We return to Late Colonial history with Frontier and Imperial Virginia 1730-1763 that ends with the conclusion of the French and Indian War. “In the Absence of Towns” looks at the frontier of piedmont Southside Virginia. “Gentry and Commonfolk” consider the class relations on the Virginia frontier from 1730 through the Revolution.
“Diversity and Accommodation” describes the complexity of frontier society, “Planting the New Virginia” examines the frontier of the Shenandoah Valley, and “The Virginia Germans” considers a large ethnic group there.
“Appalachian Frontiers” addresses the transmontane English settlement that brought direct conflict with French Indian allies. The ensuing war is narrated in “Cultures in Conflict” and “Breaking the Backcountry”.
For more book reviews at TheVirginiaHistorian.com in this historical era addressing other topics, see the webpage for Early and Late Colonial Era (1600-1763). General surveys of Virginia History can be found at Virginia History Surveys. Other Virginia history divided by topics and time periods can be found at the webpage Books and Reviews.
In the Absence of Towns
Charles J. Farmer wrote In the Absence of Towns: Settlement and Country Trade in Southside Virginia, 1730–1800 in 1993. It is now available online new in paperback.
Farmer reconstructs the settlement patterns of the ten counties established by 1800 in the piedmont region of Virginia south of Petersburg and Richmond. From early settlement in 1730 to 1760, it became the leading tobacco producing region in Virginia, a wealthy area of plantation agriculture and slavery. The region was dotted by country stores located on plantations and at ferry crossings.
The high-value export commodity that was tobacco brought about the absence of towns as manufacturing and service activities were depressed among self-reliant plantations of slaves who generated relatively little demand for goods or services. Detailed accounts of the country store and its trade describe the market areas of James Murdoch store in Halifax County and Edward Dromgoole’s store in Brunswick County.
Learn more to buy “In the Absence of Towns” from Amazon.com.
Gentry and Common Folk
Albert H. Tillson, Jr. wrote Gentry and Common Folk: Political Culture on a Virginia Frontier, 1740–1789 in 1991. It is now available at the University Press of Kentucky and online new and used.
Tillson concentrates on the Upper Valley of Virginia south of Augusta County and the in-migration of the Scotch-Irish to populate it. The colonial era when compared to republican times was an age of moral order with a deferential political culture. The elites accommodated ordinary settlers by personally financing frontier forts and negotiating instances of desertion from imperial Indian wars, indiscipline within militia ranks and violence against “friendly” Indians.
While the Valley’s elite was successful in re-creating a gentry culture similar to that of eastern Virginia, it was not as deferential as the eastern. Despite continuing gentry class power, there came to be “a strikingly more republican ethos by 1789”. But it was spared the disorder of western Pennsylvania and the Carolinas.
Learn more to buy “Gentry and Common Folk” from Amazon.com.
Diversity and Accommodation
Michael J. Puglisi edited Diversity and Accommodation: Essays on the Cultural Composition of the Virginia Frontier in 1997. It is now available from the University of Tennessee Press and online used.
Non-English ethnics settling in the Valley of Virginia between the Potomac and the James Rivers and in southwestern Virginia’s Roanoke Valley and New River Valley generally engaged in trade, lived as neighbors and learned to tolerate their differences in town life. Local leaders were appointed to preserve and extend eastern Virginia hierarchies regardless of the gentry’s ethnicity.
Initially ethnics protected their separate identities through religious practice, inheritance and marriage patterns. But Scots-Irish and the Germans in Virginia, especially compared to settlement in Pennsylvania or western Maryland, grew more dispersed and their ethnic ties became more tenuous by learning English and marrying across ethnic lines. African American slaves were sometimes the first pioneers on the Indian frontier making clearings for farms and establishing trade with Native Americans.
Learn more to buy “Diversity and Accommodatilon” from Amazon.com.
The Virginia Germans
Klaus Wust wrote The Virginia Germans in 1969. It is now available online new in paperback.
Despite the small Amish and Mennonite groups who persist, no large distinctive German groups exist in Virginia. The Prussian glassblowers of Jamestown were few. In the 1730s the Germans settling in the Valley and upper Piedmont had effectively merged into the Anglo-Saxon culture by 1800. A second wave of “New Germans” settling in the 1830s around Richmond were thoroughly Americanized by the First World War.
The influx of Germans from Pennsylvania, Maryland, German principalities, Switzerland or French Alsace were welcomed as a buffer on the frontier from Indian attacks which developed in a fury between 1753 and 1758. Pockets of “little Germany” persisted until English became the daily and church language of frontier settlers. Germans became important as farmers and craftsmen. They were important both as gunsmiths and militia, but also notable in their exemption from militia laws as Dunkers and Mennonites.
Learn more to buy “The Virginia Germans” from Amazon.com.
The Planting of New Virginia
Warren Hofstra wrote The Planting of New Virginia: Settlement and Landscape in the Shenandoah Valley in 2004. It is now available from the John Hopkins University Press and online new and used.
This study has a dual focus on both regional settlement and British Empire. First was the “open-country neighborhood” of scattered yeoman farmers beginning in the 1730s. Frederick County is established around Winchester in 1743 and others followed at the behest of Governor Spotswood to counter French imperial encroachment, inter-Indian warfare and Indian-settler warfare, and hostile maroon colonies of escaped slaves. The military trade brought a commercial economy of production and consumption that ranged from the trans-Appalachian West across the entire Atlantic region.
By the end of the Seven Year’s War, local farmers shipped flour to markets in Alexandria, Baltimore and Philadelphia. Indian trade declined, new roads connecting farms to mills and mills to town shops were built. A rural middle class developed in the Valley. All was not peaceful and placid; Dutch and Irish residents of Winchester flung riots against one another twice a year on their opposing holidays.
Learn more to buy “The Planting of New Virginia” from Amazon.com.
*Mitchell, Robert D. Commercialism and Frontier: Perspectives on the Early Shenandoah Valley (1977). It is out of print but available online used. Learn more to buy “Commercialism and Frontier” from Amazon.com.
*Mitchell, Robert D., ed. Appalachian Frontiers: Settlement, Society and Development in the Preindustrial Era (1991). It is out of print but available online used. Learn more to buy “Appalachian Frontiers” from Amazon.com.
Cultures in Conflict
Warren R. Hofstra edited Cultures in Conflict: The Seven Years’ War in North America in 2007. It is now available on Kindle and online new in paperback.
This volume features seven essays on culture-related topics of the Seven Years’ War, or French and Indian War. It focuses on the British, French, Indians, Canadians and Anglo-American colonists. There is dispute among historians whether American colonial participation was more a patriotic expression of British Empire against Catholic French expansion, or the prelude to the American Revolution due to colonial resistance against centralizing British imperial controls.
The essays on Native Americans contrast the experience of the cultural resiliency and maturity of the Iroquois Confederacy and the cultural instability of the Ohio Country Indians. The Iroquois pan-Indian confederacy survived the war relatively unharmed, while the struggling Ohio Indians fell victim to disastrous wartime decisions, increasing material dependence on Europeans and political infighting.
Learn more to buy “Cultures in Conflict” from Amazon.com.
Breaking the Backcountry
Matthew C. Ward wrote Breaking the Backcountry: The Seven Years’ War in Virginia and Pennsylvania, 1754–1765 in 2003. It is now available at the University of Pittsburgh Press, on Kindle and online new and used.
This social and military history describes how French, English and Indian territorial ambitions clashed in the 1750s. Britain’s initial offensive failed, and thousands of Pennsylvanian and Virginians settlers were driven from a large region adjacent the Ohio Valley. In 1758 Americans negotiated the Treaty of Easton foreswearing future Native-American incursions. British and American forces then conquered Canada, but their unhappy Indian policy brought about Pontiac’s Rebellion which led to Parliament’s 1763 guarantee of the earlier 1758 promises. But its Indian policy reversed American rights or privileges and caused the American Revolution.
The Indian frontier of the British Empire was bleak even in peacetime. When Indian raids began, they opened up deep divisions within backcountry society. Enforcement of social order broke down, there was rioting in an Augusta County election in 1755 and Virginia’s resident Lieutenant Governor Robert Dinwiddie sought to replace justices of the peace who had not maintained civilian authority. Draft orders were ignored, Virginia’s Regiment suffered desertions. Under the duress of war local gentry were required to listen to the poorer settlers who were now called upon to fill the militias.
Learn more to buy “Breaking the Backcountry” from Amazon.com.
Note: Insights for these reviews are include those taken from articles in the Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, the Journal of Southern History and the Journal of American History.