In the eighteenth century, cash grains were introduced on Maryland's Eastern Shore and eventually replaced tobacco as market crops. What factors brought about this shift from tobacco production to diversified agriculture, and what were its effects on the people living there? This book charts the early social and economic history of the Eastern Shore, focusing on the ways in which Atlantic commerce shaped the lives of English settlers between 1620 and 1776. Professor Clemens is concerned with the relationship between changes in society brought about by local economic circumstances and those created by international market conditions. He also points out the distinctive balance between commercial agriculture and self-sufficiency farming that was achieved on the Eastern Shore. Offering a new perspective on early American history, his book not only depicts the growth of a particular region in colonial America but places that growth in the broader context of both the Atlantic market economy and the economies of other English New World settlements.

The Atlantic Economy during the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries is a collection of essays focusing on the expansion, elaboration, and increasing integration of the economy of the Atlantic basin - comprising parts of Europe, West Africa, and the Americas - during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In thirteen essays, the contributors examine the complex and variegated processes by which markets were created in the Atlantic basin and how they became integrated. While a number of the contributors focus on the economic history of a specific European imperial system, others, mirroring the realities of the world they are writing about, transcend imperial boundaries and investigate topics shared throughout the region. In the latter case, the contributors focus either on processes occurring along the margins or interstices of empires, or on breaches in the colonial systems established by various European powers. Taken together, the essays shed much-needed light on the organization and operation of both the European imperial orders of the early modern era and the increasingly integrated economy of the Atlantic basin challenging these orders over the course of the same period.

An introduction to colonial Maryland, describing the history, economy, and daily life of the colony.

During the earliest decades of Virginia history, some men and women who arrived in the New World as slaves achieved freedom and formed a stable community on the Eastern shore. Holding their own with white neighbors for much of the 17th century, these free blacks purchased freedom for family members, amassed property, established plantations, and acquired laborers. T.H. Breen and Stephen Innes reconstruct a community in which ownership of property was as significant as skin color in structuring social relations. Why this model of social interaction in race relations did not survive makes this a critical and urgent work of history.