A Tentative Ranking of the Clannishness of the “Founding Fathers”
Edit 2/24/14 [Post updated, see below]
Edit 7/20/13: [Post updated as per HBD Chick’s comment. See below]
The European colonists (mostly British, French, and Germans, with a smattering of other groups) who first settled North America brought with them their distinct “cultural” features that laid the foundation for the persistent regional differences across the U.S. and Canada. There were several such groups, each landing in a different part of the country, as discussed in David Hackett Fischer’s Albion’s Seed and Colin Woodard’s American Nations, from which the map at right was drawn. Each of these seed colonies spread out into their surrounding areas, eventually giving us the American cultural and political “nations” we now know.
But, as HBD Chick would note, where does “culture” come from? Culture is ultimately rooted in biology, and that biology is shaped by natural selection. One of the conditions guiding natural selection on human groups, as described by HBD Chick, are mating patterns – particularly, the level of cousin marriage. As per HBD Chick’s hypothesis, higher levels of cousin marriage tend to select for more kin-centric behaviors, since that amps the coefficient of relationship between individuals in a family. By contrast, low levels of cousin marriage tend to select for more “commonweal”, or at least nationalistic (with a “nation” regarded in very large terms) sentiments. Overall, Northwestern Europeans are fairly outbred, having a history of low levels of cousin marriage. However, within NW Euros, there is significant variation, and that variation affects the traits of these groups. Some of these colonies and their present-day derivatives seem more clannish than others. Discussion at HBD Chick’s is on-going (see the previous link and here). HBD Chick made a tentative ranking of human groups by level of clannishness:
the pattern seems to be that, the longer and greater the inbreeding, the more clannish — and the opposite — the longer and greater the outbreeding, the less clannish.
if we take 1 as the least clannish and 10 as the most clannish, i would rate various groups as follows (these are today’s judgements — i reserve the right to alter these as i go forward and learn more about all of these populations!):
1 – the english (not all of them — probably not the cornish, for instance), some of the dutch
2 – the scandinavians
3 or 4 – the irish
6-7 – the italians, the greeks, the chinese
7-8 – the albanians
10 – the yanomamo
11 – the arabs
In that vein, here’s a tentative list of the clannishness of the colonial American groups, based on the information in the aforementioned books, ordered from the least clannish to most clannish [Edit, 2/24/14: I’ve revised the list and table again. Edit 7/20/13 I’ve revised the list and the table slightly]:
- New Netherland Dutch
- French Canadians/Americans
- Puritans
- Quakers
- Cavaliers
- Borderlanders (Scotch-Irish)
And this is a summarized list of the traits of these various founding groups. Note that this is relative to each other, not relative to the world as a whole, as seen in HBD Chick’s list. Even the most clannish here rank only a “4” at most on HBD Chick’s scale.
| Characteristics of the Colonial Americans | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Characteristics | ||||||
| Authoritarian/ Egalitarian |
Nationalist/ Universalist |
Kin vs Commonweal | Individualistic vs. Communal |
Outgroup Regard | ||
| Group | New Netherland Dutch | Egalitarian (capitalistic) |
Universalist | Unclear (corporate) |
Individualistic | High |
| French Canadians | Egalitarian | Intermediate | Commonweal (now leaning towards kin) | Intermediate | High | |
| Puritans | Egalitarian | Nationalistic | Commonweal | Communal | Moderate | |
| Quakers | Egalitarian | Universalist | Commonweal | Intermediate (leaning more towards individualistic) | High | |
| Cavaliers | Authoritarian (hierarchical) | Nationalistic | Intermediate (Feudal) | Intermediate | Low | |
| Borderlanders (Scotch-Irish) |
Anarchistic (clannish) | Nationalistic (Clan-based) | Kin | Communal (clans) | Low | |
This is only preliminary. Through continuing investigation and discussion, this list will be revised and expanded upon. Stay tuned!
EDIT, 3/20/15 [I’m adding some key passages from Albion’s Seed that support this ranking:
On the Puritans:
Like most of their contemporaries, the Puritans thought of the family as a concentric set of nuclear and extended rings. But within that conventional idea, they gave special importance to the innermost nuclear ring. Strong quantitative evidence of this attitude appeared in their uniquely nuclear naming customs. As we shall see below, the Puritans of Massachusetts gave high priority to the descent of names from parents to children within the nuclear family. This naming strategy was unique to the Puritans, and very different from other cultures in British America.
Similar tendencies also appeared in customs of inheritance, which were more nuclear in New England than in other American colonies during the seventeenth century. One study of 168 wills in Newbury, Massachusetts, for example, found that only 6.5 percent left bequests to a niece or nephew, and 3.0 percent to other kin. None whatever bequeathed property to a cousin—a pattern different from the Chesapeake colonies.
…
In short, the New England household more closely coincided with the nuclear unit, and the nuclear family was larger and stronger than elsewhere in the Western world.The strength of the nuclear unit was merely one of many special features of New England families. Another was a strong sense of collective responsibility for maintaining its individual integrity. The people of the Bay Colony worked through many institutions to preserve what they called “family order” and “family government” within each nuclear unit. Other cultures also shared these concerns, but once again Puritan New England did things in its own way, with a special intensity of purpose. The selectmen and constables of each town were required by law to inspect families on a regular basis. Where “good order” broke down within a household, their task was to restore it.
(e-book pp. 62-63)
On the Cavaliers:
Among Virginians and New Englanders, ideas of the family were similar in strength, but different in substance. Virginians gave more importance to the extended family and less to the nuclear family than did New Englanders. Clear differences of that sort appeared in quantitative evidence of naming practices and inheritance patterns. The language of familial relationships differed too. The word “family” tended to be a more comprehensive term in Virginia than in Massachusetts. Virginians addressed relatives of all sort as “coz” or “cousin,” in expressions that were heavy with affective meaning; but the term “brother” was used more loosely as a salutation for friends, neighbors, political allies, and even business acquaintances. It is interesting to observe that an extended kin-term tended to be more intimate than the language of a nuclear relationship. The reverse tended to be the case in Massachusetts.
Individuals in Virginia were stereotyped by traits that were thought to be hereditary in their extended families. Anglican clergyman Jonathan Boucher believed that “family character both of body and mind may be traced thro’ many generations; as for instance every Fitzhugh has bad eyes; every Thornton hears badly; Winslows and Lees talk well; Carters are proud and imperious; and Taliaferros mean and avaricious; and Fowkeses cruel.” Virginians often pronounced these judgments upon one another. The result was a set of family reputations which acquired the social status of self-fulfilling prophecies.
For most Virginians the unit of residence tended to be a more or less nuclear household, but the unit of association was the extended family, which often flocked together in the same rural neighborhoods. Jonathan Boucher noted that “certain districts are there known and spoken of … by there being inhabited by the Fitzhughs, the Randolphs, Washingtons, Carys, Grimeses or Thorntons.” These kin-neighborhoods developed gradually during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century by continuing subdivision of estates
(e-book pp 210-211)
On the Quakers:
Quakers considered all Friends as their “near relations” and welcomed them to hearth and home. In this respect, Quaker ideas of the family were not more nuclear than those of other English colonists, but actually less so.
In every Anglo-American culture, the nuclear family was the normal unit of residence, and the extended family was the conventional unit of thought. The Quakers were no exception to this rule. They commonly lived in nuclear households, but thought of grandparents, cousins, uncles, aunts, nephews and nieces as members of their family. Relatives by marriage were not “in-laws,” but were called simply “father,” “brother” or “sister.” In these respects, the family ways of the Quakers were similar to most other English-speaking people in their own time. But the Quakers submerged the nuclear and the extended family in a larger sphere which was their “family of God.”
Quaker family customs were also distinctive in other ways. Tests such as the descent of names show that the intensity of nuclear consciousness in Quaker families was stronger than in Anglican Virginia, but weaker than in Puritan New England. The physical composition of households in the Delaware Valley also showed a similar pattern, which was intermediate between the northern and southern colonies. An average Quaker household had smaller numbers of children than in New England, and larger numbers of servants. But by comparison with Virginia, it had more children and fewer servants.
Quaker ideas of the family were less hierarchical than those of New England Puritans or Virginia Anglicans. Even as many Friends continued to insist that children should obey their parents, and that the young should honor their elders, they tended to think of the family and the household as a union of individuals who were equal in the sight of God.
(e pp. 366-367)
These were found in various comments here and elsewhere. I have listed here for ease of reference. ***End Edit***]
EDIT, 8/16/13: See also clannishness defined | hbd* chick
EDIT, 2/24/14: I’ve revised the table, moving the Quakers further along the clannishness scale. See this post: quaker individualism | hbd* chick, and my comment there.
Be sure to also see these key posts:
Flags of the American Nations
The Cavaliers
Maps of the American Nations
Rural White Liberals – a Key to Understanding the Political Divide
How Inbred are Europeans?
Edit: As a tribute to Americana, this song seems fitting (not an ad; whatever video you see after this one is the ad! 😉 )
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i like the rankings! …wondering about the Germans, especially in Pennsylvania.
& right on, culture is the onion skin on top of biology
(making biology into an onion:)
Decent analogy. Well, there were several waves of Germans. Broadly, they are in-between the Quakers and Puritans in terms of their traits. The German Pietists that came with the Quakers were the most like them, and are the largest constituent of the “Midlands” spawned by the Quakers.
thank you – a small donation is headed your way – a penny for your thoughts:) if you get a chance, please share with hbdchick – i can never figure out how to “tip” her – you both do such excellent work AND you both have that rare gift of making it accessible.
Thanks a lot! Really appreciate it.
i like it! (^_^) i especially like your table. we need more tables!
i am still completely lost when it comes to the quakers. i don’t get them — i don’t know anything about their mating patterns or family types histories (well, i guess i know that they had nuclear families) — i’m not even clear on just their history. so, i’ll skip them for now (again).
i think you could swap the positioning of the french and the dutch — or maybe they should be at the same level of clannishness just on different (evolutionary) branches? i think that the rather extreme capitalistic tendencies of the dutch exemplifies strong non-clannishness (strong universalism). it’s an “every man for himself” sort-of scenario, if you see what i mean. they are really egalitarian in the Liberal sense of the word, not in the redistributive sense of the word. i think that the dutch also had a strong “outgroup regard” at the time. i know the issue of slavery comes up here, but i think one has to look at, not whether or not slavery was present/allowed in a group, but whether or not the sorts of individuals who might’ve been slaves could alternatively be freemen. slavery, then, almost (almost) becomes a matter of one’s personal history rather than one’s ethnic/racial background in new amsterdam — at least as far as the dutch were concerned, anyway. i might be wrong about that.
i think that you could also swap the positioning of the cavaliers and the puritans — although again i need to find out more about the mating pattern history of the cavaliers. the cavaliers may have been hierarchical, but this is the group that gave us most of our thoughtful founding fathers — thomas jefferson, et al. — and i think that the hierarchy is, in fact, just a stage along the path to universalism. i haven’t posted about this yet, but there was a french historian, georges duby, who (like mitterauer) studied and wrote all about family history in medieval europe, and his big interest was how the family types went from horizontal (kindreds, clans) to hierarchial (lineages). really interesting stuff! and, according to duby, these lineages really started in — yes, you guessed it — ne france and the low countries. and the normans, then, brought it along with them to england (although, of course, the kindreds were already almost gone from south & central england by that time). so, i think the cavaliers’ focus on hierarchy really indicates that they were quite far down the road to universalism, actually. again, i could be wrong!
and, like i said in my post about the clannish puritans, i think they were actually pretty clannish. although not at all as clannish as the border peoples/scots-irish — and, like you said, not at all as clannish as most other populations almost everywhere else!
again, i reserve the right to be completely and utterly wrong about all of this! (^_^)
@HBD Chick:
😦 To science another day then. 🙂
I actually originally had the Dutch at #2. The slavery thing is what got me; New York City was the business capital of the Deep South and at the heart of the slave trade. But the New French seemed to be somewhat unique in their persistent attempt to stay on friendly terms with the Natives, but indeed, that trait is actually unique to the top 3 groups on my list. But you’re right, the New Netherland Dutch didn’t care who you were or where you came from, they’d do business with you (or using you, in the case of the slaves). Since New Amsterdam and later NYC was never mono-ethnic, the type of “redistributive, commonweal” liberalism couldn’t really take hold there. I think I will reverse the Dutch and the French, but perhaps in reality, they are tied for #2.
Interestingly, the New French seem to have reversed a bit towards clannishness today, illustrating that subsequent evolution in America is likely quite important.
Yeah that is an interesting situation between those two groups. I think here is where your branching bush illustration comes to bear. The Puritans and the Cavaliers appeared to go down different paths, despite perhaps being at roughly the same “level” of clannishness. These two groups are the historical arch-rivals in America, something that goes back to ye old England. Each possesses some of the traits of historic inbreeders and some of outbreeders. The Puritans seemed to have picked up ideas of equality and liberty (for themselves) as well as the importance of the commonweal and representative government, but didn’t get the true universalism of other outbred groups. In many ways, the Puritans of the day seem like the Japanese of today – not so much clannish as they were highly nationalistic. As we see with Yankees and their Scandinavian cousins, that trait is flexible, or at least has been co-opted. Yankees will tolerate the presence of outsiders, but fully expect outsiders to conform to their norms (as often is bemoaned about SWPL neighborhoods). Woodard mentions that the Yankees even had a ceremonial “melting pot” where they’d “Americanize” immigrants.
The Cavaliers on the other hand appear to have been quite atomized. Settlers to the South came as independent men, either as businessmen or indentured servants. So perhaps they can be accurately described as being individualistic. But they had absolutely no tolerance for outsiders, at least no further than they were useful to them. They were also the most militaristically aggressive expansionists. It is possible that their position on an English frontier did the trick. They didn’t (and still much don’t) have too high a regard for the commonweal, but at the same time I don’t get the impression that they were then – or now – bound to extended family. I suspect that they two are an in-between group, a group on its way to absorbing classic outbreeder traits, but they didn’t pick up much of any sentiment of universalism. They did (and still do) feel that they were naturally racially superior to all other people. It’s almost as if they were partially on their way to be true “outbreeders”, they have the atomization, a partial breakdown of extended family ties, but not the feeling of the “brotherhood of all men”, even within themselves.
It is perhaps these that set the Cavaliers and the Purtians on the repeated collision course of conflict.
About the Quakers, one thing I learned recently is that the earliest Quakers were really wild. They would appear in public with very little clothing, interrupt Anglican and other church services with harangues, and the like. Apparently George Fox, who I thought was one of the founders, came along later and toned them down to make them respectable.
@HBD Chick:
It’s also worth noting that, according to David Hackett Fischer, the Cavaliers seemed bound to kin in a way that the Puritans did not – though certainly not to the extent that the Borderlanders were:
(e-book pp 210-211)
By contrast, this is what he says about the Puritans:
(e-book pp. 62-63)
For those reasons, I’d say the Cavaliers were more clannish than the Puritans, if only somewhat so.
I keep getting astounded by the similarities between the Puritans and the Japanese. What seems to have happened is that what was normally within-clan based feelings and responsibilities because extended to the broader society. It does seem like a parallel path for an outbreeding society to take rather than complete atomization.
Now to be fair, as Colin Woodard elaborates, the Deep South proper is a little removed from the Tidewater area in many respects, even though they were both settled by a common stock. The Deep South, as described by Woodard, seemed to be a “down & dirtier” version of the Tidewater, which probably makes sense since the former’s settlers came with the express purpose of making money. Hence, I often consider the two together.
@JayMan – I came across a book about Native Americans in New England (The Indian Great Awakening by Linford Fisher). I haven’t read it, but the blurb sounded interesting.
It might offer some hints about the way New Englanders viewed perceived insiders vs perceived outsiders. From what I gathered, Native Americans attempted to negotiate their status within New England society and were somewhat successful. As long as they were good Christian citizens, New Englanders apparently were willing to accept Native Americans.
This is different than how the Puritans are portrayed in their militaristic brutishness toward the natives. Considering examples like Roger Williams, I wonder how clannish they were. They would be brutish to outsiders, but at the same time they seemed open to accepting almost anyone as an insider just as long as they would conform and assimilate.
This made me think of the other founding groups. The French Canadians and the Quakers tried to get along with the natives. I was wondering about the Southern colonies and settlements. I know Native Americans were able to find a place in North Carolina, but they maybe did that by remaining in the rural mountain areas. It is hard for me to imagine the Cavaliers accepting the natives as part of their society. I’m thinking the Cavaliers were quite a bit more clannish than the Puritans.
It’s a Yankee trait that persists to this day. As long as you are willing to conform to the norms of the society (and a plus if you were brought in by a local, as I was), you will be accepted by the society. The Yankees conquer, in essence, by absorbing individuals that can adapt to their norms. The western reaches of “Yankeedom” (out towards the western Great Lakes area and beyond) are full of Scandinavians, who, as cousins to the Puritans, easily blended into the latter’s world.
Here in northern New England, they have a term for outsiders: the people from away (PFAs). An outsider can move in, but they will always be a PFA.
See here.
I made a little sign that properly conveys the sentiment here.
You’re quite correct. The Cavaliers made no attempt to befriend the Natives, and promptly attempted to enslave or exterminate them. And the Borderlander wars with the Natives played a big role in allowing the other groups to expand into the areas the Borderlanders cleared.
Indeed, both groups, upon defeating Mexico and conquering “El Norte”, repayed the favor of the Norteno assistance in the war by seizing their land and crowding them out of Texas and the Southwest so they could colonize it for themselves (much as, in a reversal of fortune, the Mexicans are doing to the White settlers today).
@JayMan -“Here in northern New England, they have a term for outsiders: the people from away (PFAs). An outside can move in, but they will always be a PFA.”
My experience of New England culture is indirect. My dad’s paternal line is the only truly Northern part of my family. It is a mix of people born in Pennsylvania, New York and New Jersey. My paternal grandfather was born in New Jresey, but he grew up as the son of the head gardener on a Long Island Sound estate. His father, also born in New Jersey, was raised by Shakers where he was trained in gardening. The earliest known Steele was born (1829) in Pennsylvania which is the only person in my family to be born that far North.
Even though that part of my family isn’t ethnically of New England, my paternal grandfather seems to have internalized that culture. His having grown up on a wealthy estate permanently internalized a class consciousness in his mind. And I’m sure that class consciousness included the fact that he came from a poor New Jersey family (PFA). But he aspired for the rest of his life to live the life of luxury whenever possible such as staying at resorts and expensive hotels. My father also seems to have internalized that culture through his own father and through yearly summer visits to his grandfather on the estate. Not many small town Indiana boys spent their summers at Long Island Sound estates.
Oddly, I have never even visited New England. It primarily exists in my mind as my dad describes his own experiences of the place.
The only other indirect experiences I have of New England come from the Midwest. In Iowa, there are some small college towns surrounded by rural farmland that were established according to the New England style, although I have no idea if it was specifically New Englanders who founded any of them. I’ve also spent some time in Wisconsin and Minnesota, the latter being where my brother has lived for quite a few years now. The Upper Midwest is extremely different from the Lower Midwest and even more different from Appalachian-influenced Hoosier Indiana.
The Upper Midwest, however, doesn’t have as much of that PFA attitude you mentioned. Or at least I haven’t noticed it. It isn’t Indiana, but it still has that general Midwestern flavor that mutes such things as class consciousness.
I was rethinking my previous comments about assimilation. The ideal of assimilation is more of a New England ideal that doesn’t fully translate to any part of the Midwest, even the Upper Midwest. The Melting Pot vision has had its influence on the Midwest, but it has never been able to stamp out that long-lived tradition of Quaker pluralism. The ethnic enclaves and islands go on existing, although they do become less distinct over time.
It was because of the pluralism of the Quakers (and the Dutch) that the Irish, Italians and Germans were able to create and maintain their larger ethnic identities, moreso in some ways than was even possible in the Old World. The World Wars allowed the Yankee oppressiveness to force these ethnic groups to assimilate more into a plain ‘white’ identity, but it never was fully successful. The German hold of particular cities like Milwaukee was loosened. The World Wars did do some damage to the Midlands culture, most especially German culture.
It is strange that, nonetheless, Midlands culture has still been able to maintain such dominance. Its usefulness as a mediating culture was too centrally important for the project of Americanizing all the regions and ethnicities. I continually find myself amazed that the dialect of English spoken in a small section of the Midwest centered in Iowa has become the most dominant standard for English in the entire world and the official standard for English in the US. Midlands culture won the war of cultures by not trying to win. While the other regions fought more overt battles for the heart and soul of America, Midlands culture somehow gained control of a major chunk of the narrative about what it means to be American. Maybe it is because Midlands pluralism was backed up by the influence of its own great multicultural city of Chicago which stood at the center of America’s infrastructure and backed up by the multicultural powerhouse of New York City which was the first experience of so many immigrants.
New England assimilation has had an outsized influence, but New England has never fully captured the American imagination, particularly not this past century. It is too much on the periphery up in the Northeast corner of the country. That semi-isolation probably has helped New Englanders maintain their PFA attitude. This PFA attitude, however, obviously could never be applied to the whole country. New England culture operates best on the small-scale it seems.
“You’re quite correct. The Cavaliers made no attempt to befriend the Natives, and promptly attempted to enslave or exterminate them. And the Borderlander wars with the Natives played a big role in allowing the other groups to expand into the areas the Borderlanders cleared.
“Indeed, both groups, upon defeating Mexico and conquering “El Norte”, repayed the favor of the Norteno assistance in the war by seizing their land and crowding them out of Texas and the Southwest so they could colonize it for themselves (much as, in a reversal of fortune, the Mexicans are doing to the White settlers today).”
Despite having so much Southern ancestry, I struggle coming to terms with this Style of politics. It makes the New England style of oppressive assimilation seem like a utopia. If the Puritans had been running the South and had taken over the Southwest, they probably would have found a way by now to assimilate those devoutly religious blacks and Hispanics. Or at least New Englanders seem talented at making peace with their former enemies. They are the masters of creating social order.
I fear we are going to be suffering the consequences of Southern politics for a long time to come. Those Hispanics and blacks in the South are becoming a minority majority and they aren’t going to remember kindly how they were treated in the past. It is unfair that these conflicts get carried across the generations, but fair or not Southern whites and the rest of us along with them will be paying for the sins of their fathers and forefathers. A shit storm is about to hit the South. I keep imagining hordes of white Southerners fleeing to the North.
@Benjamin:
Check out Colin Woodard’s map.
The Midwest is a continuous – and blurry – gradient from the Scotch-Irish sections in the south, the Midland areas in the center, and the Yankee sections in the north. There is considerable overlap between all three of these groups. Throughout, and especially in the northern and western parts, there is a considerable German and Scandinavian component.
Indeed. To the Yankees, it was assimilation: if you wanted to live among them, you needed to become like them. To the Quaker/German Midlanders, it was multiculturalism; the mosaic, more so than the melting pot, because they didn’t expect newcomers to abandon their culture, but live in their own little enclaves in their own way. This sentiment is quite visible in the northern corner of the Midlands, in Midlander-dominated Canada (particularly Ontario).
Certain Midland values have become synonymous with “American” – as American as apple pie. I wouldn’t say they were the complete cultural victors though – they “won” by acting as a filter for what worked and what didn’t, I’d say. This is why the Betsy Ross flag was chosen for the Quakers in the post. Both the U.S. and Canadian Midlands symbolize the essential essence of the “original” American values.
That said, all the colonial groups have contributed to American culture, and all have been locked in conflict for dominance, particularly Yankeedom and the Deep South.
Indeed. But SWPLs find ways. Wherever Yankees go, they Puritanize the area (e.g., Whole Foods, co-ops, etc…). They are on a quest to make the area amenable to people like themselves, with the implicit belief that everyone is just like them.
Indeed… 😦
I think they would have given up (as they did with Appalachia and the Deep South during Reconstruction). The West Coast (the Left Coast) is such a place, a Yankee settlement that also received other immigrants from the other American regions, whom the Yankees tried to “civilize”, with varying degrees of success.
@JayMan – “The Midwest is a continuous – and blurry – gradient from the Scotch-Irish sections in the south, the Midland areas in the center, and the Yankee sections in the north. There is considerable overlap between all three of these groups.”
I think that is what makes the Midlands Midwest special. It doesn’t melt ethnic cultures into a single monolithic culture nor does it try to keep them absolutely distinct and pure. It mixes it up with a chunk of this there and a chunk of that there, like a stew, but the flavors do blend which forms a semi-coherent whole that is regionally distinct. There is an unintentional melting over time, but it happens slowly and organically, not forced. It is an assimilation of the willing.
The Midlands could be considered just a blurry region between Yankees and Southerners. Blurry pluralism is what the Quakers left us in their great wisdom. Well, I like it. A comfortable middle-of-the-road blurriness seems like a good position to take in this crazy world we live in. It’s like the scramble suit in PKD’s A Scanner Darkly. Here is from the movie, if you haven’t already watched it:
“Let’s hear it for the vague blur!”
“Indeed. To the Yankees, it was assimilation: if you wanted to live among them, you needed to become like them. To the Quaker/German Midlanders, it was multiculturalism; the mosaic, more so than the melting pot, because they didn’t expect newcomers to abandon their culture, but live in their own little enclaves in their own way. This sentiment is quite visible in the northern corner of the Midlands, in Midlander-dominated Canada (particularly Ontario).”
The comparable metaphors that work the best are the Yankee Melting Pot and the Midlands Stew Pot. In a stew pot, you want chunks of different flavors and textures that stand out, but you also want the flavors and textures to blend to create a wholesome meal.
The Northernmost corner of the Midlands was the only place the Midlands tradition could survive the onslaught of the World War and Cold War oppressive assimilation. For much of the twentieth century, to be different in any kind of way was considered unAmerican, possibly communist if not outright dangerous to everything that is good and pure.
The destruction of German culture was brutal at times in America. It was about like how the Japanese were treated after the Pearl Harbor attack. Germans were personally oppressed, sometimes beaten or jailed or killed. Everything German became stigmatized. Almost everything with a German name (streets, foods, etc) were changed to less threatening names. The German newspapers were almost entirely put out of business and German stopped being a commonly spoken language, especially not as the language used to teach in German-dominated public schools.
Germans once were one of the most dominant cultures in all of American history. They ethnically controlled entire cities and regions. As a pluralist Midlander and as someone of partial German ancestry, I find this immensely saddening. We Americans destroy what we fear and we are very effective in our destruction. You get in the way of the American Way and you will be obliterated. You will thank your lucky stars if the only thing that happens to you is that you are assimilated.
“Certain Midland values have become synonymous with “American” – as American as apple pie. I wouldn’t say they were the complete cultural victors though – they “won” by acting as a filter for what worked and what didn’t, I’d say.”
That is a good way of putting it.
“This is why the Betsy Ross flag was chosen for the Quakers in the post. Both the U.S. and Canadian Midlands symbolize the essential essence of the “original” American values.”
I say that is true in the sense that Midlands developed as a region precisely as America developed as a country. Midlands is the soul of America in that it never had a strong history of British cultural dominance. The Quakers embraced that which existed outside of being British and so embraced the initial impulse of what it meant to be American as a new people in a new land..
“That said, all the colonial groups have contributed to American culture, and all have been locked in conflict for dominance, particularly Yankeedom and the Deep South.”
I think the key importance of the Midlands is that it was between the Yankee North and the South. It was originally a part of the Middle Colonies. Quakers had no more loyalty to or alliance with the Puritans than they had with the Cavalier and Barbados aristocracy. The real struggle in America may be less between Yankeedom and the Deep South. That was the outward battle for power, but the battle for the soul of America happened between the Midlands and Greater Appalachia, the two border regions with a very blurry border between them.
It was through the Midlands and Greater Appalachia that America first spread westward. Quakers/Germans and Scots-Irish fought for dominance as they pushed further into the frontier. It was this push westward that helped initiate the American Revolution, the War of 1812, the annexation of North Mexico, and the Civil War. The furthest this fight went was into California which, during the Civil War, became a cultural battleground of the new nation spanning a continent.
“I think they would have given up (as they did with Appalachia and the Deep South during Reconstruction). The West Coast (the Left Coast) is such a place, a Yankee settlement that also received other immigrants from the other American regions, whom the Yankees tried to “civilize”, with varying degrees of success.”
The eternal problem of the Puritans was they were always outnumbered. Still, you have to give them credit for what they accomplished with so few people. They knew their abilities and limits. California is a good example of that. If that had tried to spread their small numbers across the entire West Coast, they would have failed miserably. Instead, they concentrated themselves in a few key cities and focused their influence by creating institutions of their authority and culture.
In my comment, I was having a thought experiment. I was imagining a what-if scenario where the Puritans had enough members or allies of their New England club. If you could have sent a few million Puritans and like-minded ethnicities down into the Deep South and Southwest right when they were first being settled by Americans, that would have been quite interesting.
Alas, America was too large and the Puritans were too few.
I was going to ask you what “universalism” meant in the context of this chart however it dawned on me that it meant the one world order of Christianity. That all men are equal in Christ, but if you don’t convert to Christianity than you and whatever non-Christian religion you do choose to practice is “heathen”.
Christians see their religion as a “universal truth” meant for everyone – whether we want it or not.
A big ‘NO’ to the French-Canadians and the Quakers being strong– not true at all, they are both very, very weak– while it is the Puritans who have shown extraordinary strength and staying power– as in, America being essentially shaped in their image– and would never have even happened without them.foun
I think you’re misreading the chart…
Interesting. But I wonder if “kin-based” should be intermediate on the individualistic/communal dichotomy. At least those clan feuds don’t seem very individualistic.
@Staffan:
Good point. I’ve fixed the table.
It is a little ironic that the English are at the top of the chart considering that English consanguinity has been the topic for so many major Hollywood movies.
I speak of “The King’s Speech” a movie about a stutterer. Stuttering is of course a genetic malady associated with cousin marriage. George VI was the product of a line of descent from Victoria and Albert – first cousins. There are also a couple Jack the Ripper movies about Prince Edward too. The Windsor blood was running thin.
Some of these consanguinity films were pretty good but not as good as Verdi’s “Don Carlos” the story of Charles the Infante to the Hapsburg throne. He was a psychotic murderous and twisted dwarf. But it’s still a great opera.
Albertosaurus
See HBD Chick on that.
The ruling class in Tidewater Virginia was sometimes referred to as “the cousinage.” As with the English aristocracy, a lot of this (I think, maybe I am wrong about this) was motivated by ideas of”class” and “good breeding.” Why, shoot, right here in my hometown of Chattanooga, the handful of the very richest families, most of whom live on one street on Lookout Mtn., are famous for intermarrying with each other, which, after a couple of generations, inevitably results in a lot of cousin marriages. This is now ending though as rich kids spread out across the country.
I was thinking about my own family line that descends from Virginia aristocracy. That group of immigrants are typically referred to as Cavaliers who are partly of Norman ancestry that was mostly from Southwestern England. However, my family were lowland Scots from Peebles which is in the border area.
I’m not sure exactly what relationship my family had to the Cavaliers, but I assume it had to do with the Scottish and English kingdoms becoming joined. I know that Peebles became an important town royalty visited.
I was wondering how many of the Virginia aristocracy were Scottish like my family or of some other ethnicity. I suspect that my lowland Scottish family would have been a lot more clannish than the typical Cavalier, but I’m not sure. I wonder if Scottish immigrants were accepted by the Cavaliers or if their clannishness separated them. Is clannishness or class the stronger factor in a regional aristocracy?
Probably more than a few.
Good question.
“The European colonists (mostly British, French, and Germans, with a smattering of other groups) who first settled North America brought with them their distinct “cultural” features that laid the foundation for the persistent regional differences across the U.S. and Canada.”
One “cultural feature” which they seemed to share is a disdain for large intact family units. The result is the state of the “family” (or lack thereof) that you see in the States today.
This ties into my comments under the fertility thread about biology informing culture and how the Northern and Western European gene stock may be evolutionarily wired AGAINST the concept of family.
Just a hypothesis based on my travels and experiences with them around the world.
@Hindu Observer:
If by large family units, you mean sprawling bands of extended family (i.e., clans), then you’re right. For Northwestern Europeans in general, that was largely the point. Centuries of outbreeding broke down the ties between far-flung kin in favor of immediate relatives, with the exceptions here noted. The nuclear family became the primary unit. The nuclear family was held in very high regard by the American settlers. See my comments above.
“For Northwestern Europeans in general, that was largely the point. Centuries of outbreeding broke down the ties between far-flung kin in favor of immediate relatives, with the exceptions here noted. The nuclear family became the primary unit. The nuclear family was held in very high regard by the American settlers. ”
Mmmm, I’m thinking deeper than that. If biology informs culture than my grandmother’s statement, “these people have no family in their DNA” is correct.
I thought it was just another xenophobic and culturally snobbish comment of hers, but my own personal experiences have spoken to that, and science may soon prove her right.
The nuclear family is just one step away from no family. The West has already surpassed the nuclear family model is favor of the no family model.
Kudos!
I’ve always been aware of huge differences between myself- an Appalachian- and non mountain whites.
This post has I illuminated just why my academic colleagues are so hostile to my wilder side. They’re literally Puritans.
Several observations.
1. The Puritans were no less tolerant than the Borderers. Its just they pushed down the memory hole the outcome of King Philip’s War. In both the Red Stick War and King Philips, White settlers in conflict with natives armed by hostile European powers (the French for the King Philips War, the Spanish and British for the Red Stick War) ended up with annihilation and expulsion. Indeed by terms of outmarriage and adoption, the Borderers were more open (Andrew Jackson had an adopted Indian son) than the New Englanders. Famous Border-derived people like James Garner credibly claim Cherokee ancestry whereas that’s not the case for New Englanders.
2. New England was according Fischer, the most populous and healthy place to live, in the colonies, until the disastrous King Philips War which accounted for 20% of the population being killed and over 300 towns and villages burnt down. New England never recovered from that event. The Puritans were lucky in occupying land vacated due to plague; later westward expansion inevitably brought war.
3. War with the native Americans was not due to “evilness” or lack of accomodation, but a fundamental conflict over agrarian-proto industrialism and hunter gatherer way of life. The Red Stick Wars were aimed as much at the Indians who adopted White ways of farming and agriculture, and like modern day “insurgents” it was impossible to tell a Red Stick from native allies — hence Jackson deporting the Cherokee from the South.
4. The Midlanders had conflicts as well, Fischer recounts native attacks as late as the 1780s in PA, and the author of the book detailing the “Great American Warpath” (too lazy to look it up) notes that continued Indian attacks in Upstate New York were a fact of life well after the French were removed from Canada for all intents and purposes.
5. The French were too few in number to be judged wrt their interaction with native Americans. Most were men, most were intent on fur trading, that’s a different meal than a full course of agricultural settlement, farming, and industry. Considering that most French immigrants were provincial types — the current deep cultural conservatism and clannishness matches quite well the attitudes found in the French Countryside which are radically different from Paris or Lyon.
6. The Deep South was as much sharecropper and individual agrarian as plantation; particularly in the piney woods areas where soil was not suitable for intense plantation cotton/tobacco agriculture.
7. People often moved between these cultures — a former Confederate Soldier and Riverboat pirate styled himself a Connecticut Yankee (in King Arthur’s Court) and indeed lived there extolling Yankee industry and accomplishments. You can read Twain’s Life on the Mississippi and find pages of prose devoted to how darn excellent life on the River was with electric lights and improved steam boilers and such. Considering Twain’s brother close in age was killed in a boiler explosion, this is understandable (as was his lifelong resentment of superstition that tormented him as a boy and in effect, “cheated” him).
8. There were almost no Hispanics in California, Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah, Wyoming, Colorado, Kansas, etc. at the time of the Mexican War. You can read (available on Project Gutenberg — the great thing about E-readers — Sherman’s account of how he arrived there at the conclusion and found California pretty much empty). Sherman describes with affection the very few Californios he met, aristocratic, White, educated and impressive to a West Point graduate. He recounts he was offered land at the then Yerba Buena (later San Francisco) but declined, feeling it an awful place for a town and thinking California would remain unpopulated. Hispanic migration only came in serious numbers during the Mexican Revolution, and then mostly upper classes. The current mass migration has no real analog in modern industrial history, you’d have to reach back to the Visigoth incursions to find anything that big.
9. Almost no White cultural group or personages in the 17th, 18th, or 19th Centuries thought it possible to assimilate Blacks, as opposed to Whites, due to vast differences in ways of life, that were irreconciliable. Lincoln wanted to deport the ex-slaves to Liberia or Belize, he thought they could not live among Whites for this reason. Even Twain, more sympathetic than most, and who actually knew real life Negros of the time, painted a picture of people for whom liberation from superstition and cant was impossible. You can read on Google Books, the tome “Where Black Rules White: A Journey Through Hayti” written in 1901 by an Englishman of Midland extraction, one Heskith Pritchard. Pritchard is impressed with rural Haitian generousity, he movingly accounts how people who had nothing but a clean bedsheet would give that to him and sleep on the dirt. [He did not like or think much of Haitian urban dwellers.] But Pritchard concluded that the only fate for Haitians was poverty and oppression, due to their manifest differences particularly in child sacrifice of which that was endemic in Haiti, and also West Africa, of the time. The FT has reported this is still a major problem in Uganda and West Africa — commercial buildings are “good-lucked” by sacrificing and burying a child there on.
@whiskeysplace:
The Puritans were indeed deeply suspicious of outsiders – xenophobic in fact. They were indeed quite aggressive to outsiders.
True, but such outmarriage was generally rare even for the Borderlanders.
Sure they did. The average Puritan settler managed to raise 7 children to adulthood. It didn’t take long for their population to explode.
War is a fact of life for humans. That said, some groups did indeed have most hostile encounters with the Natives than did others.
Absolutely. But again, some battled the Natives much more than others.
Much of Quebec is descended from a seed population of 2,600 settlers. While they had a small start, they indeed have the roots of a successful colonial enterprise. Remember, we’re talking in relative terms here. The French relationship with the Natives was much more peaceable than the British interaction, overall.
The plantation class formed the apex of an exploitative society. See this comment.
Indeed. But by in large, most of the population – particularly in the East – is descended from the established colonial stock. Most people just didn’t move that much.
There were plenty of nortenos in the current “El Norte” at the conclusion of the Mexican-American War. There were certainly more – at first – than the White settlers who would come to swamp the previous settlers (primarily coming from Applachia and the Deep South). The American migration to the Southwest is comparable to the Mexican re-invasion that occurred in recent times, with proportions are considered.
Oops meant the Puritans were no more tolerant than the Borderers, if you look at what they actually did rather than their blather about how cool they were.
And Puritans did not have to deal with Black people, who have radically different views of how marriage, procreation, education, and so on should happen. One of my Irish ancestors (who jumped ship at Philly) was illiterate. Could not read or write. Yet his sons all could, and had some money (lost in the Great Depression btw). His sons were among them, railroad engineer, conductors, and the like. Equivalent today to say, airline pilots. Even the most alien of Whites, Gaelic speaking (as my ancestors were from the Gaeltacht) were closer in attitudes to the Puritans than say, Black people on average on the way education, technology, tools, skills, marriage, family, and power came about. It was relatively easy for Puritans to absorb Catholics speaking Italian, Gaelic, German, Hungarian, Polish, etc. because fundamentally they all agreed on monogamy, literacy, tool making, and the power of technology. Superstition (of which the Irish have many) remains only a folk custom, not something seriously believed.
Absent continual White violence and oppression, Black people revert back to very well established patterns: matriarchy, and its constant male violence, lack of working males, emphasis on men being the best fighters, dancers, singers, general male sexiness, women doing most of the work, single motherhood (very matriarchal), near zero paternal investment in children (whose parentage is mostly dubious at best), lack of education, lack of basic literacy, no interest in obtaining even minimal literacy in succeeding generations, an inability to cooperate, lack of any interest in tinkering with tools and devices and gadgets (which is basically a White guy and Asian guy obsession) and many other features that make Black people radically different and largely incompatible with Whites.
Much of the North had no real Black presence until the Great Migration in the labor shortage of WWI. Prior to that White workingmen had kept Blacks out in the sensible principle that rock-bottom wages did not need to go any lower with more labor working even cheaper. Detroit, Chicago, Cinncinati, Cleveland, all were nearly 98% White or so until WWI. Northern Whites could not get along, assimilate, or accomodate Black people any more than Southern Whites could. They mostly fled Black riots and violence which were and are a feature of Black life wherever Blacks are a majority or substantial majority and not suppressed by White ultra violence (lynchings and the like, as much Northern features in cities like Dayton and Cleveland in the 1920s as the Deep South).
Puritan culture Whites in Boston did not like forced busing, their White kids would be target #1 for earlier maturing, physically superior Black kids. Northern Puritan Whites talke a good game but their practice is to keep their kids as far away from Blacks as possible, save those kids of Will Smith and the President. Chicago Schools are nearly all Black/Latino, White kids who represent about 40% of school age kids nearly all go to private, segregated schools.
No group of Whites, not Puritans, not Midlanders, not the Tidewater, not the Westerners, not the Texans, not the Appalachians have found any solution to persuade Black people to cease keeping it real. My view is absent DNA modification, coming to a Black Market via the Chinese and Koreans, no real solution is possible. But there is a vast difference in assimilating or tolerating or accomodating Jews, Italians, Irish, Germans, Poles, and Hungarians, and Black people. Compare/contrast Tel Aviv, Milan, Dublin, Munich, Warsaw, and Budapest with say, Lagos or Brazzaville. One of these is not like the other.
“Borderers” are people on “the Borders” between England and Scotland. “Scotch-Irish” is an American label for the Ulster Scots, who I understand were mostly of Highland origin. Not a good generalization lumping them together.
Nope.
Outgroup regard for the Puritans being MODERATE is too kind. From reading Woodards book the Puritans often tied outsiders to aq tree and cut off their noses if they did not go along with thier culture. Quakers and others did everthing in thier power to stay away from Jolly Olde New England when the Puritans were in control.
@Patrick:
You were still probably better off next to them than either the Borderlanders or the Cavaliers.
I notice the Quakers are near the middle of the rankings. Would that also apply to the original Mennonites, sometimes referred to as Pennsylvania Dutch, who were very much like, and many of whom became, Quakers soon after emigrating from the Rhineland to Philadelphia? I have some Mennonite ancestors is the reason I am curious.