"Often compared unfavorably with colonial New England, the early Chesapeake has been portrayed as irreligious, unstable, and violent. In this pathbreaking study, James Horn looks across the Atlantic, examining the enduring influence of English attitudes, values, and behavior on the social and cultural evolution of the early Chesapeake. Using detailed local and regional studies to compare everyday life in English provincial society and the emergent societies of the Chesapeake Bay, Horn provides a richly textured picture of the immigrants' Old World backgrounds and their adjustment to life in America." "Until the end of the seventeenth century, most settlers in Virginia and Maryland were born and raised in England, a factor of enormous consequence for social development in the two colonies. Horn examines the factors that encouraged or forced these settlers to leave England, their initial impressions of their new home, their adaptation to the novel conditions they encountered, and their experience of family life, the local community, work, law and order, and religion." "English immigrants did not expect to find a mirror image of England in the Chesapeake. Yet for all that was different in New World society, Virginia and Maryland were emphatically English, not just in name but also in temperament. Immigrants thought of themselves as English, were governed by English laws and institutions, broadly followed English religious practices, and held to the same traditions as English people back home. By stressing the vital social and cultural connections between England and the Chesapeake during this period, Horn places the development of early America in the context of a vibrant Anglophone transatlantic world and suggests a fundamental reinterpretation of New World society."--BOOK JACKET.