On October 1

On this day in ...
... 1800 (210 years ago today), Spain returned Louisiana to France in a secret pact known as the Treaty of San Ildefonso, named after the town northwest of Madrid that's home to La Granja, the immense royal palace at right. (photo credit) Retrocession of Louisiana, which Spain had wrested from France in a 1763 peace treaty, was contingent on the establishment somewhere in Italy of a "kingdom" to be ruled by a son of the Duke of Parma. Following further machinations and negotiations, the transfer of Louisiana took effect in 1802. By means of the Louisiana Purchase the new colonial authority, France, sold it to the United States the next year.

(Prior October 1 posts are here, here, and here.)

On this day

On February 22, ...

... 1819, in Washington, D.C, U.S. Secretary of State John Quincy Adams and his Spanish counterpart, Luis de Onís, signed the "Treaty of Amity, Settlement and Limits Between the United States of America, and His Catholic Majesty," a pact better known by its signers' names. In the Adams-Onís Treaty (right), which helped to define what is now the U.S.-Mexico border, the United States purchased Florida, renounced any claim to Texas, and agreed to a fixed western boundary for lands it had obtained from France in the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. Spain kept not only Texas, but western territories that today comprise much of the states of Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming.

... 1774, in London, England, at the conclusion of 2-1/2 weeks of proceedings in the case captioned Donaldson v. Beckett but frequently known as The Question of Literary Property Case, the House of Lords "ended perpetual copyright, and established a limited copyright of fourteen years."