Cover of Tobacco Culture: The Mentality of the Great Tidewater Planters on the Eve of Revolution

Tobacco Culture: The Mentality of the Great Tidewater Planters on the Eve of Revolution

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.

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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.

Subject
history
Audience
adult
Length
medium · 256 pages

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