The birth of Virginia's aristocracy. Volume 1 / James C. Thompson ; edited by Deb Strubel.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Thompson, James C., author.

Contributor:

Strubel, Deborah, editor.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

British--Virginia.

British.

Elite (Social sciences)--Virginia.

Elite (Social sciences).

Virginia--History--Colonial period, ca. 1600-1775.

Virginia.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (157 p.)

Place of Publication:

Alexandria, Virginia : Commonwealth Books, 2010.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Author James Thompson notes in his introduction that his training is in Philosophy not History. The significance of this becomes apparent in his discussion of how society developed in 17th century Virginia. In the first part of "The Birth of Virginia's Aristocracy," Thompson recounts how the Virginia Company formed and describes the charter it received from King James I—they went into business to make MONEY! Thompson traces the problems that plagued the venture. He describes the natural disasters and management problems that led two decades later to its collapse and the reclamation of its Jamestown colony by the king in 1624. He explains how social visionary Edmund Sandys attempted to save the faltering enterprise by shifting its focus from generating business profits to manufacturing a viable community. Sandys did this, Thompson recalls, by creating a “commonwealth" which would provide a market for industrious and productive individuals. He planned to attract them by offering economic incentives, private landownership, and a community “parliament". Thompson interprets Sandys' commonwealth experiment into a first principle of society: economic policies determine to fate of a society. Virginia's commonwealth survived, for example, because Sandys' ingenious scheme succeeded—it transformed the colony into a profit-generating marketplace. Thompson describes how the process of growing as a profit-generating marketplace snarled the commonwealth's “civil society" in politics. He finds in this a second principle of society: as the cell grows it divides. In Virginia, increasingly dispersed landowners encountered increasingly different opportunities and faced increasingly different problems. These diverging personal and economic interests led to a crossroad in 1619. Seeking a better way to manage its colony's proliferating problems and conflicts, the

Virginia's Company's London Council followed Sandys' recommendation and authorized its colonists to establish a local legislature where they could define their common good and make their laws. Doing these things caused politics to become an essential aspect of Virginia's fledgling society. It quickly became a divisive force. An ominous turn occurred in 1660 when Governor Berkeley began packing the colony's legislature. This, says Thompson, produced the privileged, wealthy class remembered today as Virginia's “aristocracy". In this book, the philosopher identifies two fundamental principles of society that he applies in later analyses and commentaries.

Contents:

Front Cover; Title Page; Half Title; Copyright; Acknowledgments; Illustrations; Table of Contents; Introduction; I. Colonization; II. The Commonwealth Period; III. Civil Society in Virginia; IV. From Commonwealth to Collapse; V. The Rule Under Law of Gentlemen; VI. The Reign of Charles II; VII. Colonel Richard Lee's Submission to Lord Fairfax; VIII. The Squirearchy in the Revolutionary Era; IX. Thomas Jefferson's Other Rebellion; Endnotes; Bibliography; Index; About the Author

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (ebrary, viewed April 15, 2015).

ISBN:

0-9825922-0-5

0-9825922-1-3

OCLC:

894791233