Mobile

Mobile stands at the head of a broad bay on the northern Gulf of Mexico, where the Mobile River carries the waters of the Alabama and Tombigbee toward the sea. The bay and river gave a port here access to the interior as well as to the Gulf. Indigenous communities inhabited the surrounding country long before French colonists established their foothold on the river.

In 1702 the French founded Fort Louis and a town upriver, making Mobile the capital of Louisiana. Flooding and other difficulties prompted the settlers to move downriver to the head of the bay in 1711. Fort Condé guarded the new town; after France ceded the colony to Britain in 1763, the fort was renamed Charlotte. In 1780 the Spanish governor Bernardo de Gálvez besieged it and forced its British garrison to surrender. Spain held Mobile until American forces took possession in 1813. During the following decades, its port grew with the expansion of cotton agriculture and enslaved labour in the interior.