The Formation of a Society on Virginia's Eastern Shore, 1615-1655

The dissolution of the ill-starred Virginia Company in 1624 left Virginia — now England’s first royal colony — without a formal raison d'être. Most historians have suggested that the nascent local societies were anarchic, under the thrall of violent and unscrupulous men. James Perry asserts the opposite: The Formation of a Society on Virginia’s Eastern Shore, 1615–1655 depicts emergent social cohesion. In a model of network analysis, Perry mines county court records to trace landholders through