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The Anglo-American Colonial Experience*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Nicholas Canny
Affiliation:
University College, Galway

Abstract

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Type
Review Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1981

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References

1 See especially Demos, John, A little commonwealth: family life in Plymouth colony (Oxford, 1970)Google Scholar; Greven, Philip J., Four generations: population, land and family in colonial Andover, Massachusetts (Ithaca and London, 1970)Google Scholar; Lockridge, Kenneth A., A New England town, the first hundred years: Dedham, Massachusetts, 1636–1736 (New York, 1970)Google Scholar; Zuckerman, Michael, Peaceable kingdoms: New England towns in the eighteenth century (New York, 1970). The last of these was less influenced by French historiography than the other three.Google Scholar

2 The influence of Laslett was exerted first through Laslett, Peter and Harrison, John, ‘Clayworth and Cogenhoe‘ in Historical essays, presented to David Ogg, ed. Bell, H. E. and Ollard, R. L. (London, 1963)Google Scholar and then through Laslett, Peter, The world we have lost (London, 1965)Google Scholar; and the influence of Thirsk and other agricultural historians was conveyed through The agrarian history of England and Wales, iv, 1500–1640, ed. Thirsk, Joan (Cambridge, 1967).Google Scholar

3 Lockridge, Kenneth A., Literacy in colonial New England: an enquiry into the social context of literacy in the early modern west (New York, 1974).Google Scholar

4 Rovet, Jeanine, ‘Des Puritains aux Yankees: l'évolution des communautés rurales en Nouvelle-Angleterre aux xviie et xviiie siècles‘, Annales, E.C.S. xxvIII (1973), 1131–42Google Scholar; Laslett, The world we have lost, p. 253. The publications themselves were preceded by reports of work in progress, most of which are cited by Rovet.

5 Dunn, Richard S., Sugar and slaves: the rise of the planter class in the English West Indies, 1624–1713 (London, 1972)Google Scholar; Craven, Wesley Frank, White, red and black: the seventeenth, century Virginian (Charlottesville, Va. 1971)Google Scholar; Morgan, Edmund S., American slavery: American freedom, the ordeal of colonial Virginia (New York, 1975)Google Scholar; Wood, Peter, Black majority: negroes in colonial south Carolina through the Stono rebellion (New York, 1974).Google Scholar

6 Kim, Sung Bok, Landlord and tenant in colonial New York, 1664–1775 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1978)Google Scholar; Nash, Gary B., The urban crucible: social change, political consciousness, and the origins of the American revolution (Cambridge, Mass., 1979).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7 It should be noted that the title of the second of these collections is deceptive because its chronological span stretches to the American civil war. But attention here is confined to the bulk of the essays that do relate to early Maryland. The Tate and Ammerman volume also contains a valuable historiographical essay by Thad Tate, discussion of which does not fall within the compass of this essay. Finally it should be mentioned that the concept of the Chesapeake coast as a single geographical entity seems to have been first accepted into historical usage in Middleton, A. P., Tobacco coast: a maritime history of the Chesapeake Bay in the colonial era (Newport News, Va., 1953)Google Scholar and was later popularized by Land, Aubrey and Price, Jacob in Land, Aubrey, ‘Economic base and social structure: the northern Chesapeake in the eighteenth century‘, Journal of Economic History, xxv (1965), 639–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Price, Jacob M., France and the Chesapeake: a history of the French tobacco monopoly, 1674–1791 (2 vols., Ann Arbor, 1973).Google Scholar

8 The best succinct statement of Massachusetts migration is to be found in T. H. Breen, Puritans and adventurers, pp. 46–67.

9 The Chesapeake in the seventeenth century, p. 51, note 1, and pp. 246–7.

10 Horn, James, ‘Servant emigration to the Chesapeake in the seventeenth century‘ in The Chesapeake in the seventeenth century, pp. 5195.Google Scholar

11 Besides the works cited by Horn one should consult Clark, Peter, ‘Migration in England during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries‘, Past and Present, LXXXIII (1979),5790.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

12 Menard, Russell R., ‘Immigrants and their increase: the process of population growth in early colonial Maryland‘, in Law, society and politics in early Maryland, pp. 88110, esp. p. 107.Google Scholar

13 Cullen, L. M., ‘Population trends in seventeenth century Ireland‘, Economic and Social Review, vi, 2 (1975), 149–65Google Scholar; Canny, Nicholas, ‘Early modern Ireland: an appraisal appraised‘, Irish Economic and Social History, iv (1977), 5665.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

14 Maxwell, M. Perceval, The Scottish migration to Ulster in the reign of James I (London, 1973)Google Scholar; Quinn, D. B., ‘The Munster plantation: problems and opportunities‘, Journal of Cork Historical and Archaeological Society, LXXI (1966), 1941Google Scholar; A new history of Ireland, ed. Moody, T. W., Martin, F. X., Byrne, F. J., III: Early modern Ireland, 1534–1691 (Oxford, 1976), 168232, esp. p. 175; and pp. 387–407Google Scholar; Cullen, L. M., An economic history of Ireland since 1660 (London, 1972), pp. 22–5.Google Scholar

15 The best evidence on achievement levels is to be found among the depositions taken subsequent to the 1641 rebellion and now housed in the library of Trinity College, Dublin. Most historians now working on seventeenth-century Ireland are engaged on the study of these depositions, but no one person has yet assimilated the vast body of data that is to be found in this collection. The remarks made here are justified by a close study of those depositions relating to the province of Munster, but what holds true of Munster does not necessarily obtain for other parts of the country. T.C.D., MSS 820–9.

16 Darret and Anita Rutman, ‘“Now wives and sons-in-law”: parental death in a seventeenth-century Virginia county’, The Chesapeake in the seventeenth century, pp. 153–82; Walsh, Lorena S. and Menard, Russell R., ‘Death in the Chesapeake: two life tables for men in early colonial Maryland‘, Maryland Historical Magazine, LXIX (1964), 214–17Google Scholar. The essay by Menard, mentioned in note 12, draws heavily on the evidence derived from these two life tables.

17 Menard, ‘Immigrants and their increase’, pp. 88–91.

18 Ibid. pp. 93–5; Darrett, and Rutman, Anita, ‘Of agues and fevers: malaria in the early Chesapeake‘, William & Mary Quarterly xxxIII. 1 (1976), 3160.Google Scholar

19 Morgan, American slavery: American freedom, pp. 180–4.

20 Rutman and Rutman, ‘Of agues and fevers’.

21 Menard, ‘Immigrants and their increase’, pp. 102–5.

22 Lois Green Carr and Russell Menard, ‘Immigration and opportunity: the freedman in early colonial Maryland’, The Chesapeake in the seventeenth century, pp. 206–42; Lorena S. Walsh, ‘Servitude and opportunity in Charles county, Maryland, 1658–1705’, Law, society and politics in early Maryland, pp. 111–33; Gloria L. Main, ‘Maryland and the Chesapeake economy, 1670–1720’, ibid. pp. 134–52; Paul G. E. Clemens, ‘Economy and society on Maryland's eastern shore, 1683–1733’, Law, society and politics in early Maryland, pp. 153–70.

23 Carr and Menard, ‘Immigration and opportunity’, pp. 235–42.

24 Carr, Lois Green and Jordan, David W., Maryland's revolution of government,1689–92 (Ithaca and London, 1974).Google Scholar

25 David W.Jordan, ‘Political stability and the emergence of a native elite in Maryland’, The Chesapeake in the seventeenth century, pp. 243–73; idem, ‘Maryland's privy council, 1637–1715’, Law, society and politics in early Maryland, pp. 65–87.

26 Gloria L. Main, ‘Maryland and the Chesapeake economy, 1670–1720’ and Paul G. E. Clemens, ‘Economy and society’.

27 Stiverson, Gregory A., ‘Landless husbandmen: proprietary tenants in Maryland in the late colonial period‘, Law, society and politics in early Maryland, pp. 197211, esp. p. 197.Google Scholar

28 Shammas, Carole, ‘English-born and creole elites in turn-of-the-century Virginia‘, The Chesapeake in the seventeenth century, pp. 274–96.Google Scholar

29 Rutman and Rutman, ‘Now wives and sons-in-law’; Lorena S. Walsh, ‘“Till death us do part”: marriage and family in seventeenth century Maryland’, The Chesapeake in the seventeenth century, pp. 126–52; Lois Green Carr, ‘The development of the Maryland orphans’ court, 1654–1715’, Law, society and politics in early Maryland, pp. 41–62. See also Carr, Lois Green and Walsh, Lorena S., ‘The planter's wife: the experience of white women in seventeenth century Maryland‘, William & Mary Quarterly, xxxiv, 4, 542–71Google Scholar. But for a different perspective on family life see Zuckerman, Michael, ‘William Byrd's family‘, Perspectives in American History, XII (1979), 255311.Google Scholar

30 Walsh, ‘Till death us do part’, p. 132.

31 Ibid. p. 140.

32 Rutman and Rutman, ‘Now wives and sons-in-law’, pp. 167–73.

33 Stone, Lawrence, The family, sex and marriage in England, 1500–1800 (London, 1977)Google Scholar; the point of Stone's thesis that is being discussed here was previously discussed by him in his contribution to The family in history, ed. Rosenberg, Charles E. (Philadelphia, 1975).Google Scholar

4 Walsh, ‘Till death us do part’, pp. 141–6.

35 Lois Green Carr, ‘The development of the Maryland orphans’ court’.

36 Kulikoff, Allan, ‘The beginnings of the Afro-American family in Maryland‘, Law, society and politics in early Maryland, pp. 171–96Google Scholar; Genovese, Eugene D., Roll, Jordan, roll: the world the slaves made (New York, 1974)Google Scholar; Gutman, Herbert G., The black family in slavery and freedom, 1750–1925 (New York, 1976).Google Scholar

37 Peter Wood, Black majority, full citation in note 5.

38 The quotation is from Rutman and Rutman, ‘Now wives and sons-in-law’, p. 174.

39 Murrin, John, ‘Review essay on colonial New England‘, History and Theory, xi, 2 (1972), 226–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

40 Jennings, Francis, The invasion of America: Indians, colonialism and the cant of conquest (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1975), pp. ix, 81.Google Scholar

41 On this point see Canny, Nicholas, ‘Dominant minorities: English settlers in Ireland and Virginia, 1550–1650‘, Minorities in History, ed. Hepburn, A. C. (London, 1978), pp. 5169Google Scholar and idem, ‘The permissive frontier: the problem of social control in English settlements in Ireland and Virginia, 1550–1650’, The westward enterprise: English activities in Ireland, the Atlantic, and America, 1480–1650 (Liverpool, 1979), pp. 1744.Google Scholar

42 Bradshaw, Brendan, ‘Sword, word, and strategy in the Reformation in Ireland‘, Historical Journal, xxi (1978), 475502.CrossRefGoogle Scholar