Russell Menard (1942-2023), was Emeritus Professor[1] at the University of Minnesota specialized in the economic and social history of the British colonies in North America.
Most of his work has been on the economic, demographic, and social history of the Chesapeake region during the early colonial period, but his research interests include the origins of plantation slavery in British America, the economic development of the Lower South in the 18th century, and late 19th-century U.S. social history.
Menard, with his collaborator John McCusker, co-authored The Economy of British America, a landmark volume that emphasized the importance of the "staple thesis" for understanding the development and evolution of colonial societies from New England down to the West Indies.
Menard published dozens of articles and book chapters, but his most well known piece, “From Servants to Slaves: The Transformation of the Chesapeake Labor System” (1977).
Papers covered a wide temporal sweep from the colonial period to the American Civil War and a broad geographical and spatial scope encompassing the histories of Canada, New England, the Middle Atlantic, the Lower South, the West Indies, Latin America, slavery, and native people.