MDDM book: The Fabulous History of the Dismal Swamp Company

[Doug Millison]

http://www.daedalus-books.com/default.cfm?&CFID=1711880&CFTOKEN=68510327
The Fabulous History of the Dismal Swamp Company
SubTitle:	A Story of George Washington's Times
Author:	Charles Royster.
Publisher:	Knopf
List Price:	$35.00
Sale Price:	$7.98
Format:	hardcover
Pages/Publication Date:	622/2000
ISBN:	0679433457

Moving from the plantations of Virginia and Antigua to the warehouses of
London and Glasgow, from the iron furnaces of southern Wales to the
subscribers' room of Lloyd's of London, Charles Royster gives us the story
of the Dismal Swamp Company, a fantastically delusional enterprise that
proposed draining and developing a vast morass along the Virginia-North
Carolina border. Examining the interconnected lives of the company's
partners, Royster reveals a colonial order built on a system of cronyism,
conspicuous consumption, and debt that seems hauntingly familiar. He writes
about the many schemers and dreamers (including George Washington, Robert
"King" Carter, two William Byrds, Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson, and
Robert Morris) who failed to amass their desired fortunes, and a few
realists (Samuel Gist, Dr. Thomas Walker, and Anthony Bacon) who succeeded,
but at the dire expense of others.


from the Amazon.com page for this book:

>From Booklist
By its continuing existence, the Dismal Swamp straddling the
Virginia^-North Carolina line testifies to the failure of a company set up
in 1763 to transform it into a hemp plantation. According to Royster, the
only money the Dismal Swamp Company made was from shingles produced on the
back of slave labor. But its shareholders, a cabal of English and Virginian
land speculators with influence on the colonial governors, dreamed of
better returns, the fate of which aspirations produces the thickets of
detail in Royster's narrative. The author traces the possessors and
inheritors of every share in the company, which geographically stretches
the story to Antigua, Senegal, and London--the whole sordid
tobacco-and-slaving triangle. Because the company existed for 50 years,
Royster can also chronicle the company's window into colonial history in
terms of the American Revolution, approved of by its most enthusiastic
shareholder, George Washington, and disapproved of by shareholders resident
in England. Characterized by many trees and a few copses of forest, this
work inclines toward antiquarianism, yet holds appeal for buffs of the
Revolutionary era. Gilbert Taylor

Fortunately, Royster, an accomplished historian and author of the Francis
Parkman Prize-winning A Revolutionary People at War, had more luck getting
something valuable out of the Dismal Swamp than his Colonial predecessors.
His richly detailed, circuitous saga makes for dense, satisfying reading.
--Paul Hughes

>From Kirkus Reviews
Royster (Louisiana State Univ.; The Destructive War: William Tecumseh
Sherman, Stonewall Jackson, and the Americans, 1991) has previously proven
himself a master at providing fresh and significant historical
interpretations through historical narratives. Here, he has momentarily
lost his touch. A tale that spans more than a century, has a cast of
characters manyfold greater than War and Peace (requiring a genealogical
scorecard to keep straight), and a staging as baroque as Les Misrables,
this book gives the impression of being a large story for many smaller
stories' sake. Loosely tied to the extraordinary history of efforts to
develop and profit from the great Dismal Swamp lying between Virginia and
North Carolina, the book takes us across the history of 18th- and
19th-century Virginia and over the seas to Africa, Britain, and the
Continent as well. Everyone worth knowing (half, it seems, intermarried)
and some scoundrels besides walk the stage. Land is the main character, the
hunger for land to grow rich by the drama's engine. The Father of the
Country plays a leading and honorable part. Minor characters are as diverse
and well-drawn as any in a Dickens novel. And marriages, deaths, feuds, and
sudden turns of fortune fill the adventure with life. But in the end
Royster is defeated in his efforts to control his materials. There is
simply too muchtoo many stories and not enough theme or argument. Its hard
to tell what the author wishes us to come away withpleasure at riveting
tales (characteristically well told, to be sure) or a deeper understanding
of the most important colony and state in the century surrounding the
American Revolution. If the latter, he fails (as he does not in his
previous, prize-winning works) to tell us what that understanding ought to
be. A great sprawl of a bookartful, entertaining, informative, deeply
researched (163 pages of notes), but in the end frustrating. (20
illustrations, 5 maps, not seen) -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP.
All rights reserved. -

Book Description
>From historian Charles Royster--winner of the Francis Parkman, Bancroft,
and Lincoln prizes--comes the history of one of eighteenth-century
America's most fantastic land speculation deals: William Byrd's scheme to
develop 900 square miles of swamp on the Virginia-North Carolina border and
create fabulous wealth for himself and other shareholders, including George
Washington.
Royster scrupulously follows the paper trail through the byways of
transatlantic deal-cutting, providing a rare view of early American
economic culture. Elegantly written and impressively researched, The
Fabulous History of the Dismal Swamp Company is an eye-opening account of
greed, folly, and venture capitalism in the revolutionary era.