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Economic Development And Political Authority: Norfolk, Virginia Merchant-Magistrates, 1736-1800, Thomas Costa

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

Colonial Norfolk, Virginia, developed a more diversified economy than much of the rest of the tobacco-growing Chesapeake. Through a vigorous trade to the West Indies in agricultural products, local merchants prospered, and in 1736 a group of the leading local traders received a charter incorporating Norfolk town as a borough. From that time until the Revolution, through the offices of mayor and aldermen, who corresponded to county magistrates elsewhere in Virginia, the founding merchants and their hand-picked successors governed the town.;Norfolk's merchant-magistrates retained their grip on the town's political and economic life until after the Revolution, despite competition from new …