Robert Cole’s World: Agriculture and Society in Early Maryland by Lois G. Carr, et al

Abstract

694 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE prints), and boring and finishing (six prints). De Beer’s text elucidates the prints and provides an encyclopedic description of gunfounding at Woolwich under the Verbruggens. The drawings’ principal limitation as a source is the lack of an associated text, a deficiency made good here by the inclusion of two contemporary treatises on gunfounding, the first by David Emanuel Musly, a Swiss founder in Dutch service, dating from the 1760s, and the second by Isaac Landman, professor of artillery and fortification at the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich, written in 1793. Musly’s previously unpublished text, lavishly illustrated with plates, is remark­ ably comprehensive, omitting only the horizontal boring operation, which was considered a state secret (de Beer gives full coverage of both horizontal and vertical boring elsewhere). Landman’s less formal text, illustrated with his delightful sketches, provides a useful account of English practice two decades after the Verbruggens. Last, but not least, is a brief but richly informative chapter in which de Beer applies current knowledge of casting technology to the problem. His salient conclusion, at least as I read it: early modern gunfounding was based on a combination of rigorously adhered to traditional practice and informed guesswork; that the more successful practitioners suc­ ceeded at all, let alone with predictable replicability, is a marvel that we cannot fully explain. Beautifully written, illustrated, edited, and printed, The Art of Gun­ founding is highly recommended. My only complaints are the (under­ standably) high price and short press run. A paperback edition? Soon? Please! J. F. Guilmartin Dr. Guilmartin teaches in the Department of History at Ohio State University. Robert Cole’s World: Agriculture and Society in Early Maryland. By Lois G. Carr, Russell R. Menard, and Lorena S. Walsh. Chapel Hill: Uni­ versity of North Carolina Press, 1991. Pp. xxi + 362; illustrations, tables, notes, appendixes, index. $39.95 (cloth); $19.95 (paper). One might surmise that the Coles “made money the old-fashioned way; they earned it.” When Robert Cole, an English Catholic, arrived in Maryland in 1652, with his wife Rebecca, four children, and two servants, they had enough money to buy and start up a 300-acre farm on St. Clement’s Manor. Clearing about 15 acres, building their house and tobacco-curing shed, planting crops, a garden, and orchard, looking after a few cattle and hogs, hauling water from the creek and chopping firewood, they “pioneered” as people on the frontier would do for the next two centuries across the continent. At the start, their investment amounted to about £50. A decade later, Rebecca died after the birth of her eighth child, and Robert survived her by little more TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 695 than a year. To their orphans, they left an estate of real property and “moveables” (including four servants) worth £208. This was not a princely sum, but a 40 percent per year return amounted to a respectable investment by any standard. Some of the Coles’ capital came from selling what they raised—a little tobacco for export and extra produce to their neighbors—but it was their labor, savings, and reinvested profits that paid off the most. Building a farm offered a living and a few steps up the ladder on the way to wealth. Robert Cole’s World, offers an extraordinary view into the lives of pioneers. The authors reasonably assert that Robert Cole represented the yeomanry of early Maryland, but actually, the story offers a model of how “first farmers” far and wide turned sweat into equity. It also accounts for the price they paid, as pioneering was a fairly high-risk venture. Among other things, this fine work ought to blot out the exceedingly dull and seemingly interminable debate over the basic nature of a pioneering economy—that is, subsistence-oriented versus market-driven. It was both. Roughly halfof the book is narrative; the other half has appendixes of plantation accounts, an analysis of livestock production and meat consumption, and biographies of people mentioned in Robert Cole’s records. Details abound, largely because Robert Cole, Jr., sued the executor of his father’s estate in 1673, and the resulting court documents specified...