Explain the Louisiana purchase.

The purchase of Louisiana was a commercial transaction whereby Napoleon Bonaparte, then First French Consul, lacking the resale agreement to Spain, sold to the United States in 1803, 2 144 476 km² (529 911 680 acres) of French possessions in America of the North (ceded by Spain) at a price of about 3 cents per acre (7 cents per ha); a total price of 15 million dollars or 80 million French francs. With interest, Louisiana's territory cost $ 23,213,568.

The vast extension of the treaty covered the territories of the current states of Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, Minnesota south of the Mississippi River, much of North Dakota, almost all of South Dakota, the northeast New Mexico, northern Texas, a section of Montana, Wyoming, Colorado east of the continental divide, and Louisiana on both sides of the Mississippi River, including the city of New Orleans. In addition, the purchase included parts of the current provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan, in present-day Canada. This territory represents 23% of the current area of the United S. tates