Seventeenth-century Chesapeake involved the area of the colonies of Virginia and Maryland.

Seventeenth-century Chesapeake involved the area of the colonies of Virginia and Maryland.

This book explores the development of the fur trade in Chesapeake Bay during the seventeenth century, and the wide-ranging links that were formed in a new and extensive transatlantic chain of supply and consumption. It considers changing fashion in England, the growing demand for fur, at a time when the Russian fur trade was in decline, examines native North Americans and their trading and other exchanges with colonists, and explores the nature of colonial society, including the commercial ambitions of a varied range of investors. As such, it outlines the intense rivalry which existed between different colonies and colonial interests. Although the book argues that fur never supplanted tobacco as the region's principal export, noting that the trade declined as new, more profitable sources of supply were opened up, nevertheless the case of the Chesapeake fur trade provides an excellent example of how different elements in a new transatlantic enterprise fitted together and had a profound impact on each other.

Often compared unfavorably with colonial New England, the early Chesapeake has been portrayed as irreligious, unstable, and violent. In this important new study, James Horn challenges this conventional view and looks across the Atlantic to assess the enduring influence of English attitudes, values, and behavior on the social and cultural evolution of the early Chesapeake. Using detailed local and regional studies to compare everyday life in English provincial society and the emergent societies of the Chesapeake Bay, Horn provides a richly textured picture of the immigrants' Old World backgrounds and their adjustment to life in America. Until the end of the seventeenth century, most settlers in Virginia and Maryland were born and raised in England, a factor of enormous consequence for social development in the two colonies. By stressing the vital social and cultural connections between England and the Chesapeake during this period, Horn places the development of early America in the context of a vibrant Anglophone transatlantic world and suggests a fundamental reinterpretation of New World society.

In this study, the author discusses the influence of the seventeenth-century sheriff of England on the local political institutions of the American colonies he has chosen for study, with particular attention to Virginia and Maryland. He has used resources both in this country and in England for his material and has included documents to illustrate points made in his discussion. Originally published in 1930. A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.

This collection of essays on seventeenth-century Virginia, the first such collection on the Chesapeake in nearly twenty-five years, highlights emerging directions in scholarship and helps set a new agenda for research in the next decade and beyond. The contributors represent some of the best of a younger generation of scholars who are building on, but also criticizing and moving beyond, the work of the so-called Chesapeake School of social history that dominated the historiography of the region in the 1970s and 1980s. Employing a variety of methodologies, analytical strategies, and types of evidence, these essays explore a wide range of topics and offer a fresh look at the early religious, political, economic, social, and intellectual life of the colony. Contributors Douglas Bradburn, Binghamton University, State University of New York * John C. Coombs, Hampden-Sydney College * Victor Enthoven, Netherlands Defense Academy * Alexander B. Haskell, University of California Riverside * Wim Klooster, Clark University * Philip Levy, University of South Florida * Philip D. Morgan, Johns Hopkins University * William A. Pettigrew, University of Kent * Edward DuBois Ragan, Valentine Richmond History Center * Terri L. Snyder, California State University, Fullerton * Camilla Townsend, Rutgers University * Lorena S. Walsh, Colonial Williamsburg Foundation

This book is Volume I of A HISTORY OF THE SOUTH, a ten-volume series designed to present a balanced history of all the complex aspects of the South’s culture from 1607 to the present. Like its companion volumes, The Southern Colonies in the Seventeenth Century was written by an outstanding student of Southern history. In the America of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, just what was Southern? The first colonists looked upon themselves as British, and only gradually did those attitudes and traditions develop which were distinctively American. To determine what was Southern in the early colonies, Professor Craven has searched for those features of early American society which distinguished the South in later years and those features of early American history which help the Southerner to understand himself. The Chesapeake colonies—Virginia and Maryland—formed the first Southern community. These colonies grew out of the same interest which directed European imperialism toward Africa and the West Indies—notably the production of sugar, silk, wine, and tobacco. Craven studies the social, economic, and political development of the Southern colonies as the product of continuing European rivalries that resulted in the colonization of Carolina and Florida. Major emphasis, however, is placed upon British expansion, since Anglo-Saxon influence was dominant in the formation of the South as a region. Craven sees as crucial the middle period of the seventeenth century. Out of the political and social unrest which characterized these years emerged the points of view which gave shape to the American and the Southern tradition.