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Caillot in the Classroom
With THNOC’s A Company Man now available in paperback, the adventures of a clerk for the Company of the Indies are more accessible to students and educators.
This spring The Historic New Orleans Collection’s award-winning volume A Company Man, the lively account of a young man’s 18th-century voyage from Paris to the New World, appeared in paperback for the first time. Designed to be accessible to students and teachers in particular, the affordable softcover edition of Marc-Antoine Caillot’s vibrant memoir opens as the 21-year-old clerk sets sail from Paris in 1729. Translated from the French by Teri F. Chalmers and featuring Caillot’s own illustrations and a comprehensive introduction by THNOC Curator/Historian Erin M. Greenwald, the edition brings 18th-century New Orleans and its French Atlantic context to life in the classroom.
Caillot’s uncensored tales of pranks, parties, and romantic escapades, as well as his detailed descriptions of the native peoples and plants and animals he encountered, have proved popular among students. “He’s a young man, writing about his first job: it’s easy for students to identify with him and thus a great way for them to get a sense of the history of the region,” said Adam McKeown, professor of English at Tulane University, who assigns the entire memoir in his course on New Orleans and the early modern Caribbean. “His description of Mardi Gras and of masquerading in New Orleans is the earliest one we know of,” he noted, referring to Caillot’s colorful account of rounding up friends in search of parties and of winning male admirers while disguised as a shepherdess.
“The students also love the book itself, which is beautiful, with all those color illustrations. It’s been my experience that students still find the early-modern era more palatable
through print resources than digital,” McKeown said. College students today often do more reading online than anywhere else, but physical engagement with the old and durable technology of a print volume helps them immerse themselves in the period. McKeown said students also report that reading a print book frees them from the interruption of messages and potential Internet searches that are constant distractions while reading electronic texts.
Caillot’s memoir has found its way not only into college courses on literature and history but also into high school classrooms. The lower price of the paperback—which includes all the color illustrations and contextual material of the original—invites even broader course adoption. —THNOC STAFF
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The Remarkable French-Atlantic Voyage of a Clerk for the Company of the Indies
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Marc-Antoine Caillot
NOW AVAILABLE
A Company Man: The Remarkable French-Atlantic Voyage of a Clerk for the Company of the Indies, paperback edition
a memoir by Marc-Antoine Caillot, translated by Teri F. Chalmers and edited by Erin M. Creenwald
The Historic New Orleans Collection, 2016
$25, available at The Shop at The Collection and anywhere books are sold
Title page, Relation du voyage de la Louisianne ou Nouvelle France fait par le Sr. Caillot en I’annee 1730
between 1731 and 1758; manuscript with watercolor
by Marc-Antoine Caillot 2005.0011
Summer 2016	9