Shaping of Southern Society is a collection of thirteen essays by noted American and English scholars that explores the changing character of social relationships in the Southern colonies during the period before the American Revolution. The articles examine the ways in which people of different racial and social backgrounds interacted in the new World creating what anthropologist have termed "cultural interdependencies." In each of the plantation societies discussed here -- Maryland, South Carolina, and Virginia -- large numbers of African and European migrants established complex new societies, to which each group brought the knowledge of a culture left behind. Although the colonists attempted whenever possible to preserve what was familiar, the rich, expansive environment of the Southern colonies constantly forced the newcomers to make cultural adjustments.