The Planting of New Virginia: Settlement and Landscape in the Shenandoah Valley (review)

Abstract

The Planting of Virginia: Settlement and Landscape in the Shenandoah Valley. By Warren R. Hofstra. (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004. Pp. xv, 410. Illustrations, maps. Cloth, $49.95.)The term New denoted an eighteenth-century geographic division between planter and small farm economies in the Old Dominion. For Warren R. Hofstra, the name reflects new cultural and directions that emerged in the West during the colonial era and the early republic. Hofstra probes that development by placing the scope of the study within the larger geographical and historical context of the Virginia backcountry. The Planting of Virginia investigates patterns of settlement and development as expressed in the of the northern Shenandoah Valley between the 173Os and the early 180Os. That area symbolized changes taking place in the entire valley as it evolved from a peripheral region to a forcountry (1) with an interconnecting and country landscape (2) based upon strong commercial ties to the Atlantic trade.Hofstra combines the terminology of cultural geography, studies, and history to argue that landscapes are the products of intricate forces that extend over several generations. By using this approach, he rejects Turnerian and eurocentric interpretations that fail to trace the intricate complexities of that development. Landscapes, Hofstra explains, are encoded with specific historic backgrounds that denote the impact of human groups as they negotiate their coexistence with arid manipulation of the environment. To trace the development of the lower Shenandoah Valley landscape, Hofstra extracts elements from models of development, including central place and strategic place theories. He then interweaves accounts of external forces and human agents that shaped the Shenandoah Valley: the natural environment, the presence of Native American and European immigrants, provincial and British imperial policies, and the impact of trade.Hofstra draws the reader into the work by employing a narrativebiographical approach to describe the phases of settlement. In Chapter 1, Hofstra creates a visual description of the fashioned by Native Americans and European immigrants. He transports the reader to 1742 by describing a hypothetical tour of the Shenandoah Valley based upon the journey of thirty Iroquois warriors. Hofstra strongly advocates the study of native accounts to provide a more accurate evaluation of native impact upon the and their reception to European changes. Hofstra then probes the text (113) of property and survey tracts made by European settlers in the lower valley during the 173Os and 174Os.The cadastre (112), or shape of the surveyed tracts made in the lower valley during the 173Os and 174Os, reflect the historical effort to settle the region and the impact of European immigration. The Virginia government sought quick occupation of the valley by populating it with Protestant German and Scots-Irish settlers to protect its western lands from French expansion. Provincial leaders authorized the dispersal of land through speculator-agents such as Jost Hite and his partner, Robert McKay, who allowed settlers to negotiate their selection of land. Settlers fashioned a landscape (138) consisting of small groups of dispersed homesteads and businesses. Such a development also was found in Tidewater Virginia. But the backcountry reflected cultural practices and pragmatic use of the natural environment to achieve economic competency (7). This vernacular remained generally free from outside forces that shaped landscapes in other backcountry regions during the 170Os-in spite of the imperial policies that populated the valley.First-generation immigrants did not operate isolated, subsistent farms, nor did they engage in a commercial, market town economy. Settlers conducted an exchange economy in which goods and services were transferred over a large area. …