1st Edition

Creole Gentlemen The Maryland Elite, 1691-1776

By Trevor Burnard Copyright 2002
    288 Pages
    by Routledge

    288 Pages
    by Routledge

    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.

    List of Abbreviations Acknowledgments 1. Problems and Perspectives : A Picture of the Maryland Elite 2. A Gentleman's Competence : The Economic Ambitions of the Maryland Elite 3. A Species of Capital Attached to Certain Mercantile Houses : Elite Debts and the Significance of Credit 4. Patriarchy and Affection : The Demography and Character of Elite Families 5. Arrows over Time : Elite Inheritance Practices 6. The Rule of Gentlemen : Elite Political Involvement 7. The Development of Provincial Consciousness : The Formation of Elite Identity 8. Conclusion : Toward a History of Elites in the Eighteenth-Century British Empire Appendix : The Creation of the Elite Sample of Wealthy Marylanders Index

    Biography

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

    "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