Posted on 08/29/2003 6:48:29 PM PDT by pinochet
Albion's Seed (America's Ethnic British Heritage)
DAVID HACKETT FISCHER
This book is the first volume in a cultural history of the United States, from the earliest English settlements to our own time. It is a history of American folkways as they have changed through time, and it argues a thesis about the importance for the United States of having been British in its cultural origins. From 1629 to 1775, North America was settled by four great waves of English-speaking immigrants. The first was an exodus of Puritans from the east of England to Massachusetts (1629-1640). The second was the movement of a Royalist elite and indentured servants from the south of England to Virginia (ca. 1649-75). The third was the "Friends' migration,"--the Quakers--from the North Midlands and Wales to the Delaware Valley (ca. 1675-1725). The fourth was a great flight from the borderlands of North Britain and northern Ireland to the American backcountry (ca. 1717-75).
These four groups differed in many ways--in religion, rank, generation and place of origin. They brought to America different folkways which became the basis of regional cultures in the United States. They spoke distinctive English dialects and built their houses in diverse ways. They had different ideas of family, marriage and gender; different practices of child-naming and child-raising; different attitudes toward sex, age and death; different rituals of worship and magic; different forms of work and play; different customs of food and dress; different traditions of education and literacy; different modes of settlement and association. They also had profoundly different ideas of comity, order, power and freedom which derived from British folk-traditions. Albion's Seed describes those differences in detail, and discusses the continuing importance of their transference to America.
In his controversial book, Alien Nation, Peter Brimelow revealed that during the American Revolutionary War, 78 percent of the (White) American population was British, and 98 percent was Protestant. He called that America's "specific ethnic core". The 22 percent who were not British were mostly Dutch, French Huguenots, Germans and Scandinavians.
This interesting book by David Fischer, reminds me of a debate I once watched between a hardline Anglo opponent of immigration, and a Hispanic open-borders activist. The moderator asked the Anglo anti-immigration activist, how he could oppose immigration, when he himself was a descendant of immigrants just like everyone else (except for American Indians).
The answer he gave stuck in my mind. He explained that his Anglo-Saxon ancestors came to this country in the 1600s, before there existed anything resembling America. He said that his Anglo ancestors built this country from scratch, and that made them pioneers, not immigrants. And it was after his Anglo pioneer ancestors had built a country, that made it possible for immigrants to have an actual country to immigrate to. In his view, to refer to his noble, adventurous, conquering Anglo-Saxon ancestors as immigrants, is an insult to them. His ancestors founded the damned country, and did not immigrate to it, he explained indignantly.
Fischer's book tells the story of immigration to America before the Revolutionary War, from 1629 to 1775. Descendants of those people are the ones who join organizations like the Sons of the American Revolution and Daughters of the American Revolution, and are listed in publications like the Social Register.
Anyway, I would have liked nothing better than to debate that Anglo anti-immigration activist, whom, I feel, sounded a little arrogant. Although the paternal side of my family is made up of recent South American immigrants, who came here in the last 80 years, the maternal side of my Spanish family can be traced back to Florida during the Second Spanish Period between 1784 and 1821, In those years, Florida was under Spanish control, before it was trasferred to American control in 1821. I would have told him, "My Spanish ancestors built Florida, before your goddamned Anglo country seized control of Florida from us in 1821!". So there.
Another cultural issue that separates Americans, is that between Americans whose forbears fought in the Civil War of 1861-65 (irrespective of ethnicity), and the Americans whose families immigrated after the Civil War. Some (not all) individuals who do not have ancestors who participated in the Civil War, tend to dismiss that part of American history as being insignificant, or as less significant than American involvement in World War Two. An ancestor on my maternal side, fought with Lee's army of Northern Virginia, before settling down in Texas after the war. Some people I have met, do not feel the strong emotions that accompany debates over the Civil War. Descendants of Confederate veterans often have to grind their teeth in anger, when they hear ill-informed comments by people ignorant of the Civil War, describing their Southern ancestors as murderers, traitors, monsters, slavers, rapists, nazis, etc.
Something to think about, eh?
Well, obviously none of them were Nazis. And most of them were not monsters, if we can take Charles Manson or Jeffrey Dahmer as examples. As for the rest of it? Guilty as charged.
The Old South was founded on slavery, rape, murder, kidnapping, torture, and ultimately high treason. Good riddance, and may it never rise again.
Three cheers for Sherman!
-ccm
There is a core of Americans who built this country. They wrote its Constitution and other founding documents after winning its independence from their former homeland. They were the English and Scotch, and the Scotch-Irish. They still make up about 40% of our population.
PS. I am a first generation American.
It is a privilege to be born here.
I believe that no one is an American until they can call the British settlers their forefathers in an allegorical sense.
Social Register? that a broad assumption
Being a direct descendent of the "first exodus"... GGGGGGGGrand Dad hit Plymouth in 1635...I'm hardly in the Social Register I'm just a (poor)working stiff...
All I say is lets not screw the place up and turn it in to the old country we came from
We came up with a pretty good new idea here... And I assume people came here because they liked the new country and the old country sucked ...
If we do screw it up I know I have no place else to go
Piece of advice .... don't EVER say that in the rural Old South where people can hear you.
It continues to resonate thru my mind as I travel the country, meet people, read more and learn things...
For example, about 2 years after reading the book, my sister-in-law who was teaching karate at the time to children, and sometimes their parents, told me about a pretty rowdy family she had at the time...They often seemed to have fights or disagreements with others in the class, and with each other, altho whenever challenged by an outsider, the family would stand up for one another...She'd never seen anything like it!
Curious, and on a hunch, I asked their name and if they were from Indiana, where my SIL was teaching at the time.
No, they'd just moved from Kentucky and their name was MacClellan...or some such name! They were Scots-Irish, descendents of their fighting clannish forebears!
A few years later I read a book about the Celts, their movements across Europe, and their first encounters with the earliest Romans...
The Celts decimated their opponents, several centuries BC, due to their well-crafted swords and by terrifying them with the most blood-curdling yells as the battle began.(Later the Romans turned the tables and drove the Celts back...)
A little thought and a lightbulb went off in my head: was this the precursor to the Rebel yell of the Civil War?
Down thru the centuries, thru Europe, into Scotland, carried to the New World by the Scots-Irish who settled the southern mountains...did this tactic survive to be used by our brothers in Gray? Seems possible to me...
Anyway, the book has fascinating details about the 4 British folkways he traces to this country....
I am teaching my son about the first Republic, Plato's Republic. Plato had such pride in his city and her citizens. My Dad served in the military and where ever we went in the world, we knew it was less. We knew it was not home.
My Dad could articulate to me what it meant to be an American and what was worth fighting for, risking his life for, sacrificing for.
My 12 year old son is entirely grossed out by many of the Hellenic traditions. I assure him that the point of knowing history is to be able to see where other cultures went wrong and to chose differently.
I am very much afraid that European style socialism is creeping into what used to be the culture of the individual in America.
In a way, I am counting on the new Americans to remember and demand that America remain true to the promises of individual liberty guaranteed by our constitution.
There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism. The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its continuing to be a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities.
Juan Rosario
CGVet58
That may be true for more recent immigrants. But the founders of the country brought with them from England the same traditions of individual freedom and personal liberty that they later based our founding documents on.
As far as I can see, English speaking countries are pretty much the only ones to ever have existed that are based on such traditions.
IMO, it's something to bear in mind when considering immigration.
I've haven't found a web site for the Social Register, but if they have one, I guess you'd have to already be in the Register just to be invited to look at it.
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