Analysis Of The Virginia Gentry By Woody Holton

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I believe that Holton wrote this book in order to explain the complex make up of the Virginia gentry. The title of Woody Holton 's history of revolutionary Virginia seems to promise an account of how enslaved Africans and Native Americans were compelled toward independence against their will and interest. He explains that the forced fathers in this account are actually the Virginia gentry. Holton argues that the Virginia gentry were propelled toward independence by two other causes related to their class and material interests. One cause was an outgrowth of the gentry 's problem with debts and merchants. Free Virginians were attracted to the most important resistance strategy of the prewar period, the commercial boycott against Britain.