David Hackett Fischer’s Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America is a ground-breaking 946-page book I never got around to reading, and probably won’t. But I think I got the gist of it by reading a review by Scott Alexander on his Slate Star Codex blog.
Fischer’s argument is that basic patterns of American culture were set by migrations of four very different groups of migrants from the British Isles:
Puritans to New England in the 1620s.- Cavaliers to Virginia in the 1640s.
- Quakers to Pennsylvania in the 1670s.
- Borderers (aka Scots-Irish) to the Appalachians in the 1700s.
Those who came after, he said, had to adapt to social systems established by these four groups—the moralistic Puritans, the aristocratic Cavaliers, the tolerant Quakers and the warlike Borderers—even though the biological descendants of these groups ceased to be in the majority.
It’s interesting and, I think, at least partly true. Alexander’s review is long for a blog post, but much shorter than the book, and even those uninterested in his basic theme will enjoy reading his lists of fun facts about each group.
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