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One of the strongest currents in early American studies at the present time is a major revival of interest in the history of seventeenth-century Virginia and Maryland.

This volume of essays illustrates the richness and variety of the work being done, especially by a group of young social historians. Through its important sampling of new research, it succeeds in bringing the Chesapeake into focus as a region.

The rediscovery of the early Chesapeake, emigration, and marriage and family are three of the essay topics. Other subjects include environment, disease, and mortality; immigration and opportunity; parental death in a particular county; settlement patterns; political stability and the emergence of a native elite; and English-born and Creole elites in turn-of-the-century Virginia.

While the essays individually exemplify a number of distinct themes and methodological approaches to the subject, as a whole they provide a remarkable comprehensive overview of the progression in the seventeenth century from a predominantly emigrant society, subsisting under conditions of great instability and high mortality, to a largely native-born population that had achieved a notable degree of political and social stability.