Creole Gentlemen: The Maryland Elite, 1691-1776

ISBN-13: 9780415931748 / Angielski / Miękka / 2002 / 256 str.

Trevor G. Burnard

Opis

While much scholarship has examined the colonial Chesapeake's slave culture, little attention has been paid to the class of landowners who dominated this society. Trevor Burnard has undertaken a systematic study of this agricultural elite, providing a glimpse into the lives of 460 of the wealthiest men who lived in colonial Maryland during the period 1691-1776.

Recenzje

"Burnard's book makes a useful and worthy contribution." -- The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography
"Burnard has written a valuable book. He asks significant questions that are sure to elicit provacative responses . In particular, his emphasis on situating Maryland within the entire English imperial context is a welcome approach that will broaden our understanding of the entire system from which British North America withdrew in 1776." -- American Historical Review, February 2003
"Trevor Burnard breathes new life into the field of Maryland's colonial history by providing us with a superb portrait of its native-born, Creole elite. Deftly uncovering the various layers of reality that gave meaning to their experience, he captures the distinctive duality of their identity, split between an ardent pursuit of British cultural values, especially genteel respectability, and a rapidly growing independence coupled with a commitment to local, provincial interests .A major contribution to the scholarship on early modern British America." -- Michael J. Rozbicki, author of The Complete Colonial Gentleman: Cultural Legitimacy in Plantation America
"Trevor Burnard breathes new life into the field of Maryland's colonial history by providing us with a superb portrait of its native-born, Creole elite. Deftly uncovering the various layers of reality that gave meaning to their experience, he captures the distinctive duality of their identity, split between an ardent pursuit of British cultural values, especially genteel respectability, and a rapidly growing independence coupled with a commitment to local, provincial interests .A major contribution to the scholarship on early modern British America." -- Michael J. Rozbicki, author of The Complete Colonial Gentleman:
"Trevor Burnard breathes new life into the field of Maryland's colonial history by providing us with a superb portrait of its native-born, Creole elite. Deftly uncovering the various layers of reality that gave meaning to their experience, he captures the distinctive duality of their identity, split between an ardent pursuit of British cultural values, especially genteel respectability, and a rapidly growing independence coupled with a commitment to local, provincial interests .A major contribution to the scholarship on early modern British America." -- Michael J. Rozbicki, Author of The Complete Colonial Gentleman: Cultural Legitimacy in Plantation America
"This is a lucid, superbly argued study of "the lives of moderately well off gentleman at the edges of the Atlantic plantation world" that reconstructs the social and material contexts that anchored the identities and framed the behaviors of Maryland's elite.
." -- S. Max Edelson, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Spis treści

List of Abbreviations Acknowledgments 1. Problems and Perspectives : A Picture of the Maryland Elite 2. A Gentleman's Competence : The Economic Ambitions of the Maryland Elite 3. A Species of Capital Attached to Certain Mercantile Houses : Elite Debts and the Significance of Credit 4. Patriarchy and Affection : The Demography and Character of Elite Families 5. Arrows over Time : Elite Inheritance Practices 6. The Rule of Gentlemen : Elite Political Involvement 7. The Development of Provincial Consciousness : The Formation of Elite Identity 8. Conclusion : Toward a History of Elites in the Eighteenth-Century British Empire Appendix : The Creation of the Elite Sample of Wealthy Marylanders Index

O autorze

Trevor Burnard is a Reader in Early American History at Brunel University in England.