Customer Reviews

The Fabulous History of the Dismal Swamp Company: A Story of George Washington's Times

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

After reading the previous reviews I almost didn't purchase this book. But because I had read and enjoyed Prof. Royster's book on "Light-Horse Harry" Lee and I'm interested in colonial Virginia, I gave it a try. Charles Royster is The Boyd Professor of history at LSU, the recipient of the Brancroft and Lincoln Prizes and the Sydnor Award. Did I find this book "Highly captivating and intriguing"? No. (Don't expect some Wilbur Smith swashbuckler laced with pirates and gratuitous sex.) Did I find the book very readable, informative, well-researched, thought-provoking and would I recommend it to American history enthusiasts? Definitely.

What my fellow reviews fail to realize is that this book's importance does not lie in the Dismal Swamp Company. Royster has woven a narrative that not only describes the economic climate in which America's elite lived, but also demonstrates that without the support of overseas investors our nation would not have been able to expand as quickly as it did. Granted, the Dismal Swamp Company represents a clear failure, but look at the investors. Prominent Englishman and Virginian planters poured money into this financial black hole. Why? For decades it returned little, if any, profit. The reason they kept investing was the belief that they could make something out of a most inhospitable plot of marshland. In short, do not get bogged down in all the names and places. Instead, think about the overall meaning of what you read.

This is an excellent study of life among the upper classes in Virgina and North Carolinia. This is the first book I have read that provides details on how many of the planter class struggled to keep their heads above water while trying to appear rich.

I have often wondered what motives some of the elites had in joiing the American Revolution. Royster points out that more than a few of the planter class had strong economic reasons to sever ties with Britian in the hopes of freeing themselves from a mountain of debt.

This is a brilliant, fascinating mess. Royster could have made it more approachable with the simple device of some genealogical charts and tables showing who the owners of the company were at a given time. The thousands of names flit in and out, and it's not until you're 50 pages into the book that the first chapter---about the Dismal Swamp Company---starts to tie in with the multitudes of narratives. Just as you start identifying with one person, his narrative ends and isn't taken up again for 20 pages, by which time, you've forgotten who he was. The only common element throughout the book is the greedy misanthropic Samuel Gist---and then, only because he lived so long. There are dozens of other ways Royster could have organized the book---and all of them would have made more sense. On the other hand, there's something about it that makes you keep reading. Ambitious, unique, and yes, as another reviewer said, weird. Royster's writing style is often annoying, as if he felt compelled to spew out every note he ever made; this often results in choppy, declarative sentences. The father died. The daughter sued. The author doesn't do transitions. Finally, the footnotes---for those of us who are compelled to find a particular source---are overwhelming and hard to use; they're organized by page, which is fine, but then lumped together in a mass grave.

I think it was worth the time reading it. It stands out enough that you won't forget. Like the movie "A Clockwork Orange," see it once, but you'll never watch it again.

This strange, brilliant, sometimes exasperating, always fascinating book uses the forty-year history of a company that developed land in Virginia's Dismal Swamp as the hook for an overload of stories about the men who invested in that company. The results is a crazy quilt chronicle of 18th century Virginia replete with tales of ambitious orphans, elopements, bills of exchange, debt, bankruptcy, the tobacco trade, land speculation in Kentucky and Ohio, the slave trade on the Gold Coast, smuggling in Antigua, the underwriter rooms of Lloyds, theatergoing in London, and more marriages than one can keep track of. The American Revolution comes and goes somewhere in the background. The Dismal Swamp Company itself is just a MacGuffin at the center of a rich, lively rigamorole.

The reader who complained that this book is like reading through 18th century business ledgers actually captures some of its feeling, but I liked that quality. There is material here for a dozen or so historical novels, which is one of the book's problems, but I enjoyed navigating through the scattered storylines and assembling the pieces in my head.

Charles Royster's prose is always clear and quick and his research is amazing. The reader just needs to be patient and be able to go with the flow of it. I was helped by the fact that I grew up in Virginia and know some of the names and places: William Byrd, the Nelson family, Lord Dunmore, Williamsburg, Westover and Rosewell. But I've never encountered anything quite like this book. It's an experiment in storytelling and it won't work for everyone but it worked for me. The world of the 18th century will never be the same.

Ledgers, lists of names, etc., etc., etc. While this was far from a compelling read, there were bits and pieces that I picked up that thoroughy entertained me. I certainly doubt that the general history reader would find this compelling, but I did enjoy reading about Lord Dunmore's reluctance to come to Virginia and, apparently, disagreeable personality and genuine enjoyment of liquid refreshment.

I return to this book now and then for a quick refresher. However, I would not define it as a classic of historical literature.

It is hard to believe that we were trading with England during the Revolutionary War but evidently we were. Many people owed a lot of money to British bankers and could not pay, and it seems that was a reason for the war not talked about. It is amazing to see how inbred Virginia was in those days, and how many names(Fairfax, Washington, Randolph) are prominent to this day from the 1600's. A slog but I enjoy slogs

Charles Royster opens a dialog into the lives of the patirots and the not so famous participants of society during the pre and post revolunary times. He has called a spade a scroundral and told of the DSC efforts to use one to dig a ten mile ditch into the interior of the swamp. Well written and full of information into our ancessoral past.

Being a fan of the AmRev/Colonial times, I really wanted to like this book. I really did. How could anyone resist such a title? Then I started reading it. I'm 100 pages into it so far, but am not sure if I'm going to finish it. Names are scattered like clover: who married whom, who's in business with whom, and so on. I guess this is to show how incestuous business dealings were back then... I guess. It seems like there's a good story in here trying to get out, but just when I think it's going to appear, Royster smothers it with more names.

This is definitely more for the academic than general history reader.

When will publishers realize that Royster's books are just plain wierd? This book goes nowhere; after 100 pages of Va. genaologies, anecdotes, and poorly put together themes, the book barely mentions the Swamp and one cannot tell where in the world the author is going. He writes in a pleasing style but his subject is incredibly disjointed. The same was true of his earlier book "This Destructive War." I have given up on Royster; he has forgotten that a book has to have a subject and must deal with a subject in an orderly fashion.