Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America (America: a Cultural History) | 
 enlarge | Author: David Hackett Fischer
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Category: Book
List Price: $34.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  84 reviews
Sales Rank: 12998
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 972
Shipping Weight (lbs): 3
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6.1 x 2
ISBN: 0195069056
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN: 9780195069051
ASIN: 0195069056
Publication Date: March 14, 1989
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Good+; 1989; Oxford University Press, USA
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Product Description
This fascinating book is the first volume in a projected 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.
While most people in the United States today have no British ancestors, they have assimilated regional cultures which were created by British colonists, even while preserving ethnic identities at the same time. In this sense, nearly all Americans are "Albion's Seed," no matter what their ethnicity may be. The concluding section of this remarkable book explores the ways that regional cultures have continued to dominate national politics from 1789 to 1988, and still help to shape attitudes toward education, government, gender, and violence, on which differences between American regions are greater than between European nations.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 79 more reviews...
 Indispensable for understanding the origins of the American Civil War October 9, 2008
As someone with a keen interest in the American Civil War and its origins, I found Fischer's Albion's Seed to be extremely valuable. Although the period it describes is mostly colonial leading up to the American war for independence from England, the four folkways documented therein clearly delineate the religious, cultural, economic and even environmental forces that lined up to bring about that most seminal event for modern America, the war of 1861-1865.
The origins of slavery and why it took hold in tidewater Chesapeake areas and not Massachusetts is described by Fischer not only in terms of religious and social values but environmental as well in terms of differing mortality rates between African slaves in the two regions, thereby making slavery more economically feasible in Virginia. The regional culture of tidewater Chesapeake created slavery, not the other way around.
The controversy of territorial expansion of the United States in mid-nineteenth century, and whether these new lands would be slave or free, set the stage for the squaring off of the combined ideas of Puritan ordered liberty and Quaker reciprocal liberty (Lincoln was descended from both Puritans and Quakers) against the combination of hierarchical liberty of the tidewater cavaliers and the individualistic liberty of the people of the southern backcountry, who, although they owned few slaves, possessed an acute sense of personal honor and loved to fight.
It is a stretch to say that the American Civil War would have still happened without slavery. However, neither is it "Lost Cause" mythology to say that the North and South represented two distinct cultures, formed primarily by two each of the folkways of Albion's Seed. Had mid-nineteenth century America been one culture, then the slavery issue could certainly have been settled without warfare.
Fantastic Book!!!! October 9, 2008
I am a museum director, and this book was recommended to me by one of our docents who is researching her family history. I checked it out from the library, but it was far too thick for me to read in 3 weeks, and it had a huge waiting list so I could not renew it. So I bought my own copy -- and it was well worth it! Admittedly, I am only on the second part of the book (which includes my own ancestry), but I have learned SO MUCH already about the early settlement of America. Part of why it is taking me so long to read it is because I am savoring every word. The histories on regional languages alone make the book worth far more than the asking price. I have recommended this book to countless people, and will continue to do so. Like I said in the title -- this is a FANTASTIC book!
 America's Cradle September 11, 2008
I have sometimes wondered what I am. I am of course me, but sometimes it seems there is no "we" that quite fits the "me". I am hardly alone in this and there are probably many Americans that feel this way.
Albion's Seed is a grand overview of where America comes from. Where our values and habits were born.
The author traces the history of four intertwining British cultures that he says are the foundation of America. These to put it roughly would be the Yankees, the Phillys, The Southern Gentry, and the Scots-Irish "Rednecks". He gives them all a more or less sympathetic protrayal showing strengths and weaknesses from each culture.
As an Oregonian I am probably more Yankee in blood then anything else. Or at least I would like to think I am a sharp New England son of the cold North Sea though my home state's cultural outlook really seems rather "Philly" by the description of the book. Which is perhaps as well as the "Philly" culture while least congenial to my imagination(though not unattractive even there)is most likely to leave me alone. But in any case I can see elements of all four in my habitual outlook. Some of the customs described I recognize as a relation to the way I was brought up. My Church, for instance, is governed in a New England sort of way with regular "town meetings" of the congregation, to choose deacons and review policy matters. I also recognize the Southern idea that citizenship is a badge of pride(this was corrupted by the way into a justification for slavery; Southerners were not being hypocritical in denying freedom to others-they thought one of the points of freedom was that it was a posession you could brag about), and the glorifying of honor(despite the distastefulness of some aspects of the old honor code). I can also appreciate the famed scots-irish orneryness a little even though I could never manage to live with it. And I very much admire the "Philly" ideal of liberty for all. It is probably an accident of geography but it is wholly fitting that America's first capital was Philadelphia.
Albion's Seed details the customs of the four strands with their complex adaptation to life. It shows how they confronted the day to day challenges and opportunities. It gives description of the reaction of each group to a series of categories of facets of life that the author believes every culture deals with.
It gives some space to the influence of non-british minorities, though that is not it's main concern. The subject of the book is British folkways after all.
Perhaps the main fault is that it is a little to deterministic. That is an easy fault and many fall into the opposite errors of assuming people are monolithic members of a group and assuming them to be atomistic individuals. A better way to describe life is that we are all who we are but our nature and nurture is part of us and we are part of it. And a way to appreciate yourself and others is to appreciate the background people come from. And when I read this book I can appreciate what it means, not only to be an American but to be an Oregonian and a son of New England's kin.
 More For Reference Than Reading August 23, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Yawn. I just finished reading David Hackett Fischer's "Albion's Seed", and boy are my arms tired. You just try holding a 1,000-page paperback up in your bed without cracking a finger or the book's spine.
Was it worth it? Well, it was Fischer, one of my favorite authors, on the subject of American history, at which he is the best. The subject is the four cultures that made up the fabric of American society before the Revolution, and Fischer lays out his case in a clear, compelling way.
1. The Puritans - Misrepresented somewhat by modern historians but stern killjoys just the same, they settled the New England region and argued over such matters as whether it was moral to rescue a man trapped in a well on the Sabbath.
2. The Cavaliers - Wannabe aristocrats who congregated along the southern coast. Think "Gone With The Wind" without so much backtalk from the slaves. "...especially strong in Virginia, where it was reinforced by the values of an English culture that tended to be profoundly conservative in every sense - elitist, hierarchical, and strenuously hostile to social change."
3. The Quakers - Moral, high-toned, and as dry as those oats which bear their name. Believed in the inner light that led them to God, and hold up best to modern eyes despite a strenuous adversity to sex that led to the lowest birthrates and best furniture in the Americas. Founded Pennsylvania.
4. Backcountry "crackers" - See "Cletus the Slack-Jawed Yokel". Hard drinkers, borderline rapists, and Andrew Jackson. Cavaliers only tormented geese for laughs. The Crackers did the same to each other: "Bloodsports have existed in many cultures, but this was one of the few that made an entertainment of blinding, maiming, and castration."
Reading "Albion's Seed" made me feel more enlightened, yes, but it was hardly invigorating in the same way as Fischer's "Washington's Crossing" or "Paul Revere's Ride." It's a different kind of book, yes. You can't expect as many active verbs reading about sociology as you would with combat. But it feels more than a touch pat and stereotyped.
More problematically, it reads awfully slow, as Fischer painstakingly revisits the same subject areas with each of the four groups in turn. Long footnotes read like narrative, while narrative sections read like footnotes. Fischer walks each culture back to its English roots, drawing upon similarities that certainly resonate but hardly seem to matter. That Puritans wore the same clothes as their East Anglican forebears doesn't seem so important considering the lack of interest Puritans took in clothes in the first place.
Most frustrating is a final section where Fischer examines the impact of these four cultural groups on every U.S. Presidential election, right up to the one the year before the book was published in 1989. Fischer makes a point of saying all but two of the first 41 presidents had roots in one of the four groups, though that's less of a surprise given the dominance of English Protestants in American society than the fact Martin Van Buren slipped through. Fischer also seems to ignore the larger evidence that his four cultures have mutated quite out of recognition. Just try finding a Puritan in Boston today.
What's solid about the book is Fischer's way with a point, his ability to move quickly between subjects with his deft erudition and writerly flair, and most especially the enthusiasm he brings to dissecting the American WASP. But after a couple hundred pages the eyes glaze over, after 500 you are re-reading pages like a punch-drunk fighter in the 15th round. Save this for the shelf, but you'll enjoy it more in smaller doses on items of immediate interest.
Outstanding Scholarship July 22, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
How lucky I feel to have come across and finished one of those rare books that not only provides critical historical information, but also indelibly transforms the way I view the world.
The massive tome is about four discrete immigrant movements from Britain to the U.S. and their critical influence on modern regional cultures here. The migrations covered in the book start around 1630 with the East Anglian Puritans, and conclude with Ulster Scots-Irish and Anglo-Scots whose journey from impoverished regions of Britain into the backwoods areas of the Appalachians ended around 1775. His scholarship on the regional British cultures that defined the nucleus of each of the migrations is extremely impressive, and it gives him loads of ways to compare the original culture with its transplanted descendant in America. Incidentally, I never knew much about the history or geography of Britain up until I read this book, but after finishing it I found myself fascinated by just how much regional variation there was and was inspired to learn more.
One conclusion well-developed throughout Fischer's opus is that ethnic culture can remain strikingly uniform even after being transplanted to an entirely new geography and passing through many generations there (Kurds in Germany or Jews in ancient Babylon come to mind). He also argues that it was the values of the elites (mercantile and industrious in New England, humble and humanistic in New Jersey and east Pennsylvania, aristocratic and labor-averse in Virginia) that led to differences in the development of the economy.
Take the example of slavery, which was fundamental to antebellum southern states but less popular in the north. Fischer contends that slave ownership in southern colonies was more extensive due to the political hegemony of country squires (aka Cavaliers) originally from the Wessex region in SW England, particularly in the colony of Virgina. These privileged colonials believed that only landholding was an acceptable source of income for their sort, while physical labor and mercantilism were seen as contemptible, suitable only for those of low station. So while fertile lands farther north were being worked in small plots by yeoman farmer types with few or no slaves, the colony of Virginia became dominated by large plantations and manor houses that mirrored Saxon aristocracy. But since the region was semi-tropical and malarial, they chose African slaves over the white servants/serfs that were so essential to the manors of their ancestors. In other words, an imported British culture created the plantation system, not Virginian geography.
The final portion of the book deals with the pervasiveness of these original cultures throughout our national history. Fischer considers them as regionally dominant even now, despite the arrival of throngs of non-British immigrants over the centuries. Just like English has maintained itself as our national language even though less than 20% of our nation is of British descent, the prejudices of British immigrants 200-300 years ago still persist in a much more ethnically varied peoplescape.
There's much to learn AND to enjoy. Despite its 900+ pages Fischer is a lucid and focused writer, and he sprinkles the dry facts and figures with compelling anecdotes. This is essentially a polemical work, and he does jam a few squarish pegs into round holes (there are NYC Jewish gun-nuts, New Jersey Italian mobsters, and Alabama Scots-Irish peaceniks out there), but the overall evidence is so compelling that I feel this should be a standard text in high school American History courses. The belief structures of the four migrations (two really, since the Virginian/backcountry worldviews loosely align, as does that of the Puritans with the Quakers) are organized by Fischer around four distinct definitions of "freedom". Regional political conflicts are made understandable once the reader grasps these four separate outlooks.
The most provocative part of the book, in my opinion, is Fischer's scholarship and speculation about the basis of Borderer culture. "Borderers" came from southern Scotland and northern England and primarily settled and dominated the hillier, more forested regions in the Appalachians. They are often called Scots-Irish, but Fischer shows that most spoke English rather than Gaelic and had no immediate Irish blood or background. These were the people who even at that time might be called "crackers" or "rednecks" (terms that came from Britain). Centuries of cross-border warfare, raiding, and exploitative absentee lords left them with little belief in the ability of governments to promote justice and peace, and a sense that one must always be ready to defend oneself with violence. These values prepared them for the dangers of settling first the Appalachian frontier and then the Wild West, but left their descendants with a predilection toward violent conflict, as well as valuing physical prowess and robust sexuality over education and economic prosperity. We don't have any Hatfield-McCoy clan feuds in this day and age, as far as I know, but many of the fundamental belief structures of the ancient Borderers still exist through large portions of country. To my mind they bedevil us, even as they define our "average Joe" better than any other culture. People like Sen. Jim Webb and author Joe Bageant exemplify both the value and pitfalls of Borderer beliefs; they exemplify mental talent and fierce will but also carry the gloomy, suspicious, violence-prone outlook of their forebears.
Not only that, but Fischer's throw-aside supposition that long-term political instability tends to promote Borderer-style worldviews does a lot to help people from more cooperative areas understand aggressive clannish peoples, such as Somalis, Albanians, Tuaregs, and the Kurds of SE Turkey.
There's a large mental gap between someone raised in a home that trusts in guns over government and someone raised in a home with a focus on kindness, cooperation, and non-violent conflict resolution. The former sees the latter as childish and naive, while the latter sees the former as needlessly aggressive and paranoid. Both may be "correct" about the other, especially within the conditions of their region, but for any human it is difficult to imagine the effect of growing up in a culture with such fundamentally different assumptions. It's much easier to simply label one another as "wrong".
So I see this book as a Rosetta Stone, an incomplete primer into how to speak another person's internal language when that person has a different understanding of the nature of "freedom" in society as compared to you. It's straight-up BRILLIANT.
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