Louisiana: an American Betrayal as illustrated in the English Translation of Vue de la colonie espagnole du Mississippi by Berquin-Duvallon
An anonymous travelogue published in Paris by a refugee from St. Domingue in 1803 and translated by John Davis in New York in 1806 presents a particularly interesting case of translation and censorship because these publications were done within the extremely complex ideological context of the Louisiana Purchase. Having briefly been returned to France after 40 years of Spanish rule, the colony was bought by the United States in 1803. John Davis’s translation illustrates this key moment in the history of Louisiana because, by using strategies of censorship, it functions as a hostile takeover of a text which made explicit Louisiana’s link to France in order to inform potential American investors about the region. In a postcolonial perspective, it is possible to determine which elements already present in the source text were deemed translatable. This example of colonial translation helps in gaining a better understanding of the way discursive relations strengthen power and the manipulative role played by translation when it relies upon censorship.