Building the British Atlantic World: Spaces, Places, and Material Culture, 1600-1850

351 Pages·2016·10.715 MB·English

by  Daniel Maudlin, Bernard L. Herman

Building the
British A tlAntic W orld


Building the
British A tlAntic W orld

Spaces, Places, and Material Culture, 1600–1850
edited By
dAniel M Audlin & Bern Ard l. herMAn
the university of north cArolinA Press
Chapel Hill
This book was published with the assistance of the
h. eugene And lilliAn youngs lehMAn fund
of the University of North Carolina Press.
A complete list of books published in the Lehman Series appears at the end of the book.
© 2016 The University of North Carolina Press
All rights reserved
Set in Monotype Bulmer by Tseng Information Systems, Inc.
Manufactured in the United States of America
The University of North Carolina Press has been a member of
the Green Press Initiative since 2003.
Jacket illustration: A Mappe of the Somer Isles and Fortresses,
from Captain John Smith’s The Generall Historie of Virginia, New- England,
and the Summer Isles, London, 1624. Documenting the American South, University of
North Carolina at Chapel Hill Libraries. Background antique map: 123RF.com,
© Steve Estvanik. Background texture: depositphotos.com, photo © digieye.
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Building the British Atlantic world : spaces, places, and material culture,
1600–1850 / edited by Daniel Maudlin and Bernard L. Herman.
pages cm — (H. Eugene and Lillian Youngs Lehman series)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isBn 978-1-4696-2682-6 (pbk : alk. paper) — isBn 978-1-4696-2683-3 (ebook)
1. British—Material culture—Atlantic Ocean Region—History. 2. Atlantic Ocean
Region—History. 3. Architecture, British colonial—Atlantic Ocean Region—History.
4. Architecture, British—Atlantic Ocean Region—History. 5. Great Britain—Civilization.
6. Great Britain—Colonies—America—Civilization. 7. Great Britain—Colonies—Africa,
West—Civilization. I. Maudlin, Daniel, editor. II. Herman, Bernard L., 1951– editor.
III. Series: H. Eugene and Lillian Youngs Lehman series.
dA123.B85 2016
941′.009821—dc23
2015033880
contents
Introduction 1
Daniel Maudlin and Bernard L. Herman
PArt i: eMPire And governMent
1. To Build and Fortify: Defensive Architecture in
the Early Atlantic Colonies 31
Emily Mann
2. Seats of Government: The Public Buildings of British America 53
Carl Lounsbury
3. Landscapes of the New Republic at Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello 78
Anna O. Marley
PArt ii: religion And the churches
4. English Artisans’ Churches and North America:
Traditions of Vernacular Classicism in the Eighteenth Century 103
Peter Guillery
5. The New England Meetinghouse: An Atlantic Perspective 119
Peter Benes
6. The Praying Indian Towns:
Encounter and Conversion through Imposed Urban Space 142
Alison Stanley
PArt iii: coMMerce, trAffic, And trAde
7. Tools of Empire: Trade, Slaves, and the British Forts of West Africa 165
Christopher DeCorse
8. The Falmouth House and Store:
The Social Landscapes of Caribbean Commerce in the Eighteenth Century 188
Louis P. Nelson
9. Building British Atlantic Port Cities:
Bristol and Liverpool in the Eighteenth Century 212
Kenneth Morgan
PArt iv: houses And the hoMe
10. Building Status in the British Atlantic World:
The Gentleman’s House in the English West Country and Pennsylvania 231
Stephen Hague
11. Parlor and Kitchen in the Borderlands of the
Urban British American Atlantic World, 1670–1720 253
Bernard L. Herman
12. Palladianism and the Villa Ideal in South Carolina:
The Transatlantic Perils of Classical Purity 269
Lee Morrissey
13. Politics and Place- Making on the Edge of Empire:
Loyalists, Highlanders, and the Early Farmhouses of British Canada 290
Daniel Maudlin
Selected Bibliography 313
Contributors 319
Index 325
Building the
British A tlAntic W orld
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introduction
Daniel Maudlin and Bernard L. Herman

Building the British Atlantic World is an introduction to the ocean- going cul-
ture of the British Atlantic world as interpreted through its buildings, land-
scapes and settlements, exploring the extent, diversity, and sameness of the
architecture built by the British overseas across their North Atlantic colonies.
It explores the many meanings that buildings held for the colonists—and
colonized—who built and occupied them and reflects on the profound archi-
tectural connections that were maintained between the colonies and Britain.
As such, the book draws upon expertise from the fields of art and architec-
tural history, archaeology, historical geography, folklore, environmental his-
tory, material culture and vernacular architecture studies, museum curation,
cultural history, and economic history in order to present an overview of
British Atlantic culture through its built spaces and places.
Driven by imperial expansion, religion, trade and migration from Canada
to the Caribbean, from West Africa to the thirteen colonies, and the passage
back to Britain, the cultural space of the British Atlantic world was mapped
onto the landscapes of the northern Atlantic oceanic rim. Through periods
of discovery and establishment in the seventeenth century, maintenance in
the eighteenth century, and eventual dismantlement and decline in the nine-
teenth century, this world was made, seen, and experienced through its build-
ings: those built in distant, different lands and those built at “home.” Today,
across the vast expanse of this former Atlantic empire, buildings and towns
remain as highly visible reminders of British colonial rule. Equally, through-
out England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales, other buildings stand today as
monuments to the impact of the Atlantic colonies on Britain. Whether forts in
Bermuda, churches in New England, plantation houses in South Carolina, or
farms in Canada, historic buildings are markers of a historic British presence,
artifacts of a coherent but complex Atlantic culture. While individual build-
ings and urban centers were fundamentally made in order to facilitate func-
tions and activities—defense, prayer, shelter—they also served as important
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