson and embarked on what
was to become a disastrous colonial venture.
The Alsatian Amazon, or Colonizing in the Land of Candide 45
Choiseul had been very impressed by a handbook written by a French Guiana planter
named Brûletout de Préfontaine. A precursor to what would become an influential co-
lonial genre during the nineteenth century, Préfontaine's book extolled the individualist-
ic agrarian frontier life and the rich soils and natural resources of French Guiana in his
Maison rustique a l'usage des habitans de la partie de la France equinoxial . His 1763
bookwassoenthusiasticallyembracedinParisthatChoiseulbelievedthatGuianamight
yet become the ideal yeoman colony. Further, as Choiseul noted, “peopled with whites,
the Guyane, well placed on the winds for the French islands of the Gulf of Mexico, is
favorably situated to provide them with assistance and even to act offensively against
the British islands.” 46 To this end, Choiseul made plans for a large white settler colony
on the Kourou River, near Cayenne. While many tropical hands, including Governor
d'Orvilliers, counseled against this (and resigned over the program), Choiseul desig-
natedÉtienneFrançoisTurgottoorganizetheexpedition,andsoonextravagantpromises
of tropical agrarian utopia and two-year stipends had inflamed the imaginations of large
numbers of marginalized French provincials, mostly rustic blonds from the Alsace and
Rhineland. 47 ThefuturegovernorVictorPierreMalouetdescribedthemotleybunchthis
way: “It was a deplorable spectacle, even for one of my experience, to see this crowd of
imbeciles, among whom, in addition to agricultural workers, were merchants, families
ofartisans,acrowdofcivilandmilitaryservantsandfinallyatroopofclownsandmusi-
cianswhoweretoprovideamusementforthenewcolony.” 48 In1764-65sometwelveto
fourteen thousand hapless Alsatian colonists would find themselves in the coastal low-
lands in the rainy season with no colonial preparation on site, only rotted provisions,
and soon they began to die like flies, albeit in the ghoulish manner of Edgar Allan Poe's
MasqueoftheRedDeath .Absentproductiveactivitiesforcolonists,and“inordertopre-
vent melancholy”—a malady at least as likely to undermine the colony as malaria, so it
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