The Formation of a Planter Elite: Jonathan Bryan and the Southern Colonial Frontier

by Alan Gallay

Jonathan Bryan (1708-88) rose from the obscurity of the southern frontier to become one of colonial Georgia€™s richest, most powerful men. Along the way he made such influential friends as George Whitefield and James Oglethorpe. Bryan€™s contemporaries, in terms of their large holdings of land and slaves, were markedly traditional and conservative. As Alan Gallay shows, Bryan was different. Paternalistic and relatively open minded, Bryan contemplated religious, social, political, and economic ideas that other planters refused to consider. Of equal importance, he explored the geographic areas that lay beyond the reach and understanding of his contemporaries. Through the career of a remarkable individual--which spanned the founding of Georgia, the Revolution, and the birth of the new republic--Gallay chronicles the rise of the plantation slavery system in the colonial South.

Genres: History

304 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 1989

About the author

Alan Gallay is an historian of early America and the Atlantic World, with special interest in Native America, the American South, and the histories of slavery. Gallay has been a Fulbright teaching fellow at the University of Auckland, NZ, a Mellon Faculty Fellow in the Humanities at Harvard University, and twice received year-long research fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities. He holds the Lyndon B. Johnson Chair of U.S. History at Texas Christian University. Gallay is currently conducting research on First Nations art, stories, and history in the Pacific Northwest.

Reviews

[Debra · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book because Jonathan Bryan was my 6th grand uncle. It is a well researched book about the rise and success of one of the most powerful and wealthy men in Georgia during the 18th century. Bryan, influenced by Revered George Whitefield, supported evangelical reforms concerning the Christian conversion and education of slaves, as well as their humane treatment.