American Origins and Regional Institutions: The Seventeenth-Century Chesapeake

Abstract

The current debate about relationships between American origins and European precedents has engaged geographers at a number of levels. A major problem has been the lack of discussion of the institutional environments of early Americans and the regional settings in which they were established. A study of the early Chesapeake reveals the importance of its profit-oriented, socially stratified beginnings based upon the success of tobacco cultivation in the southern Virginia tidewater. This placed paramount importance on the drive for land, the search for a suitable labor supply, and individual desire for upward social mobility. The dependence on British agricultural servants created early class distinctions and an initial demographic profile marked by young, unmarried males. Family life was thus less structured than it was in England or New England, and cultural patterns were subject to greater change. The principal institutions of the family, plantation, and county were recognizable by the 1660s, to which hereditary slavery was added during the 1680s. Regional differences nevertheless emerged between early Virginia and Maryland, and between the Chesapeake's eastern and western shores. Political and religious patterns in particular remained more varied and unstable in Maryland. These findings emphasize the importance of examining institutions as well as structures and patterns in the early life of American settlers. They highlight the differential significance of English social origins, the need to identify the Chesapeake yeoman, and the limitations of the culture hearth concept.

Large Scale Institutional Changes: Land Demarcation Within the British Empire

“… Marschner (1960, 22-24, 33-36),Kain and Baigent (1992, 269-76), Price (1995, 97 on free choice; see also 7, 15-18, 87-205 for discussion of the southern colonies),Thrower (1966, 10),Johnson (1957, 22),Kinda (2001, 143),Mitchell (1983).…”