Irons in the Fire chronicles the agricultural, industrial, and
commercial activities of four generations of the Tayloe family of
Northern Virginia, revealing a greater complexity in the southern
business culture of early America than scholars have generally
recognized. Through the story of one representative family, Laura
Croghan Kamoie illustrates how entrepreneurship and a broadly
skilled slave-labor force combined to create economic
diversification well before the American Revolution. Contrary to
general historical perceptions, southern elite planters were, at
least until the 1790s, very like their northern counterparts.
The Tayloes were planters and businessmen who, crucially, saw no
distinction or conflict between these two roles. In this they were
not unique: diversification, combined with an entrepreneurial
inclination among the elite of the planter class, formed the basis
of the Chesapeake's regional economy and contributed to its
development.
This diversity was reflected in the slave community.
Demonstrating a versatility exceeding later generations of slaves,
and occupying a central position in the daily operations of the
South's business culture, the Chesapeake slaves made the planters'
relatively sophisticated enterprises not only profitable but
possible.
Spanning more than a century of early American history, the
story begins in 1700, when John Tayloe I managed the family's
concerns, and concludes with his six great-grandsons, who lived
into the Civil War era. Through the generations, the Tayloes
demonstrated the same essential qualities--enterprise, risk-taking,
business savvy, innovation, ambition, and pursuit of profit--as
their northern counterparts. As the eighteenth century ended,
however, cotton plantation agriculture--and, in Virginia, the
internal slave trade in support of it--increasingly began to take
over, working against economic diversification.
Irons in the Fire provides an exceptional view of early American
business, each generation of Tayloes approaching the family's
welfare within the social, political, economic, and cultural
contexts of their day. This business-family saga also contributes a
pivotal perspective to contemporary debates about the economic
modernity of the South.
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