Journal of Transnational American Studies

Until recently, scholars of the cotton South tended to focus their attention on the antebellum years, when “King Cotton” lay at the center of the nation’s economy and politics. What this narrative of postbellum decline conceals is that the port of New Orleans continued its domination of the cotton trade, both domestic and international, after the end of the Civil War. Not only did New Orleans serve as a central market for transpacific commerce, but its port was directly integrated into a global Japanese trade network that included exchanges with Africa and South America, all served by Japanese shipping. This article looks at New Orleans as a center of growing networks of commerce with Japan, a position that also helped lead to the establishment of a Japanese presence in the Crescent City, fortified by the development of official and semiofficial Japanese institutions.