As the French and Indian war ended, Spain acquired the huge and undefined French province of Louisiana. It accepted the colony to protect other Spanish North American possessions farther to the west and south, particularly silver-rich Mexico. For nearly forty years, Spain struggled against the encroachment of Great Britain and later the United States to hang on to this vast territory inhabited largely by Native Americans. This study explains the efforts initiated by Louisiana's governors to bring in settlers, the changes made in the Catholic Crown's immigration policies to accommodate immigrants, and the results of their work. "A must for all students of colonial Louisiana, this is an extremely valuable collection of hard-to-find early articles by the undisputed dean of the history of the Spanish period, Gilbert C. Din." --F. Todd Smith, author of Louisiana and Gulf South Frontier, 1500-1821 "This volume provides an in-depth, solid, and well-researched analysis of an important topic in the history of Louisiana and the Spanish borderlands. Gilbert C. Din, a former president of the Louisiana Historical Association, is a consummate expert on the history of the colonial Gulf Coast. This well-written study joins his other important scholarly works as a must-read for anyone interested in the role Spain played in the colonial history of Louisiana." --Light Cummins, author of Spanish Observers and the American Revolution, 1775-1783