Colonial history of the United States Lower Louisiana. This vast tract was first settled at Mobile and Biloxi around 1700, and continued to grow when 7,000 French immigrants founded New Orleans in 1718. Settlement proceeded very slowly; New Orleans became an important port as the gateway to the Mississippi River, but there was little other economic development because the city lacked a prosperous hinterland. In 1763, Louisiana was ceded to Spain around New Orleans and west of the Mississippi River. In the 1780s, the western border of the newly independent United States stretched to the Mississippi River. The United States reached an agreement with Spain for
Prostitution in France A row erupted in 2002 with the proposal by Françoise de Panafieu (UMP), which divided French feminists, with Gisèle Halimi denouncing it, but Élisabeth Badinter seeing it as an issue of "the right to dispose freely of one's body". A 2010 proposal by Chantal Brunel for a return to regulated brothels was opposed by French sex workers (see Politics, above). Meanwhile, Spain has exploited the difference between the two countries by opening brothels along the French-Spanish border. In 2004, the average earnings of a French prostitute were estimated at €500 a day. For Sub-Saharian prostitutes living in France, it was