Senegal for the Compagnie du Sénégal, which held a monopoly on the trade of enslaved people from West Africa. After 1718, it merged with several other French trading monopolies into the Company of the Indies. In 1721, Perier served under his younger brother Antoine-Alexis during the capture of Arguin, an island off the coast of Mauritania. The Dutch retook the island a year later but lost it again in 1724 to French troops, including Perier and his brother. After recovering Arguin, the Company troops captured a battery and a fort at Portendick further down the Mauritanian coast before returning to France. During his service with the Company of the Indies, Perier sailed in the South Pacific off the coasts of Chile and Peru, and spent six months in 1724 on the Malabar Coast, guarding the recently established fort at Mahé, India, which was under threat from local rulers. Governor of the French Louisiana (1726–1733) In August 1726, after then-governor of French Louisiana Pierre Dugué de Boisbriant was recalled to France, Perier was appointed commandant general of the territory, overseeing military matters and relations with the Native Americans. He arrived in New Orleans in October 1726 and established his home at 613 Royal Street. Also in October, Louis XV ennobled Perier, his father, and his brother Antoine-Alexis by letters patent in recognition of the family's decades of service to the king. Despite Perier's lack of experience in colonial administration, the Company of the Indies felt they had a long-time employee who would be a pliant administrator focused on the Company's goals. To ensure this, the Company granted him an annual salary of 10,000 French livres, of riverfront land, and eight enslaved people a year so long as he remained in office. He sold the land, which is in the modern McDonoghville neighborhood, in 1737. The Company directed Perier to increase the colony's profitability, enforce discipline and loyalty, and keep the English from entering the territory. He was tasked specifically with completing improvements to secure the health and safety of New Orleans, as well as to visit the Company settlement in Natchez. Perier also sought to diffuse some of the partisan, religious, and familial cliques that had made running the colony difficult for his predecessors. In this, he had some initial successes, particularly in managing the dispute between Jesuit and Capuchin missionaries. Perier launched a large public works effort, overseeing the construction