Pursues for this generation the same themes as "Albion's Seed" did for the last ...although with considerably different details. Where "Albion's Seed" was largely about the pre-revolutionary period, a much longer span of years including the Civil War era as well as the present day is analyzed here. A book not of new research through primary sources, but rather of synthesis of other carefully chosen works of history around a theme few even imagined and almost none expressed quite this way. Specifically, the themes here are that the several cultures within the U.S. are more different from each other than quite a few nation-states, and that although the "Borderlanders" were a majority of the population, they were egregiously excluded from political power until the time of Andrew Jackson, and are still often thought of derogatorily.
He tries pretty hard -and fairly successfully- to be even-handed. Nevertheless I managed to form the impression his personal tendencies were toward progressive causes and away from the Deep South. And he does say explicitly at one point "Since 1877 the driving force of American politics hasn't primarily been a class struggle or tension between agrarian and commercial interests, or even between competing partisan ideologies, although each has played a role. Ultimately the determinative political struggle has been a clash between shifting coalitions of ethnoregional nations, one invariably headed by the Deep South, the other by Yankeedom."
Among other things, this history explains why Ohio is such an important swing state in presidential elections (different land ownership resulted in _three_ different "nations" settling inside a single state ...and in dis-contiguous areas). Although he doesn't explicitly cover it at all, it seemed clear to me from reading that both a large and growing population and economic might are keys to a culture being influential. He very briefly covers the apparently uncontroversial historical maxim that the original settling (or resettling) of an area often determines its culture for hundreds of years, even after both the original people and the original economy have largely vanished.
Since there are currently very few pursuing this unfamiliar line of historical inquiry, he perforce paints with quite a broad brush. As a result, some of his details feel "half-baked", and once in a while at the edges there's a whopper that has trouble standing up to a few moments deep thought.
U.S. history has become mostly New England history (can you imagine relating the mythology of the U.S. without mentioning Plymouth Rock?). What happened to all the other colonies, including the older one at Jamestown? He explains how the Tidewater culture centered on Virginia was very large and enormously influential through the early decades of the union, but ultimately was hemmed in by geography and ecology and shrank to not a whole lot more than an appendage to the Deep South. He explains how the original Georgia colony was overwhelmed by the economy of the Deep South (which was founded by immigrants from Barbados rather than from Europe) and disappeared into it. And he very briefly explains that the Florida explorations and colonies were originally tied to the Spanish empire and so largely lost to the U.S.
He makes a convincing case that the odds were heavily stacked _against_ the very dissimilar "New England", "New Netherland", "Tidewater", and "Deep South" colonies allying to fight for independence and federate under the constitution; splintering of the union was a very real threat for much of the next century.
He shows how the settling of the coastal areas of the west coast by immigrants who came by ship (many from New England) produced a culture quite different from the more interior areas of those same states that were settled by different immigrants who came overland. Genesis of "The Left Coast" cultural nation is one of the sketchiest parts of his book, and as one who lived in California for quite a while, I found it maddeningly oversimplified. Still, he's put forward a seemingly reasonable novel point of view that brings order to a lot of loose ends.
He opines that although the cultures in the U.S. had to fit reasonably well into their local ecologies, most of them were not really determined by it. (I sometimes felt he actually underplayed some obvious ecological constraints.) The one glaring exception to U.S. cultures not being determined by ecology is the "Far West", whose dryness and vastness completely stymied all the cultures that attempted to expand into it. It ultimately was settled only by following the lead of large corporatist frameworks that could organize thousands of people and support them with pinpoint application of large amounts of capital, and is still dependent on the largesse of the federal government.
He's young (not long out of grad school) and he makes his living writing books and articles, rather than as an academic historian, so he has a very fresh approach to everything. For example he explains that in the backcountry folks used "whiskey" as currency (coins were almost completely absent); the tax that prompted the "Whiskey Rebellion" was essentially a blow by the coastal elites against backcountry currency! He explicitly covers every bit of background, not assuming anything at all, so readers never feel like "something's missing". He unabashedly take firm sides on current controveries, for example stating the Civil War was clearly about slavery rather than states' rights. And he's not constrained by either the "conventional wisdom" or the need to publish only defensible interpretations. Without any qualification he refers to the "Far West" as an "internal colony". Often where an academician would remain silent in the face of ambiguous or conflicting primary sources, he'll say frankly what he reads "between the lines". For example he plainly states that the scheme of Robert Morris, Alexander Hamilton, and others after the revolution to redeem federal debt certificates at full face value really was an outrageous and corrupt scheme, with much in common with the financial meltdown of 2008. He even opines (with some supporting evidence) that the "Founding Fathers" were slanted toward carefully circumscribed democracy and economic exploitation by elites.
The emphasis here is on empirical description of the U.S., not on theory or polemics. There's almost nothing allowing comparison to other countries. So we're left with the vague notion the countries of North America are "atypical", but without any specifics or quantification or context. His speculations about possible future trends for the North American countries are restricted to a few pages in the last chapter and the Epilogue. Several things he says implicitly lead to the conclusion that the U.S. would have been better off if the South had been allowed to leave the Union quietly without a Civil War. On the other hand he explicitly states -using Canada as his example- that even without the South, encompassing several very different cultures would still be problematic, and the Union might ultimately shrink back in power and authority to little more than a federation of semi-independent states like the original confederation of 1781.
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A very enjoyable read despite some generalizations
The book reads very well and is quite entertaining, but there a good degree of generalizations and some outright errors. For instance, King Charles I of England who was executed by the Puritans was not Roman Catholic but Anglican. Nevertheless if you appreciate the distinctions in the various US regions and wonder how they became the way they are this a highly readable introduction to the subject.At first I thought the thesis implausible regarding the eleven competing "nations" but Woodard's easy to read book is based on serious scholarly research of ethnoregional histories of the US like "Albion's Seed" by David Hackett Fischer. The basic premise is that the Yankee culture of New England with its Puritan roots spread to the northern Midwest and California by Yankee cultural "missionaries". The Midlands of Pennsylvania were dominated by English Quakers and German farmers who tend to be orderly, tolerant and pacifist; they are/were a blend of different nationalities and many different Protestant denominations. NYC became an isolated unit of commerce: multi-ethnic, extremely tolerant, not so religious, very materialistic but highly influential. English aristocrats who were related to the Cavaliers who fought against the Puritans in England founded the Tidewater culture of Virginia and Maryland and were unlikely bed fellows with their Yankee neighbors for the fight for "independence" from England. Most of the Tidewater gentry preferred to remain with England and considered themselves as aristocratic as anyone in their native England. Slave Lords of Barbados founded South Carolina and the Deep South culture while the belligerent Ulster Scots (Scotch Irish) settled Greater Appalachia, considering a neighbor 5 miles away too close. The descendants of the Ulster Scots were a raucous bunch that enjoyed leisure, whisky, Indian hunting and would fight anyone, anywhere at a moment's notice. To this day they are the first to enlist if they sense US "honor" slighted and Andrew Jackson, who initiated the Trail of Tears was their first President. The freedom-loving Ulster Scots surprisingly hated the Deep South slave lords more than they despised the intrusive Yankee cultural imperialists. In fact, most Scotch Irish Appalachian men fought for the Union or remained neutral, though their lands are in the South and they are the fount of the Country Music scene in Nashville. Why fight for the ilk that had oppressed you in Scotland and Ireland? The Utopian Yankees, the pacifist Midlanders, the gun touting Scotch Irish and the Slave Lords of the Deep South were all able to penetrate and colonize the interior of the continent and maintain or even expand their political power nationwide while NYC and the Virginia aristocrats remained landlocked - both regionally and politically. So much so that US history has been a political battle between the powerful Deep South and the moral crusading Yankees that replaced Puritanism with liberal values. Very often the Midlanders with their massive German population have ended up the "king makers," determining who becomes president of the USA and it was not until the Civil Rights Movement and LBJ that Greater Appalachia finally formed the "Dixie Coalition" with the Deep South. The map on the cover jacket breaks up the 11 regional "nations" and is not unlike a reflection of how the different areas vote.
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