Creole Gentlemen: The Maryland Elite, 1691-1776

by Burnard,Trevor

• ISBN13: 9780415931748
• ISBN10: 0415931746
• Format: Nonspecific Binding
• Copyright: 2002-01-02
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

While much recent scholarship has examined the colonial Chesapeake's slave culture, little attention has been paid to the class of landowners who dominated this society. Trevor Burnard has corrected this oversight by undertaking the first systematic study of an agricultural elite in any British colony, examining the lives of 460 of the wealthiest men who lived in colonial Maryland during this era. Burnard traces the development of this elite from a hard-living, profit-driven merchant-planter class in the seventeenth century to a more genteel class of plantation owners in the eighteenth century. This study innovatively compares these men to their counterparts elsewhere in the British Empire, including absentee Caribbean landowners and East Indian nabobs, illustrating their place in the Atlantic economic network.CreoleGentlemenprovides a fascinating glimpse into the lives of the men who shaped the society of colonial Maryland.

Author Biography

Trevor Burnard is Reader in Early American History at Brunel University, West London. He has taught previously at the University of Canterbury and the University of Waikato in New Zealand and the University of the West Indies in Jamaica

Table of Contents

List of Abbreviations	vi
Acknowledgments	vii
Problems and Perspectives	1	(20)
A Picture of the Maryland Elite
A Gentleman's Competence	21	(40)
The Economic Ambitions of the Maryland Elite
``A Species of Capital Attached to Certain Mercantile Houses''	61	(42)
Elite Debts and the Significance of Credit
Patriarchy and Affection	103	(36)
The Demography and Character of Elite Families
Arrows over Time	139	(28)
Elite Inheritance Practices
The Rule of Gentlemen	167	(38)
Elite Political Involvement
The Development of Provincial Consciousness	205	(32)
The Formation of Elite Identity
Conclusion	237	(34)
Toward a History of Elites in the Eighteenth-Century British Empire
Appendix
The Creation of the Elite Sample of Wealthy Marylanders	265	(6)
Index	271