The Evolution of the Southern Backcountry is the story of an expanding frontier Richard Beeman offers a lively and well written account of the creation of bonds of community among the farmers who settled Lunenburg Country far to the south and west of Virginia s center of political and economic activity Beeman s view of the nature of community provides an important dynamic model of the transmission of culture from older more settled regions of Virginia to the southern frontier He describes how the southern frontier was influenced by those staples of American historical development opportunity mobility democracy and ethnic pluralism and he shows how the county evolved socially culturally and economically to become distinctly southern