Historical Process and Narrative in Annapolis, Maryland and the Chesapeake

Abstract

The title of this chapter articulates two ideas about geography that are both accurate and necessary for understanding the focus of this book. One reading is a pair: A city, Annapolis, Maryland and a region, the Chesapeake. Understanding the negotiated relationship between these two geographic entities is a main point of this book. In the following chapters I explore how to situate Annapolis in the Chesapeake and how the Chesapeake situated Annapolis within itself. Changes in this relationship between 1700 and 1900 tell a great story, and one that I believe provides new insight to understanding the social production of the landscape in Annapolis. A second reading is a list of three places: Annapolis—Maryland—the Chesapeake. This balance between the three, as independent, symbolic places in their own right, is also essential for knowing about Annapolis because Annapolis used these symbolic geographies in ways that shifted over time. Exploring the strategic use of these geographies provides key contextual clues for understanding how changes in the Annapolis landscape are tied to the social experience of history there.