To be forthcoming, this is a book report, but stay with me. American Nations, a History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America, by Colin Woodward is one of the twenty-two books (F and NF) that our men's book club reads annually, but one that completely grabbed me and introduced me to a much different understanding than simply the "red state-blue state" macro analysis that we see on the political maps. Much more can be learned.
Woodward starts with the original thirteen colonies and the culturally different people who settled each. From that beginning point, he makes the persuasive argument that these colonies—in fact they were quite independent and considered themselves virtually sovereign entities—moved into several groupings based on differing common belief systems and economic emphasis. It's much too complex a discussion to capsule in few words, but Woodward convincingly shows how the mostly British immigrants, augmented later by waves from Ireland, Germany, and Italy, expanded the country westward, and evolved strong different regional cultures that persist to this day. Add to that the incredible city-state of metropolitan New York City, with its Dutch history of inclusiveness and social liberalism, the "New France" influence around New Orleans, and the growing Hispanic cultures that spread into the southwest and are growing, and the author draws a county-by-county map of the "American Nations," where the word nation denotes the community of people organized along similar belief structures.
A disclaimer here: the author writes from the perspective of New England, which he describes as "Yankeedom," an area strongly influenced by Puritan protestant religious and social beliefs, small owner-tilled farms, as well as a devotion to "common good" in terms of strong education and citizen participation.
He develops the argument that the two politically dominant cultures in the country were, and still are, Yankeedom and the "Deep South," an area peopled originally by British planters from Barbados, "the richest and most horrifying society in the English-speaking world," where they had established a brutal slave-based economy based on sugarcane. This social and agriculture system transitioned to the early US with immigration to the port of Charleston, SC, where the plantation system based on slave labor started in the low country, and eventually spread into the cotton growing areas westward and into the Mississippi Delta land of western Tennessee and Arkansas. The Deep South was characterized by strong protestant religious beliefs that were used (as by the Dutch Reformed Church of South Africa) to justify slavery on biblical terms, and was anchored by a handful of elite large land owners with low-wage or slave agricultural workers, a system of economic and social inequality.
These two cultures fundamentally have been at odds, if not war, for nearly 400 years, and compete politically by seeking to ally with the other "nations," as defined by Woodward. In addition to "New Netherland," which he calls the city-state of metropolitan New York City, and "New France," both of which became landlocked, others include the "Tidewater" area, set along the lowlands of the Chesapeake river and bay system, one of the oldest populated areas, strongly influenced by the British Anglican church and a genteel patrician social structure, "The Midlands," the middle-American culture of Philadelphia spread to the Midwest , and "Greater Appalachia," the Scots-Irish dominated highland/upcountry borderlands between the "Deep South" and the "Midlands." In addition, the Spanish-Mexican culture of Catholic "El Norte" to the southwest, "The Left Coast,"—established by Yankee trading ships in the harbors of San Francisco, Portland, and Seattle—secular, well educated, and socially liberal, and "The Far West," the arid and mountainous western plains and west to the Rockies and Cascades featuring extreme individualism in a harsh and rugged land, make up the contiguous land mass.
One can find many things to disagree with in this book, but it's the best attempt I've seen at describing the reason why the fundamental polarity exists in our nation's political system—a deep division of religious/secular, personal freedom, and political attitudes that has existed for centuries.
Woodward includes an epilogue, in which he wonders aloud what the U.S. will look like in 100 years. It's not a stretch at all to envision a much different nation or nations, with different borders and demographics. This book will give the reader much history to digest, and examines some of the factors that make up the culture and political struggles now underway in this country.
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James Kennedy George, Jr (Jim George)
Author, Reunion, a novel about relationships.
Available in Hard Cover, Soft Cover, and all eBook formats on the Internet from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and all other Internet retailers, as well as on-order in print format from any book store. In stock at several book stores, including Book People in Austin, Texas, Tamarack on the West Virginia Turnpike, and Hearthside Books in Bluefield, West Virginia.
A number of book clubs in Central Texas have read Reunion, and/or have selected the novel for the first half of 2013. The author will be glad to attend your book club for discussions and to answer questions regarding the book as well as the publishing process. Contact him at <n3bb@mindspring.com> for additional information and scheduling.
Thanks to your support, sales of Reunion have increased and the novel has ranked for several months now in the top 100 (number 40 as I write this) of the Kindle Store sales of Amazon’s “Parent and Adult Child” category.
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