Creole Gentlemen: The Maryland Elite, 1691-1776

by Trevor Burnard

Overview

Examining the lives of 460 of the wealthiest men who lived in colonial Maryland, 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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780415931731
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	01/02/2002
Series:	New World in the Atlantic World
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Trevor Burnard is a Reader in Early American History at Brunel University in England.

Table of Contents

List of AbbreviationsAcknowledgments1. Problems and Perspectives: A Picture of the Maryland Elite2. A Gentleman's Competence: The Economic Ambitions of the Maryland Elite3. A Species of Capital Attached to Certain Mercantile Houses: Elite Debts and the Significance of Credit4. Patriarchy and Affection: The Demography and Character of Elite Families5. Arrows over Time: Elite Inheritance Practices6. The Rule of Gentlemen: Elite Political Involvement7. The Development of Provincial Consciousness: The Formation of Elite Identity8. Conclusion: Toward a History of Elites in the Eighteenth-Century British EmpireAppendix: The Creation of the Elite Sample of Wealthy MarylandersIndex

Editorial Reviews

"Burnard's book makes a useful and worthy contribution." — The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography
"Burnard has written a valuable book. He asks significant questions that are sure to elicit provacative responses . In particular, his emphasis on situating Maryland within the entire English imperial context is a welcome approach that will broaden our understanding of the entire system from which British North America withdrew in 1776." — American Historical Review, February 2003
"Trevor Burnard breathes new life into the field of Maryland's colonial history by providing us with a superb portrait of its native-born, Creole elite. Deftly uncovering the various layers of reality that gave meaning to their experience, he captures the distinctive duality of their identity, split between an ardent pursuit of British cultural values, especially genteel respectability, and a rapidly growing independence coupled with a commitment to local, provincial interests .A major contribution to the scholarship on early modern British America." — Michael J. Rozbicki, author of The Complete Colonial Gentleman: Cultural Legitimacy in Plantation America
"Trevor Burnard breathes new life into the field of Maryland's colonial history by providing us with a superb portrait of its native-born, Creole elite. Deftly uncovering the various layers of reality that gave meaning to their experience, he captures the distinctive duality of their identity, split between an ardent pursuit of British cultural values, especially genteel respectability, and a rapidly growing independence coupled with a commitment to local, provincial interests .A major contribution to the scholarship on early modern British America." — Michael J. Rozbicki, author of The Complete Colonial Gentleman:
"Trevor Burnard breathes new life into the field of Maryland's colonial history by providing us with a superb portrait of its native-born, Creole elite. Deftly uncovering the various layers of reality that gave meaning to their experience, he captures the distinctive duality of their identity, split between an ardent pursuit of British cultural values, especially genteel respectability, and a rapidly growing independence coupled with a commitment to local, provincial interests .A major contribution to the scholarship on early modern British America." — Michael J. Rozbicki, Author of The Complete Colonial Gentleman: Cultural Legitimacy in Plantation America
"This is a lucid, superbly argued study of "the lives of moderately well off gentleman at the edges of the Atlantic plantation world" that reconstructs the social and material contexts that anchored the identities and framed the behaviors of Maryland's elite.
." — S. Max Edelson, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

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