An Extraordinary Atlantic Life: Sebastián Nicolás Calvo de la Puerta y O’Farrill, Marqués de Casa-Calvo

An Extraordinary Atlantic Life: Sebastián Nicolás Calvo de la Puerta y O’Farrill, Marqués de Casa-Calvo

by Gilbert C. Din

Sebastián Calvo de la Puerta was an interim governor of Louisiana for two years (1799-1801) during an era that most historians have ignored. Born into a Spanish family that settled in Havana in the sixteenth century and became very wealthy because of sugar, Sebastián chose a military career and gradually rose to the rank of general. In addition to Casa-Calvo's career in Louisiana, the study explores Spanish settlement in Cuba, Cuba’s importance in the Spanish empire, Spain’s economic and military decline, the French invasion of Spain (1808-1813), and Sebastián’s last years in Paris. Despite the fact that Casa-Calvo left virtually no personal papers or even a picture of himself, Gilbert Din has provided a remarkable biography of a man who lived An Extraordinary Atlantic Life.

Gilbert C. Din holds AB and MA degrees from the University of California, Berkeley, and a doctorate from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid in Spain, all in history. He specializes in the Spanish period (1763-1803) of colonial Louisiana and has published a number of books and many articles about its history. Among the awards he has won are two Kemper Williams Prizes for The Canary Islanders of Louisiana (1988) and Spaniards, Planters, and Slaves: The Spanish Regulation of Slavery in Louisiana (1999).

ISBN:  9781935754787

Softcover, 363 pp., ©2016

Release date: September 6, 2016