Creole Architecture: A Comparative Analysis of Upper and Lower Louisiana and Saint Domingue

What factors accounted for variations in architectural traditions in the French colonial settlements of the New World? This paper tests several of the propositions of culture theory against what is known of the process of tradition-formation in the French vernacular architecture of the Illinois Country, Lower Louisiana, and the Caribbean colony of Saint Domingue. It explores the extent to which generalized cultural processes such as preadaptation, founder’s effect, and cultural syncretism account for changes in the forms of typical settler’s houses.