Tobacco Culture - Softcover

Breen, T. H.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0691005966 ISBN 13: 9780691005966

Publisher: Princeton University Press, 1987

Synopsis

The great Tidewater planters of mid-eighteenth-century Virginia were fathers of the American Revolution. Perhaps first and foremost, they were also anxious tobacco farmers, harried by a demanding planting cycle, trans-Atlantic shipping risks, and their uneasy relations with English agents. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and their contemporaries lived in a world that was dominated by questions of debt from across an ocean but also one that stressed personal autonomy.

T. H. Breen's study of this tobacco culture focuses on how elite planters gave meaning to existence. He examines the value-laden relationships--found in both the fields and marketplaces--that led from tobacco to politics, from agrarian experience to political protest, and finally to a break with the political and economic system that they believed threatened both personal independence and honor.

About this title

About the Author:

T. H. Breen is the William Smith Mason Professor of American History at Northwestern University.

From Library Journal:

Why did Virginia's great Tidewater planters figure so prominently in the movement for independence? A good part of the reason, according to Breen, is found in the values of personal honor and autonomy that the tobacco planters' culture promoted. Growing indebtedness to English merchants, which threatened such values, made many especially susceptible to ``Radical Country thought.'' Rejecting the purely economic interpretation of the Progressive historians, and going beyond the ``idealist'' explanation of Bernard Baylin, Breen skillfully details the ``complex interplay between ideology and experience.'' A rich, balanced, and judicious work that breaks new ground in the study of the American Revolution. For informed laypersons and scholars. Roy H. Tryon, Delaware State Archives, Dover
Copyright 1985 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Publication date: 1987
• ISBN 10: 0691005966
• ISBN 13: 9780691005966
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 240