Urban dreams, rural commonwealth : the rise of plantation society in the Chesapeake / Paul Musselwhite.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Musselwhite, Paul, author.

Series:

American beginnings, 1500-1900

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Urbanization.

Chesapeake Bay Region (Md. and Va.)--History.

Chesapeake Bay Region (Md. and Va.).

Urbanization--Chesapeake Bay Region (Md. and Va.).

Virginia--Chesapeake.

Genre:

History.

Physical Description:

xii, 341 pages ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Chicago ; London : The University of Chicago Press, 2019.

Summary:

The English settlers who staked their claims in the Chesapeake Bay were drawn to it for a variety of reasons. Some sought wealth from the land, while others saw it as a place of trade, a political experiment, or a potential spiritual sanctuary. But like other European colonizers in the Americas, they all aspired to found, organize, and maintain functioning towns-an aspiration that met with varying degrees of success, but mostly failure. Yet this failure became critical to the economy and society that did arise there. As Urban Dreams, Rural Commonwealth reveals, the agrarian plantation society that eventually sprang up around the Chesapeake Bay was not preordained-rather, it was the necessary product of failed attempts to build cities. Paul Musselwhite details the unsuccessful urban development that defined the region from the seventeenth century through the Civil War, showing how places like Jamestown and Annapolis-despite their small size-were the products of ambitious and cutting-edge experiments in urbanization comparable to those in the largest port cities of the Atlantic world. These experiments, though, stoked ongoing debate about commerce, taxation, and self-government. Chesapeake planters responded to this debate by reinforcing the political, economic, and cultural authority of their private plantation estates, with profound consequences for the region's laborers and the political ideology of the southern United States. As Musselwhite makes clear, the antebellum economy around this well-known waterway was built not in the absence of cities, but upon their aspirational wreckage.

Contents:

Introduction: "our folly and ruining singularity"

Garrison towns, corporate boroughs, and the search for order under the Virginia Company

From corporate communities to county courts in the early Stuart empire

The political geography of empire in the English revolution

Planters, the state, and the restoration city

Towns, improvement, and the contest for authority in the 1680s

The imperial city and the solidifying of the plantation system

Urban growth and country thought in the planters' golden age

Epilogue: "this little common wealth."

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780226585284

022658528X

OCLC:

1045665383

Publisher Number:

40028891498