The colonial gentry

Anglo-Americans' reliance on debt bondage and slavery to meet the demand for colonial labor created a wealthy colonial class (nobility) in the tobacco colonies of Chesapeake and elsewhere. . Being classy - being a member of the nobility - meant being cultured and not rude. American aristocrats built elaborate mansions to display their status and power. William Byrd II of Westover, Virginia is an example of colonial nobility. A wealthy planter and slave owner, he is known for founding Richmond and for his diaries that chronicle the lives of gentleman planters.

The diary of William Byrd, a Virginia planter, provides a unique way to better understand colonial life on a plantation:

August 27, 1709

I rose at 5 o’clock and read two chapters in Hebrew and some Greek in Josephus. I said my prayers and ate milk for breakfast. I danced my dance. I had like to have whipped my maid Anaka for her laziness but I forgave her. I read a little geometry. I denied my man G-r-l to go to a horse race because there was nothing but swearing and drinking there. I ate roast mutton for dinner. In the afternoon I played at piquet with my own wife and made her out of humor by cheating her. I read some Greek in Homer. Then I walked about the plantation. I lent John H-ch seven pounds in his distress. I said my prayers and had good health, good thoughts, and good humor, thanks be to God Almighty . . .

The consumer revolution

One of the ways the nobility distinguished themselves was through the purchase, consumption and display of goods. The increased supply of consumer goods from England that became available in the 18th century gave rise to a phenomenon known as the Consumer Revolution. Consumer goods linked the colonies and England in a real and tangible way. Indeed, alongside colonial aristocrats, colonial laymen also participated in the frenzy of consumer spending on goods from Britain. It became the “drink of the British Empire.”

Newspapers, pamphlets, and novels in the consumer revolution

In the eighteenth century, however, a flood of journals, books, pamphlets, and other publications became available to readers on both sides of the Atlantic. Cato’s Letters, by Englishmen John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon, was one popular series of 144 pamphlets. However, the pamphlets cautioned readers to be ever vigilant and on the lookout for attacks upon that liberty. Another very popular publication was the English gentlemens magazine the Spectator, published between 1711 and 1714.

What made the Spectator so wildly popular was its style; the essays were meant to persuade and cultivate among readers a refined set of behaviors, rejecting deceit and intolerance and focusing instead on the polishing of genteel taste and manners. Novels, a new type of literature, made their first appearance in the 18th century and proved very popular in the British Atlantic.