Existing comment:
Virginia and the Planter Class
Governor William Berkeley set out to imitate the society of inequality of wealth and education that he knew in England. By the late 1660s he had succeeded in creating a small governing elite.
Berkeley recruited from England both younger sons with no inheritance and supporters of the king who were fleeing a civil war. He promoted them to lucrative offices and granted them large estates. They established an upper class made up of powerful families that became dynasties. They utilized slave labor to cultivate tobacco. Until after the American Revolution, they in effect ruled Virginia. [The middle and lower class families -- the vast majority of the population -- have been forgotten.] |