A "Topping People" is the first comprehensive study of the political, economic, and social elite of colonial Virginia. Evans studies twenty-one leading families from their rise to power in the late 1600s to their downfall over one hundred years later. These families represented the upper echelons of power, serving in the upper and lower houses of the General Assembly, often as speaker of the House of Burgesses. Their names--Randolph, Robinson, Byrd, Carter, Corbin, Custis, Nelson, and Page, to note but a few--are still familiar in the Old Dominion some three hundred years later. Their decline was due to a variety of factors--economic, social, and demographic. The third generations showed an inability to adapt their business philosophies to the changing economic climate. Their inclination was to mirror the English landed gentry, living off the income of their landed estates. Economic diversification was the norm early on, but it became less effective after 1730. Scots traders, for example, introduced chain stores, making it more difficult to continue family-run stores. And land speculation was no substitute for diversification. An increase in population resulted in the creation of new counties, which weakened the influence of the Tidewater region. These leading families began to spend more than they earned and became heavily indebted to British mercantile firms. The Revolution only served to make matters worse, and by 1790 these families had lost their political and economic status, although their social status remained. A "Topping People" is a thorough and engrossing study of the way families came to gain and, eventually, lose great power in this turbulent and progressive period in American history.

Lorena Walsh offers an enlightening history of plantation management in the Chesapeake colonies of Virginia and Maryland, ranging from the founding of Jamestown to the close of the Seven Years' War and the end of the "Golden Age" of colonial Chesapeake agriculture. Walsh focuses on the operation of more than thirty individual plantations and on the decisions that large planters made about how they would run their farms. She argues that, in the mid-seventeenth century, Chesapeake planter elites deliberately chose to embrace slavery. Prior to 1763 the primary reason for large planters' debt was their purchase of capital assets--especially slaves--early in their careers. In the later stages of their careers, chronic indebtedness was rare. Walsh's narrative incorporates stories about the planters themselves, including family dynamics and relationships with enslaved workers. Accounts of personal and family fortunes among the privileged minority and the less well documented accounts of the suffering, resistance, and occasional minor victories of the enslaved workers add a personal dimension to more concrete measures of planter success or failure.

"An astonishing range of reading in contemporary tracts and modern authorities is manifest, and many aspects of British and colonial affairs are illuminated. As a political analysis this very important contribution will be hard to refute...." —Frederick B. Tolles, Political Science Quarterly "He produces historical analysis which is as revealing to the political scientist or sociologist as to the historian, of the significance of social and cultural forces on political changes in eighteenth-century America." —John D. Lees, Cambridge University Press "...these well-argued essays represent the first sustained and systematic attempt to provide a comprehensive and integrated analysis of all elements of American political life during the late colonial period...the author has once again put all students concerned with colonial America heavily in his intellectual debt." —Jack P. Greene, The New York Historical Society Quarterly "...Mr. Bailyn brings to his effort a splendid gift for pertinent curiosity. What he has found, and what patterns he has made of his findings, light our way through his longitudes and latitudes of scholarly precision." —Charles Poore, The New York Times

Places the antebellum debate over slavery and states' rights in the context of early discussions of the two-party system and economic development by founding fathers Jefferson and Madison, arguing that the similarities between North and South were more numerous than the differences, and analyzes the state's regional cultures, demonstrating that party politics as a system expanded democracy Virginia. Includes bandw maps and photos. For scholars of history. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

First published in 1988, Marc Egnal's now classic revisionist history of the origins of the American Revolution, focuses on five colonies—Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and South Carolina—from 1700 to the post-Revolutionary era. Egnal asserts that throughout colonial America the struggle against Great Britain was led by an upper-class faction motivated by a vision of the rapid development of the New World. In each colony the membership of this group, which Egnal calls the expansionist faction, was shaped by self-interest, religious convictions, and national origins. According to Egnal, these individuals had long shown a commitment to American growth and had fervently supported the colonial wars against France, Spain, and Native Americans. While advancing this interpretation, Egnal explores several salient aspects of colonial society. He scrutinizes the partisan battles within the provinces and argues that they were in fact clashes between the expansionists and a second long-lived faction that he calls the "nonexpansionists." Through close analysis he shows how economic crisis—the depression of the 1760s—influenced the colonists' behavior. And although he focuses on the initiative and leadership of the elite, Egnal also investigates the part played by the common people in the rebellion. A Mighty Empire contains insightful sketches of Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and other revolutionary leaders and makes clear the human dimensions of the clash with Great Britain. The final chapter provides a new context for understanding the writing of the Constitution and considers the links between the Revolution and modern America. An appendix lists members of the colonial factions and identifies their patterns of political commitment. Now back in print with a new preface, A Mighty Empire is a valuable addition to the debate over the role of ideas and interests in shaping the Revolution. For the 2010 edition, Egnal reviews how interpretations of the American Revolution have developed since the publication of his landmark volume. In his new preface he considers and critiques explanations for the Revolution founded on ideology, the role of non-elite Americans, and British politics. Egnal also looks to a trend in the writing of the history of the Revolution that considers its effects more than its causes and thereby grapple with the conflicts ingredient in the nascent American empire. With great lucidity, he shows where the writing of history has gone since the appearance of A Mighty Empire and makes a case for its continuing relevance.

Ruling America offers a panoramic history of our country's ruling elites from the time of the American Revolution to the present. At its heart is the greatest of American paradoxes: How have tiny minorities of the rich and privileged consistently exercised so much power in a nation built on the notion of rule by the people? In a series of thought-provoking essays, leading scholars of American history examine every epoch in which ruling economic elites have shaped our national experience. They explore how elites came into existence, how they established their dominance over public affairs, and how their rule came to an end. The contributors analyze the elite coalition that led the Revolution and then examine the antebellum planters of the South and the merchant patricians of the North. Later chapters vividly portray the Gilded Age "robber barons," the great finance capitalists in the age of J. P. Morgan, and the foreign-policy "Establishment" of the post-World War II years. The book concludes with a dissection of the corporate-led counter-revolution against the New Deal characteristic of the Reagan and Bush era. Rarely in the last half-century has one book afforded such a comprehensive look at the ways elite wealth and power have influenced the American experiment with democracy. At a time when the distribution of wealth and power has never been more unequal, Ruling America is of urgent contemporary relevance.