In this Book
- On the Rim of the Caribbean: Colonial Georgia and the British Atlantic World
- Book
- 2013
- Published by: University of Georgia Press
summary
How did colonial Georgia, an economic backwater in its early days, make its way into the burgeoning Caribbean and Atlantic economies where trade spilled over national boundaries, merchants operated in multiple markets, and the transport of enslaved Africans bound together four continents?
In On the Rim of the Caribbean, Paul M. Pressly interprets Georgia's place in the Atlantic world in light of recent work in transnational and economic history. He considers how a tiny elite of newly arrived merchants, adapting to local culture but loyal to a larger vision of the British empire, led the colony into overseas trade. From this perspective, Pressly examines the ways in which Georgia came to share many of the characteristics of the sugar islands, how Savannah developed as a "Caribbean" town, the dynamics of an emerging slave market, and the role of merchant-planters as leaders in forging a highly adaptive economic culture open to innovation. The colony's rapid growth holds a larger story: how a frontier where Carolinians played so large a role earned its own distinctive character.
Georgia's slowness in responding to the revolutionary movement, Pressly maintains, had a larger context. During the colonial era, the lowcountry remained oriented to the West Indies and Atlantic and failed to develop close ties to the North American mainland as had South Carolina. He suggests that the American Revolution initiated the process of bringing the lowcountry into the orbit of the mainland, a process that would extend well beyond the Revolution.
In On the Rim of the Caribbean, Paul M. Pressly interprets Georgia's place in the Atlantic world in light of recent work in transnational and economic history. He considers how a tiny elite of newly arrived merchants, adapting to local culture but loyal to a larger vision of the British empire, led the colony into overseas trade. From this perspective, Pressly examines the ways in which Georgia came to share many of the characteristics of the sugar islands, how Savannah developed as a "Caribbean" town, the dynamics of an emerging slave market, and the role of merchant-planters as leaders in forging a highly adaptive economic culture open to innovation. The colony's rapid growth holds a larger story: how a frontier where Carolinians played so large a role earned its own distinctive character.
Georgia's slowness in responding to the revolutionary movement, Pressly maintains, had a larger context. During the colonial era, the lowcountry remained oriented to the West Indies and Atlantic and failed to develop close ties to the North American mainland as had South Carolina. He suggests that the American Revolution initiated the process of bringing the lowcountry into the orbit of the mainland, a process that would extend well beyond the Revolution.
Table of Contents
Download Full Book
- Introduction
- pp. 1-10
- 1. The Three Georgias
- pp. 11-31
- 2. Merging Planting Elites
- pp. 32-49
- 4. Savannah as a “Caribbean” Town
- pp. 69-92
- 5. Merchants in a Creole Society
- pp. 93-111
- 7. The Making of the Lowcountry Plantation
- pp. 134-152
- 8. Georgia’s Rice and the Atlantic World
- pp. 153-171
- 9. Retailing the “Baubles of Britain”
- pp. 172-192
- 10. The Trade in Deerskins and Rum
- pp. 193-212
- 11. Nationalizing the Lowcountry
- pp. 213-228
- Bibliography
- pp. 301-336
Additional Information
ISBN
9780820345802
Related ISBN(s)
9780820335674
MARC Record
OCLC
827235530
Pages
376
Launched on MUSE
2013-05-20
Language
English
Open Access
No