Final answer:
The elite white population in New Orleans reacted to the growth of the free Creoles of Color by imposing strict segregation and establishing rigid social hierarchies to maintain racial and social control.
Step-by-step explanation:
By 1810, the reaction of the small, elite, white population in New Orleans to the increase in the number of free Creoles of Color to at least 5,000 was to impose strict segregation and social hierarchies. This reaction can be linked to the broader patterns seen across the Spanish colonial world where Enlightenment ideas did influence the creole elite, who demanded more social and political authority, yet these demands were primarily for White males of Spanish descent, not for mixed-race or African populations.
Not only did these elite creole groups reject the egalitarian rhetoric when applied to mixed-race people, but there was also a pervasive fear of mixed-race individuals gaining too much power or infiltrating the higher tiers of society, which at the time, were reserved for the White population.
The city council of Caracas' opposition to upward mobility for mixed-race populations, based on fears that it would lead to societal destruction, and the conflicts in Saint-Domingue, which revealed the threat of insurrections, underscored the efforts to maintain racial and social control by the elite white populations in New Orleans.