Creole Gentlemen: The Maryland Elite, 1691-1776

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Psychology Press, 2002 - Business & Economics - 278 pages
Examining the lives of 460 of the wealthiest men who lived in colonial Maryland, Burnard traces the development of this elite from a hard-living, profit-driven merchant-planter class in the seventeenth century to a more genteel class of plantation owners in the eighteenth century. This study innovatively compares these men to their counterparts elsewhere in the British Empire, including absentee Caribbean landowners and East Indian nabobs, illustrating their place in the Atlantic economic network.
 

Contents

Problems and Perspectives A Picture of the Maryland Elite
1
A Gentlemans Competence The Economic Ambitions of the Maryland Elite
21
A Species of Capital Attached to Certain Mercantile Houses Elite Debts and the Significance of Credits
61
Patriarchy and Affection The Demography and Character of Elite Families
103
Arrows over Time Elite Inheritance Practices
139
The Rule of Gentlemen Elite Political Involvement
167
The Development of Provincial Consciousness The Formation of Elite Identity
205
Conclusion Toward a History of elites in the EighteenthCentury British Empire
237
The Creation of the Elite Sample of Wealthy Marylanders
265
Index
271
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About the author (2002)

Trevor Burnard is a Reader in Early American History at Brunel University in England.