Planting an Empire: The Early Chesapeake in British North America

Planting an Empire explores the social and economic history of the Chesapeake region, revealing a story of two similar but distinct colonies in early America.

Linked by the Chesapeake Bay, Virginia and Maryland formed a prosperous and politically important region in British North America before the American Revolution. Yet these "sister" colonies—alike in climate and soil, emphasis on tobacco farming, and use of enslaved labor—eventually followed divergent social and economic paths. Jean B. ...