Planting an Empire explores the social and economic history of the
Chesapeake region, revealing a story of two similar but distinct
colonies in early America.
Linked by the Chesapeake Bay, Virginia and Maryland formed a prosperous
and politically important region in British North America before the
American Revolution. Yet these "sister" colonies--alike in climate and
soil, emphasis on tobacco farming, and use of enslaved labor--eventually
followed divergent social and economic paths. Jean B. Russo and J.
Elliott Russo review the shared history of these two colonies, examining
not only their unsteady origins, the powerful role of tobacco, and the
slow development of a settler society but also the economic disparities
and political jealousies that divided them.
Recounting the rich history of the Chesapeake Bay region over a 150-year
period, the authors discuss in clear and accessible prose the key
developments common to both colonies as well as important regional
events, including Maryland's "plundering time," Bacon's Rebellion in
Virginia, and the opening battles of the French and Indian War. They
explain how the internal differences and regional discord of the
seventeenth century gave way in the eighteenth century to a more
coherent regional culture fostered by a shared commitment to slavery and
increasing socio-economic maturity.
Addressing an undergraduate audience, the Russos study not just wealthy
plantation owners and government officials but all the people involved
in planting an empire in the Chesapeake region--poor and middling
planters, women, Native Americans, enslaved and free blacks, and
non-English immigrants. No other book offers such a comprehensive brief
history of the Maryland and Virginia colonies and their place within the
emerging British Empire.
