History
See also: History of Mobile, Alabama
See also: List of people from Mobile, Alabama

Colonial
The settlement of Mobile, then known as Fort Louis de la Louisiane, was first established in 1702, at Twenty-seven Mile Bluff on the Mobile River, as the first capital of the French colony of Louisiana. It was founded by French Canadian brothers Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville and Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne, Sieur de Bienville, in order to establish control over France's Louisiana claims with Bienville having been made governor of French Louisiana in 1701. Mobile’s Roman Catholic parish was established on 20 July 1703, by Jean-Baptiste de la Croix de Chevrières de Saint-Vallier, Bishop of Quebec. The parish was the first established on the Gulf Coast of the United States.The year 1704 saw the arrival of 23 women to the colony aboard the Pélican, along with yellow fever introduced to the ship in Havana.Though most of the "Pélican girls" recovered, a large number of the existing colonists and the neighboring Native Americans died from the illness. This early period also saw the arrival of the first African slaves aboard a French supply ship from Saint-Domingue.The population of the colony fluctuated over the next few years, growing to 279 persons by 1708 yet descending to 178 persons two years later due to disease.

Mobile and Fort Condé in 1725.
These additional outbreaks of disease and a series of floods caused Bienville to order the town relocated several miles downriver to its present location at the confluence of the Mobile River and Mobile Bay in 1711. A new earth and palisade Fort Louis was constructed at the new site during this time. By 1712, when Antoine Crozat took over administration of the colony by royal appointment, the colony boasted a population of 400 persons. In 1713 a new governor was appointed by Crozat, Antoine Laumet de La Mothe, sieur de Cadillac, founder of Detroit. He did not last long due to allegations of mismanagement and a lack of growth in the colony, and he was recalled to France in 1716. Bienville again took the helm as governor, serving the office for less than a year until the new governor, Jean-Michel de Lepinay, arrived from France. Lepinay, however, did not last long either due to Crozat's relinquishing control of the colony in 1717 and the shift in administration to John Law and his Company of the Indies. Bienville found himself once again governor of Louisiana and in 1719 decided to move the capital elsewhere.
The capital of Louisiana was moved to Biloxi in 1720, leaving Mobile relegated to the role of military and trading outpost. In 1723 the construction of a new brick fort with a stone foundation began and it was renamed Fort Condé in honor of Louis Henri, Duc de Bourbon and prince of Condé.Mobile would maintain the role of major trade center with the Native Americans throughout the French period, leading to the almost universal use of Mobilian Jargon as the simplified trade language with the Native Americans from present-day Florida to Texas.

The expanded West Florida territory in 1767.
In 1763, the Treaty of Paris was signed, ending the French and Indian War. The treaty ceded Mobile and the surrounding territory to the Kingdom of Great Britain, and it was made a part of the expanded British West Florida colony.The British changed the name of Fort Condé to Fort Charlotte, after Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, King George III's queen. The British were eager not to lose any useful inhabitants and promised religious tolerance to the French colonists, ultimately 112 French Mobilians remained in the colony. In 1766 the population was estimated to be 860, though the town's borders were smaller than they had been during the French colonial efforts.During the American Revolutionary War, West Florida and Mobile became a refuge for loyalists fleeing the other colonies. The Spanish captured the town in 1780 during the Battle of Fort Charlotte. The Spanish wished to eliminate any British threat to their Louisiana colony, which they had received from France in 1763s Treaty of Paris. Their actions were also condoned by the revolting American colonies due to the fact that West Florida remained loyal to the British Crown. The fort was renamed Fortaleza Carlota, with the Spanish holding Mobile and the surrounding Mobile District as a part of Spanish West Florida until 1810 when the Mobile District became part of the briefly independent Republic of West Florida. The Spanish continued to hold onto the town of Mobile itself until 1813, when the weakly defended port was seized by the U.S. General James Wilkinson during the War of 1812.