Adapting to a New World: English Society in the Seventeenth-Century Chesapeake

This surprisingly readable history of the seventeenth century Chesapeake details how English society was transferred to the new English colonies of Maryland and Virginia. James Horn explores how would be colonists from western and southern England found their way from poverty to new opportunities over seas. However, this is not to say that all former poor English peasants found fame and fortune in the Newe World. America was a rugged, dangerous place and it took special skills to master its challenges. Few aritocratic gentleman farmers made the hazardous journey across the Atlantic. But younger sons of established families and other minor members of the English gentry quite possibly did make the move. But the vast majority of settlers were indentured servants. SIngle, male-dominated, and determined, these servants took their chances, or were at least more willing to take their chances. Some found work for fair masters while others were taken advantage of. But no where in their minds were they developing distinct "American" senses of priorities. Too often historians want to sshow how from the very beginning something different was happening in America as hadbeen in place in England. TO a degree that is true because the Chesapeake was very different and very far from the home country. But for 30 years William Berkeley governed Virginia as an appointee of the Stuarts. During the Civil Wars Viginia did not experience the upheaval in its social strata. Maryland wasn't much different. While Lord Baltimore extended an official attitude of religious toleration, this was a political expediency rather than an embracement of religious freedom. Professor Horn's book is not for everyone, but any scholar who wants to learn more details of Chesapeake's English society will wantto consider reading this book.

Horn compares local societies in England and the colonial Chesapeake to support his argument that the social development of 17th century Virginia and Maryland cannot be fully understood unless it is placed within the broader context of the social development of the 17th century Anglophone world. Until nearly the end of the 1600s, the majority of colonists in the Chesapeake were born and raised in England. They brought with them not only English traditions and customs, but also news and attitudes that reflected the current social developments in England. The colonial societies were affected by these developments. For instance, the uprisings against proprietary rule in Maryland and Bacon's Rebellion in Virginia appear far less extraordinary when they are viewed together with the political upheavals occurring in England. This broader view of the colonial Chesapeake refutes claims that Virginia and Maryland were somehow abhorrent, rather they were preserving and adapting English traditions and customs to life on the Chesapeake while operating in an extended Anglophone world.