American Nations

American Nations, A History of The Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America, by Colin Woodard, Penguin 2011

Every few months a publisher throws a “new idea” out there – Gladwell’s The Tipping Point, or The Demographic Cliff, for example.  And Colin Woodard’s fun and creative history read is one of these very special books, a different way of looking at the map and the cultures, traditions, pains and values of what he identified as the eleven regions in the US – from Yankeedom to the Tidewater and The South, all the way to El Norte. 

This book explains why so many pieces of the US puzzle don’t quite fit together, why they rub at the edges and periodically burst out with their own regional disturbances - Shay’s Rebellion, for instance, the displacement of Quakers and Native Americans, and of course the US Civil War.  Given eleven different sets of regional values, none of these tragic events should be much of a surprise.

In Yankeedom, for instance, Woodard notes the Pilgrims and the Puritans’ approach to development.  The Puritans, already prosperous immigrants who landed with big plans in mind for the New World, for instance, differed in many ways from their close neighbors the Pilgrims, who starved and were greatly diminished within their first two years.  Puritans, the group I am most familiar with, arriving on the North Shore of Cape Ann in 1635, in 12 years brought 25,000 immigrants, mostly from the densely populated, urbanized and educated area of East Anglia.  Although their stated purpose, to create a new religious society, “A City on a Hill,” the economics of land acquisition, cattle, tanning, hay, lumber, blacksmithing, farming and later textiles and the machinery to drive the mills, are what continued to drive their prosperity.  All of this growth and development no doubt reinforced the Puritans’ strict and punishing approach to conformity –

Dissenters such as Anne Hutchinson (whose sympathy for the Indigenous peoples led to her eventual banishment and death at the hands of the very same Natives whom she favored) and Roger Williams were banished; those who committed adultery, blasphemy, idolatry, etc, were physically punished. Local courts frequently fined farmers who worked on the Sabbath.  Despite the harshness of their vision, the Puritans also valued education and reading; in fact, says Woodard, “While few Englishmen could read or write in 1660, two-thirds of Massachusetts men and more than a third of women could sign their own names.”  The Puritans can be credited with fostering educational elite that grew great schools and universities.

The Tidewater region, however, which extends from Virginia south,   settlers came from a different area of Europe, and not in complete, intact families immediately transplanted into growing settlements. And, says Woodard, with the whole Atlantic seaboard before them, they chose to establish their first colony on a low-lying island surrounded by malarial swamps.  Of the 104 settlers who arrived in 1607, only 38 were alive nine months later.  And they were, like the Pilgrims later, starving, with questionable approaches to the Native Americans 

What saved the Tidewater settlers and established a plantation approach that lasted well past the Civil War was Pocahontas’ husband John Rolfe successfully transplanting West Indian tobacco to the Chesapeake.  Slavery, exports, inherited power and other characteristics of thriving Tidewater distinguished the area from its northern Yankeedom cousin. 

Each ensuing growth region took a different path, fought different wars, and to this day has ended up with different commerce, families, gods and even accents.  It’s fun to speculate on what on-going initiatives in California over taxation and human rights, for instance, will mean to American history. And does New York City promise to continue in its Dutch roots as an ethnically diverse commerce center?  Woodard’s history shows us how so many seemingly divergent political and cultural preferences really were inherited from early settlers, and despite migrations and mass media, can still be seen deeply rooted in segments of America’s vast landscape.

The Mill Girl Verdict:  a fun read, great break from business and operations tomes!