Building Charleston: Town and Society in the Eighteenth-Century British Atlantic World

Hart (modern history, U. of St. Andrews, Scotland) examines Charleston, the fourth largest and wealthiest town in colonial America, within a British perspective, detailing the rise of the city and its importance to the development of South Carolina and the British Atlantic world during the eighteenth century. Challenging the narrative of southern development that is dominated by staple agriculture study, she questions why the plantation has been central to understanding the region and instead, whether Charleston's urban and commercial elements influenced South Carolina. She links the urban process and the shaping of Low Country society from the late 1730s on; discusses how its growth brought wealth and innovation to sectors outside the plantation economy, such as manufacturing and housing construction; describes the development of a new social class--a "middling sort,"--that created an non-unified white population; and examines how Charleston was a provincial British Atlantic town with a diverse marketplace. The book is based on her dissertation. Annotation c2010 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Emma Hart is Lecturer in the Department of Modern History at the University of St. Andrews, Scotland.