Robert Cole's World Chapter Summary

Lois Green Carr, Russell R. Menard, and Lorena S. Walsh’s Robert Cole’s World: Agriculture and Society in Early Maryland, provides an in-depth study of the plantation established by Robert Cole, his family as well as his servants in seventeenth century Maryland. Cole and his family were English Catholics that had relocated from England to the New World because of the system of agriculture the Chesapeake was capable of producing. The Cole plantation account provides readers with an understanding of what was produced on the plantation, what was sold, and what was purchased. Cole’s life in Maryland was cut short, as was the life of many individuals who risked the harsh Chesapeake conditions to attempt at achieving economic success. We are able …show more content…
The book focuses on one plantation, however the focus on the Cole plantation provides a comprehensive understanding of what other planters in the region would have experienced. The first chapter provides a background of society in the Chesapeake region and details the evolution of the region as planters came to inhabit the area. The following two chapters discuss the action of farm building and the development of agriculture on the plantation system. The authors then provide an analysis of the effects of the plantation system in terms of wealth accumulation and its direct impact on the evolution of living standards. Robert Cole’s World then continues in describing family members and the relationship of the Cole’s and the neighboring plantations. The authors then conclude Robert Cole’s World through establishing connections between Cole’s world and the early eighteenth-century …show more content…
Shortly after her death comes the death of Robert. The executors of the manner served as the guardians of Cole’s seven children following the death of Robert and Rebecca. In their short lives in Maryland, the authors are able to distinguish that the Coles were not extremely wealthy immigrants by any means, but the plantation was able to grow in the Cole’s time in Maryland. The authors use the tax lists and estate inventories kept by Luke Gardiner in order to create a larger context of Chesapeake agriculture by use of the Cole plantation documents. In the many years following the arrival of the Cole family, the manner of agricultural production in the Chesapeake allowed for the freedom of servants that had migrated to the region and allowed for immigrant families to establish their own farms and compete in the growing tobacco market. Thus the opportunity for the yeoman farmer in the Chesapeake grew significantly, as the economy offered opportunity to settlers and also laid the foundations for a more stratified society that was sought out in Lord Baltimore’s intention of establishing