Development of the United States to 1865  

Lecture 5
 
The Settlement of the Chesapeake

Theme: the Chesapeake (Virginia and Maryland) was the first permanent English New World settlement. From a chaotic, frontier society, the Chesapeake was transformed into a stable, hierarchical society dominated by slaveowning tobacco planters.

Chesapeake Indian Village - John White


Chesapeake Inidan Village - Drawing by John White






































Prologue: Bacon's Rebellion and the Meeting of English and Amerindians in the Chesapeake.  

I. The Jamestown Experience: Frontier Society

A. The Jamestown Disaster, 1607-1624
B. Living with Death: Seasoning, Dysentery, Smallpox, Malaria
C. Making a Living: Growing Tobacco and Exploiting Servants
D. Social Structure: A Crude and Brutal Equality
E. Family Life and Women's Lot: Freedom and Deprivation
II. Settling In: Emergence of a Planter Class
A. The Problem with Tobacco
B. Beginning of Natural Population Growth
C. Race and Slavery
            -brutalization of labor
            -exhausting the supply of servants
            -slavery in an Atlantic context
            -defining race: controlling the productive and reproductive labor of black women
        -initiation of the direct African slave trade (1670s)
D. Slavery and Economic Power in the Chesapeake: the Origins of the Planter Class

III. Planter Class in Power - Symbols of Mastery
 
       A. Political Power - the County Court
       B. Religion Power - The Vestry and Parish (Anglican) Church
     C. Military Power - the Militia System
      D. Gender and Planter Power
      E. Race and White Power 

Identification: Powhatan Confederacy, tobacco, Virginia Company, "seasoning period and starving time," Jamestown, Bacon's Rebellion

17th Century Chesapeake Plantation House



18th Century Chesapeake Plantation




Layout of Chesapeake Plantations Along Rivers