It is not surprising to anyone who knows the Bay country that the Chesapeake captured the imagination of Europeans in the 17th and 18th centuries," writes Arthur Pierce Middleton in this classic maritime history of the earliest years of Maryland and Virginia. "It was called the 'Noblest Bay in the Universe' in which the whole navies of Great Britain, France and the Netherlands might simultaneously ride at anchor."

"Tobacco Coast" is the history of how the Chesapeake Bay shaped the society and economy of an entire region. Its hundreds of miles of navigable tributaries made adoption of...