Review by Choice Review
Steffen's work turns 18th-century Chesapeake studies on its head and gives readers a very different picture from that based on the study of Tidewater aristocrats. Steffen treats the "country gentry" of the upper Chesapeake in Baltimore County, a "frontier" area neglected by both the aristocrats of the time and by recent historians. Rather than finding continuity, stability, and permanence among the upper class, Steffen finds just the opposite--the inability of the elite to control society and to develop the entrenched family oligarchy associated with the Tidewater region. Elite families rose and fell within two generations. Rather than stability, there was fluidity and impermanence that gave rise to a very different source of discontent for the coming of the Revolution. Steffen argues that in the 17th century, no gentry class emerged in Baltimore County; that openness and instability, in political and economic terms, prevailed throughout the 18th century; and that those characteristics also accurately define the labor arrangements on gentry plantations. Steffen asserts the major reasons for this very different society were partible inheritance and the development of a merchant community in Baltimore, and that this openness also extended to the established church. In short, this area of the Chesapeake was a world apart from William Byrd and Landon Carter. Recommended for advanced undergraduates and above. G. W. Franz; Pennsylvania State University, Delaware County Campus
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
