Adapting to a new world English society in the seventeenth-century Chesapeake / James Horn.

Includes bibliographies and index.

Often compared unfavorably with colonial New England, the early Chesapeake has been portrayed as irreligious, unstable, and violent. In this pathbreaking study, James Horn looks across the Atlantic, examining the enduring influence of English attitudes, values, and behavior on the social and cultural evolution of the early Chesapeake. Using detailed local and regional studies to compare everyday life in English provincial society and the emergent societies of the Chesapeake Bay, Horn provides a richly textured picture of the immigrants' Old World backgrounds and their adjustment to life in America. Until the end of the seventeenth century, most settlers in Virginia and Maryland were born and raised in England, a factor of enormous consequence for social development in the two colonies. Horn examines the factors that encouraged or forced these settlers to leave England, their initial impressions of their new home, their adaptation to the novel conditions they encountered, and their experience of family life, the local community, work, law and order, and religion. English immigrants did not expect to find a mirror image of England in the Chesapeake. Yet for all that was different in New World society, Virginia and Maryland were emphatically English, not just in name but also in temperament. Immigrants thought of themselves as English, were governed by English laws and institutions, broadly followed English religious practices, and held to the same traditions as English people back home. By stressing the vital social and cultural connections between England and the Chesapeake during this period, Horn places the development of early America in the context of a vibrant Anglophone transatlantic world and suggests a fundamental reinterpretation of New World society.

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Preface; Illustrations and Tables; Introduction; ONE The English Context of Emigration; 1 Contrast and Diversity: The Social Origins of Chesapeake Immigrants; A Diverse Multitude: Social Characteristics; Town and Country: Geographical Origins and Migration; Poverty and Profit: Motives for Emigration; On the Margins: Forests, Heath, and Woodland; 2 English Landscapes; Gloucestershire and Emigration; Plenty and Want: The Vale of Berkeley; A "Much Diversified Country": Kent; Comparisons: Provincial and Local Cultures; TWO The Formation of Chesapeake Society

3 The Great Bay of Chesupioc"A Lande, Even as God Made It,"; White Immigration, Population, and Settlement; Tobacco and the Chesapeake Economy; Inequality and Opportunity; 4 Settling the Land; Lower Norfolk; Lancaster County; County and Parish; THREE Comparative Themes; 5 The Social Web: Family, Kinship, and Community; Sex and Marriage; Family and Inheritance; Friends and Neighbors: The Local Community; 6 Adam's Curse: Working Lives; The Necessity of Work; Earning a Living; Servants, Planters, and Merchants; 7 House and Home: The Domestic Environment; Houses, Rooms, and Room Use

The World of Goods: Household PossessionsThe Material World: Poverty, Class, and Gender; 8 Order and Disorder; The Establishment of Authority; Crimes and Misdemeanors; Protest and Rebellion; 9 Inner Worlds: Religion and Popular Belief; Religion, Church, and Society; Magic and Witchcraft; 10 English Society in the New World; Index