Russell R Menard
Biographic Data
| ID | 1045922 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Russell R Menard |
| GIVEN NAMES | Russell R |
| FAMILY NAME | Menard |
| SIGNATURE | MENARD R R |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Minnesota System |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 73 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 97 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 73 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1973 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2022 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
From Servants to Slaves
This chapter explores regional variations in the growth of slavery within the Chesapeake before concluding with a discussion of the impact of the shift from servants to slaves on the ownership and distribution of labor. Scattered evidence from Virginia suggests that this timing was not peculiar to Maryland, although more data are required before the case can be considered closed. In the prime tobacco lands between the James and Rappahanock rivers…
The Tobacco Industry in the Chesapeake Colonies, 1617-1730
Since tobacco dominated the export sector of Maryland and Virginia during the early colonial period, a description of that industry must stand at the center of any interpretation of the Chesapeake economy. This essay offers such a description and interpretation. It focuses on the interaction between secular trends and short-term movements in staple production in order to illuminate the process of expansion in the tobacco industry and the role of …
The Origins of Slavery in the Americas
This article offers an overview of the rise of African slavery in English America. Several propositions are useful in ordering the historical record. The most important is that transitions to African slavery in the several colonies of England's emerging empire can be better understood if Britain's Atlantic world is approached as a single if imperfect and fragile labour market, and if variations in the composition of the workforce among colonies a…
Making Tobacco Bright
Journal Article Making Tobacco Bright: Creating an American Commodity, 1617–1937 Get access Making Tobacco Bright: Creating an American Commodity, 1617–1937. By Barbara Hahn. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011. xii, 236 pp. $60.00.) Russell R. Menard Russell R. Menard University of MinnesotaMinneapolis, Minnesota [email protected] Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History,…
Making a "Popular Slave Society" in Colonial British America
Evidence from probate inventories in St. Mary's County, Maryland, suggests that the transition from servants to slaves in colonial British America was not the sole mechanism by which the Chesapeake transformed into a fully developed slave society. Rather, this transition was only the first step in a century-long process by which slavery gradually took root, until, by the eve of the Revolution, the Chesapeake finally bore the imprint of slavery in…
Slavery in White and Black
The Transition to African Slavery in Maryland
Our Maryland research suggests that it might be possible to integrate the labour supply and planter preferences approach to the transition to slavery by thinking of it as a process that occurred in two stages. During the first stage a small number of ‘Early Plungers’ demonstrated by example that African slavery could be employed profitably. They also created the legal and institutional structures needed to guarantee property rights in slaves. Pro…
African American Life in the Georgia Lowcountry
Journal Article African American Life in the Georgia Lowcountry: The Atlantic World and the Gullah Geechee Get access African American Life in the Georgia Lowcountry: The Atlantic World and the Gullah Geechee. Ed. by Philip Morgan. (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2010. xiv, 311 pp. $34.95, ISBN978-0-8203-3064-8.) Russell R. Menard Russell R. Menard University of Minnesota Minneapolis, Minnesota Search for other works by this author on: Oxfo…
Financial Founding Fathers
Plantation Empire
This essay develops an American approach to the rise of the English Atlantic during the seventeenth century. It argues that productivity gains in plantation agriculture fueled an extraordinary expansion of commerce as planters raising tobacco, sugar, and rice improved their efficiency and were able to lower prices. Lower prices made the products of American plantations affordable to an ever-growing number of European consumers. The increased cons…
South Carolina’s Colonial Land Market
This study analyzes noncredit, rural property transfers from colonial South Carolina. These records are used to measure the frequency, annual timing, geographic spread, and turnover rate of land sales. These data also are used to derive a hedonic land-price index. We argue that these estimates reflect variations in the local expectations of future economic growth and conclude that the rapid increase in land prices reflected the fact that the Low …
Early American Family and Legal History
Recent work about the method of family reconstitution and economic history raises serious doubts about the demographic and economic premises that underlie much of the existing scholarship about early American family history. As a result, early American family history-one of the new social history's crowning achievements during the 1960s-is now in disarray. Some scholars see the new microhistorical studies of the colonial family as an effort to si…
New Directions in the Study of Slavery
Book Review| July 01 2000 New Directions in the Study of Slavery Masters, Slaves, and Subjects: The Culture of Power in the South Carolina Low Country, 1740-1790, Robert Olwell.Slave Counterpoint: Black Culture in the Eighteenth-Century Chesapeake and Lowcountry, Philip D. Morgan.Jews, Slaves and the Slave Trade: Setting the Record Straight, Eli Faber. Russell R. Menard Russell R. Menard Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google …
Merchants and Empire
Journal Article Merchants & Empire: Trading in Colonial New York. By Cathy Matson. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998. xii, 458 pp. $45.00, ISBN 0-8018-5602-7.) Get access Russell R. Menard Russell R. Menard University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 85, Issue 4, March 1999, Page 1577, https://doi.org/10.2307/2568299 Pub…
Wealth and Welfare in Early Maryland
Lois Green Carr, Russell R. Menard, Wealth and Welfare in Early Maryland: Evidence from St. Mary's County, The William and Mary Quarterly, Vol. 56, No. 1, The Economy of British North America (Jan., 1999), pp. 95-120
United States
Reckoning With Williams
Reckoning with Williams: Capitalism and Slavery and the Reconstruction of Early American History * Russell R. Menard (bio) As is the case with, I suspect, many American historians of my generation, my introduction to Eric Williams was through his critics. I thought of him as an inventive but fundamentally wrong-headed historian who need not be taken seriously, so I avoided reading him until circumstances arose that made it impossible to avoid Cap…
Good Wives, Nasty Wenches, and Anxious Patriarchs
Creating the Commonwealth
Journal Article Creating the Commonwealth: The Economic Culture of Puritan New England. By Stephen Innes. (New York: Norton, 1994. x, 403 pp. $25.00, ISBN 0-393-03584-0.) Get access Russell R. Menard Russell R. Menard University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 82, Issue 4, March 1996, Page 1554, https://doi.org/10.2307/2945332 Publish…
Insider Lending
The Minnesota Historical Census Projects
This special issue describes the historical census projects at the University of Minnesota. These projects involve the development of historical public use samples of nineteenth-century U.S. censuses including the development of the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series. This database will include information on over 50 million individuals spread over 140 years of extraordinary social and economic change. We expect that the unprecedented potenti…
Cultivation and Culture
Journal Article Cultivation and Culture: Labor and the Shaping of Slave Life in the Americas. Ed. by Ira Berlin and Philip D. Morgan. (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1993. x, 388 pp. Cloth, $49.50, ISBN 0-8139-1421-3. Paper, $17.95, ISBN 0-8139-1424-8.) Get access Russell R. Menard Russell R. Menard University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of A…
Traders and Gentlefolk
Financing the Lowcountry Export Boom
I N i690, the English settlement in coastal South Carolina was a struggling, unimpressive outpost colony of some 4,000 people. Small planters grew provisions and produced naval stores and timber products for the West Indian market, either alone or with a few servants and slaves. By I740, the lowcountry had a different look. The population numbered more than 50,000, the economy turned on the production of rice for European markets, and the region'…
The Northwest Coast
The backside of America Nova Albion the Strait of Anian and other northwest passages sea-otter pelts, Muscovites and Mandarins merchant sea traders Meares and a scheme of empire Botany Bay and Nootka sound encroachments in the Spanish lake impasse a voyage of discovery westward the course of empire epilogue
The Maryland Slave Population, 1658 to 1730
A LTHOUGH historians have written extensively on the origins of slavery, the attitudes of Europeans toward Africans, and the status of blacks in the New World, they have paid scant attention to a wide variety of questions concerning the lives of early Afro-Americans.1 The surviving evidence limits what can be learned about blacks in Maryland and Virginia in the seventeenth century, but it is possible to move beyond the issues that have preoccupie…
The Minnesota Historical Census Projects
This special issue describes the historical census projects at the University of Minnesota. These projects involve the development of historical public use samples of nineteenth-century U.S. censuses including the development of the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series. This database will include information on over 50 million individuals spread over 140 years of extraordinary social and economic change. We expect that the unprecedented potenti…
Robert Cole's World
In 1652 Robert Cole, an English Catholic, moved with his family and servants to St. Mary's County, Maryland. Using this family's story as a case study, the authors of Robert Cole's World provide an intimate portrait of the social and economic life of a middling planter in the seveneenth-century Chesapeake, including work routines and agricultural techniques, the upbringing of children, neighborhood relationships and community formation, and the r…
Making Tobacco Bright
Journal Article Making Tobacco Bright: Creating an American Commodity, 1617–1937 Get access Making Tobacco Bright: Creating an American Commodity, 1617–1937. By Barbara Hahn. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011. xii, 236 pp. $60.00.) Russell R. Menard Russell R. Menard University of MinnesotaMinneapolis, Minnesota [email protected] Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History,…
From Servant to Freeholder
M j -ILES Gibson, Stephen Sealus, William Scot all arrived in Maryland as indentured servants in the i66os. They completed their terms soon accumulated enough capital to purchase land. Thereafter, their careers diverged sharply. Gibson, aided by two good marriages, gained a place among the local gentry served his county as justice of the peace, burgess, sheriff. At his death in i692, he owned more than two thousand acres of land a personal estate…
Financing the Lowcountry Export Boom
I N i690, the English settlement in coastal South Carolina was a struggling, unimpressive outpost colony of some 4,000 people. Small planters grew provisions and produced naval stores and timber products for the West Indian market, either alone or with a few servants and slaves. By I740, the lowcountry had a different look. The population numbered more than 50,000, the economy turned on the production of rice for European markets, and the region'…
Speculators and Slaves
African American Life in the Georgia Lowcountry
Journal Article African American Life in the Georgia Lowcountry: The Atlantic World and the Gullah Geechee Get access African American Life in the Georgia Lowcountry: The Atlantic World and the Gullah Geechee. Ed. by Philip Morgan. (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2010. xiv, 311 pp. $34.95, ISBN978-0-8203-3064-8.) Russell R. Menard Russell R. Menard University of Minnesota Minneapolis, Minnesota Search for other works by this author on: Oxfo…
Land, Labor, and Economies of Scale in Early Maryland
Seventeenth-century planters developed a new system of husbandry, a long fallow, hoe-based agriculture that raised tobacco for export and Indian corn for subsistence. Plentiful land and shortages of labor characterized the system, which had few economies of scale. It provided rapid increases in wealth during the farm building stages, but its land and labor constraints set limits on growth. Eighteenth-century adaptations created economies of scale…
A Small Planter's Profits
Russell R. Menard, Lois Green Carr, Lorena S. Walsh, A Small Planter's Profits: The Cole Estate and the Growth of the Early Chesapeake Economy, The William and Mary Quarterly, Vol. 40, No. 2 (Apr., 1983), pp. 171-196
Approaches to the Analysis of Economic Growth in Colonial British America
(1980). Approaches to the Analysis of Economic Growth in Colonial British America. Historical Methods: A Journal of Quantitative and Interdisciplinary History: Vol. 13, Approaches and Methods in Early American History, pp. 3-18
Plantation Empire
This essay develops an American approach to the rise of the English Atlantic during the seventeenth century. It argues that productivity gains in plantation agriculture fueled an extraordinary expansion of commerce as planters raising tobacco, sugar, and rice improved their efficiency and were able to lower prices. Lower prices made the products of American plantations affordable to an ever-growing number of European consumers. The increased cons…
Merchants and Empire
Journal Article Merchants & Empire: Trading in Colonial New York. By Cathy Matson. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998. xii, 458 pp. $45.00, ISBN 0-8018-5602-7.) Get access Russell R. Menard Russell R. Menard University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 85, Issue 4, March 1999, Page 1577, https://doi.org/10.2307/2568299 Pub…
Wealth and Welfare in Early Maryland
Lois Green Carr, Russell R. Menard, Wealth and Welfare in Early Maryland: Evidence from St. Mary's County, The William and Mary Quarterly, Vol. 56, No. 1, The Economy of British North America (Jan., 1999), pp. 95-120
Reckoning With Williams
Reckoning with Williams: Capitalism and Slavery and the Reconstruction of Early American History * Russell R. Menard (bio) As is the case with, I suspect, many American historians of my generation, my introduction to Eric Williams was through his critics. I thought of him as an inventive but fundamentally wrong-headed historian who need not be taken seriously, so I avoided reading him until circumstances arose that made it impossible to avoid Cap…
The Northwest Coast
The backside of America Nova Albion the Strait of Anian and other northwest passages sea-otter pelts, Muscovites and Mandarins merchant sea traders Meares and a scheme of empire Botany Bay and Nootka sound encroachments in the Spanish lake impasse a voyage of discovery westward the course of empire epilogue
A Public Use Sample of the 1880 U.S. Census of Population
The Social History Research Laboratory at the University of Minnesota...is now creating a Public Use Sample of the 1880 U.S. Census of Population. With a sampling density of 1 in 100 cases the project will yield information on just over 500000 individuals living in just under 100000 families. This note provides a brief overview of other public use samples a description of the 1880 census and its value for historical analysis and a summary of our …
The World They Made Together
The Transition to African Slavery in Maryland
Our Maryland research suggests that it might be possible to integrate the labour supply and planter preferences approach to the transition to slavery by thinking of it as a process that occurred in two stages. During the first stage a small number of ‘Early Plungers’ demonstrated by example that African slavery could be employed profitably. They also created the legal and institutional structures needed to guarantee property rights in slaves. Pro…
South Carolina’s Colonial Land Market
This study analyzes noncredit, rural property transfers from colonial South Carolina. These records are used to measure the frequency, annual timing, geographic spread, and turnover rate of land sales. These data also are used to derive a hedonic land-price index. We argue that these estimates reflect variations in the local expectations of future economic growth and conclude that the rapid increase in land prices reflected the fact that the Low …
Pursuits of Happiness
Journal Article Pursuits of Happiness: The Social Development of Early Modern British Colonies and the Formation of American Culture. By Jack P. Greene. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988. xvii + 284 pp. Cloth, $32.50; paper, $12.95.) Get access Russell R. Menard Russell R. Menard University of Minnesota Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 76, Issue 3, De…
The Economy of British America, 1607-1789
From Servant to Freeholder
M j -ILES Gibson, Stephen Sealus, William Scot all arrived in Maryland as indentured servants in the i66os. They completed their terms soon accumulated enough capital to purchase land. Thereafter, their careers diverged sharply. Gibson, aided by two good marriages, gained a place among the local gentry served his county as justice of the peace, burgess, sheriff. At his death in i692, he owned more than two thousand acres of land a personal estate…
A Spirit of Dissension
Journal Article A Spirit of Dissension: Economics, Politics, and the Revolution in Maryland. By Ronald Hoffman. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1973. xiv + 280 pp. Maps, tables, notes, and index. $10.00.) Get access Russell R. Menard Russell R. Menard Institute of Early American History and Culture Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 62, Issue 1, June 1975, Pages 108–109, h…
The Maryland Slave Population, 1658 to 1730
A LTHOUGH historians have written extensively on the origins of slavery, the attitudes of Europeans toward Africans, and the status of blacks in the New World, they have paid scant attention to a wide variety of questions concerning the lives of early Afro-Americans.1 The surviving evidence limits what can be learned about blacks in Maryland and Virginia in the seventeenth century, but it is possible to move beyond the issues that have preoccupie…
Comment on Paper by Ball and Walton
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American Slavery, American Freedom
Journal Article American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia. By Edmund S. Morgan. (New York: Norton, 1975. x + 454 pp. Map, tables, appendix, notes, note on sources, and index. $11.95.) Get access Russell R. Menard Russell R. Menard University of Minnesota Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 63, Issue 2, September 1976, Pages 371–373, https://doi.org/…
The Great Wheel of Circulation
The Maryland Slave Population, 1658 to 1730
Five Maryland Censuses, 1700 to 1712
Approaches to the Analysis of Economic Growth in Colonial British America
(1980). Approaches to the Analysis of Economic Growth in Colonial British America. Historical Methods: A Journal of Quantitative and Interdisciplinary History: Vol. 13, Approaches and Methods in Early American History, pp. 3-18
Revolution, Reform, and the Politics of American Taxation, 1763-1783
Journal Article Revolution, Reform, and the Politics of American Taxation, 1763–1783. By Robert A. Becker. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1980. xi + 323 pp. Tables, appendix, notes, bibliography, and index. $25.00.) Get access Russell R. Menard Russell R. Menard University of Minnesota Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 68, Issue 1, June 1981, Page 114, htt…
The growth of population in the Chesapeake colonies
Settling with the Indians. The Meeting of English and American Cultures in America, 1580–1640
Savagism and civility. Indians and Englishmen in colonial virginia
Poor Carolina
Colonial Maryland
Journal Article Colonial Maryland: A History. By Aubrey C. Land. (Millwood, N. Y.: KTO, 1981. xviii + 367 pp. Maps, illustrations, tables, appendixes, notes, bibliography, and index. $25.00.) Get access Russell R. Menard Russell R. Menard University of Minnesota Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 68, Issue 4, March 1982, Pages 914–915, https://doi.org/10.2307/1900786 Publis…
Capital and Credit in British Overseas Trade
Journal Article Capital and Credit in British Overseas Trade: The View from the Chesapeake, 1770–1776. By Jacob M. Price. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1980. xii + 233 pp. Tables, appendixes, notes, select bibliography, and index. $18.50.) Get access Russell R. Menard Russell R. Menard University of Minnesota Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 69, Issue 4, March 198…
A Small Planter's Profits
Russell R. Menard, Lois Green Carr, Lorena S. Walsh, A Small Planter's Profits: The Cole Estate and the Growth of the Early Chesapeake Economy, The William and Mary Quarterly, Vol. 40, No. 2 (Apr., 1983), pp. 171-196
"Caught in a "Seamless Web
The Economy of British America, 1607-1789
By the American Revolution, the farmers and city-dwellers of British America had achieved, individually and collectively, considerable prosperity. The nature and extent of that success are still unfolding. In this first comprehensive assessment of where research on prerevolutionary economy stands, what it seeks to achieve, and how it might best proceed, the authors discuss those areas in which traditional work remains to be done and address new p…
The Economy of British America, 1607-1789
Journal Article The Economy of British America, 1607–1789. By John J. McCusker and Russell R. Menard. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1985. xxiv + 485 pp. Map, illustration, charts, tables, appendixes, notes, bibliography, and index. $35.00.) Get access Terry Anderson Terry Anderson Montana State University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 73, Issue 1, J…
Urban Growth in Colonial Rhode Island
The Economy of British America, 1607-1789
Spirited Capitalists
The Economy of British America, 1607-1789
The World They Made Together
History (48 works) · Political science (42 works) · History (41 works) · Sociology (28 works) · Economics (27 works) · Economic history (25 works) · Archaeology (24 works) · American Constitutional Law and Politics (23 works) · Colonialism, slavery, and trade (22 works) · Law (22 works)