On a quiet wing on the fourth floor of Tulane University’s library, visitors are greeted with early 18th Century maps of America, the land carved into colonies by the European powers that ruled it.
In one case sits a faded letter from a Spanish administrator to his nephew, Bernardo de Gálvez, with instructions for governing Spain’s Louisiana territory. (He advised growing more tobacco.) Nearby is a replica of a El Cazador, a Spanish warship that sailed out of Veracruz in 1793 loaded with coins meant to support the Spanish Louisiana province. It sank in the Gulf and never made it to New Orleans. Around the corner, another display shows newspapers and books, including one browning newspaper with a translation of Thomas Paine’s 1791 ‘Rights of Man.’
On Thursday, a member of the royal family of Spain, which once controlled much of the continent, took it all in…