The Chesapeake in the Seventeenth Century: Essays on Anglo-American Society

About this book

One of the strongest currents in early American studies at the present time is a major revival of interest in the history of seventeenth-century Virginia and Maryland. This volume of essays illustrates the richness and variety of the work being done especially by a group of young social historians. Through its important sampling of new research it succeeds in bringing the Chesapeake into focus as a region. The rediscovery of the early Chesapeake emigration and marriage and family are three of the essay topics. Other subjects include environment disease and mortality; immigration and opportunity; parental death in a particular county; settlement patterns; political stability and the emergence of a native elite; and English-born and Creole elites in turn-of-the-century Virginia. While the essays individually exemplify a number of distinct themes and methodological approaches to the subject as a whole they provide a remarkable comprehensive overview of the progression in the seventeenth century from a predominantly emigrant society subsisting under conditions of great instability and high mortality to a largely native-born population that had achieved a notable degree of political and social stability.