Servants indentured to the French West India Company under three-year contracts were brought to Louisiana. French officials also deported convicts and underprivileged people to Louisiana, but this policy soon began to threaten the social and political stability of the kingdom. The enslavement of Native Americans in their homeland proved to be inefficient and was eventually abolished. Africa became the readiest source of forced labour with the skills necessary to develop the subtropical lands of the Gulf Coast. The melding of the microhistory of Whitney plantation and the German Coast with the macrohistorical forces that shaped the evolution of plantation slavery and slave societies in the American South shows how specific African and American spaces were connected, spurring economic development and giving rise to the celebrated Afro-Creole culture of Louisiana. The history of the slave trade is not merely the history of deportation into the Americas of able-bodied people who could better tolerate the subtropical climate; more importantly, it is about the transfer of skills that had been used on African soil for many centuries. Beyond generating wealth and prosperity for the masters, enslaved Africans contributed to the emergence of a unique culture whose role in shaping American identity can no longer be ignored.