Colin Woodward divides American into 11 "Nations" based on the original settlements and population migrations. He argues that the influence of the original settlers is bigger in developing a region's culture than subsequent population migrations (and provides evidence to that effect). However, he does say that ranges can grow and shrink at the expense of each other. (I haven't gotten very far into the book, but I've got the basic concept down, if you have any questions).
So, what do you think of this map as broad cultural regions of the United States?
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-KQ_Qh60Wcw...ations_map.JPG
About each group...
Yankeedom: founded on the shores of Massachusetts Bay by radical Calvinists as a new Zion. From the outset it was a culture that put great emphasis on education, local political control, and the pursuit of the "greater good" of the community, even if it required individual self-denial. Yankees have the greatest faith i the potential of government to improve people's lives, tending to see it as an extension of the citizenry, and a vital bulwark against the schemes of grasping aristocrats, corporations, or outside powers. ("secular Puritanism").
New Netherland: short-lived colony with a lasting impact. From the start a global commercial trading society: multi-ethnic, multi-religious, speculative, materialistic, mercantile, and free trading, a raucous, not entirely democratic city-state where no on ethnic or religious group has ever truly been in charge. New Netherland also nurtured two Dutch innovations considered subversive by most other European states at the time: a profound tolerance of diversity and an unflinching commitment to the freedom of inquiry.
Midlands: Arguably the most "American" of nations, it was founded by English Quakers, who welcomed people of many nations and creeds to their utopian colonies on the shores of the Delaware Bay. Plurailistic and organized around the middle class, the Midlands spawned the culture of Middle America and the Heartland, where ethnic and ideological purity have never been a priority, government has been seen as an unwelcome intrusion, and political opinion has been moderate, even apathetic. The only part of British North America to have a non-British majority in 1775, the Midlands has long been an ethnic mosaic. Like Yankees, the Midlanders believe society should be organized to benefit ordinary people, but they are extremely skeptical of top-down government intervention, as many of their ancestors fled from European tyrannies.
Tidewater: The most powerful nation during the colonial period and the Early Republic, has always been a fundamentally conservative region, with a high value placed on respect for authority and tradition and very ltitle on equality or public participation in politics. Such attitudes are not surprising, given that it was founded by the younger sons of southern English gentry, who aimed to reproduce the semifeudal manorial society of the English countryside, where economic, political, and social affairs were run by and for landed aristocrats. These self-identified "Cavaliers" largely succeeded in their aims, turning it into a country gentlemen's paradise, with indentured servants and, later, slaves taking the part of the peasants.
Greater Appalachia: founded in the early eighteenth century by wave upon wave of rough, bellicose settlers from the war-ravaged borderlands of Northern Ireland, northern England, and the Scottish lowlands. These clannish Scots-Irish, Scots, and north English frontiersmen spread across the highland South and west. In the British Isles, this culture had formed in a state of near-constant war and upheaval, fostering a warrior ethic and a deep commitment to individual liberty and personal sovereignty. Intensely suspicious of aristocrats and social reformers alike, these American Boarderlanders despised Yankee teachers, Tidewater lords, and Deep Southern aristocrats. In the Civil War much of the region fought for the Union. During Reconstruction the region resisted the Yankee effort to liberate AFrican slaves, driving it into a lasting alliance with tis former enemies: the overlords of the Tidewater and Deep Southern lowlands of Dixie. They gave the continent bluegrass and country music, stock car racing, and Evangelical fundamentalism.
The Deep South: founded by Barbados slave lords as a West-Indies style slave society, a system so cruel and despotic that it shocked even its English contemporaries. For most of American history, the region has been the bastion of white supremacy, aristocratic privilege, and a version of classical Republicanism modeled on the Greek and Roman slave states of the ancient world. It remains a one-party entity where race remains the primary determinant of one's political affiliations.
New France: the most overtly nationalistic of the nations, possessing a nation-state-in-waiting in the form of the Province of Quebec. Founded in the early 1600s, New French culture blends the folkways of ancien regime northern French peasantry with the traditions and values of the aboriginal people they encountered in northeaster North America. Down-to-earth, egalitarian, and consensus-driven. Includes the Cajun enclaves of southern Lousiana (but New Orleans is a border city with the Deep South).
El Norte: the oldest of the Euro-American nations. Today, this resurgent nation spreads from the United States-Meico border for a hundred miles or more in either direction. Overwhelmingly Hispanic, it has long been a hybrid between Anglo- and Spanish America, with an economy oriented toward the United States rather than Mexico City. Among Mexicans, the people of Mexico's northern border states are seen as overly Americanized. Nortenos have a well-earned reputation for being more independent, self-sufficient, adaptable, and work-centered than the Mexicans form the more densely populated hierarchical society of the Mexican core. Long a hotbred of democratic reform and revolutionary sentiment, the northern Mexican states have more in common with the Hispanic borderlands of the southwestern United States--historically, culturall, economically, and gastronomically. Split in some ways like Germany during the Cold War.
The Left Coast: A wet region of staggering natural beauty, it was originally colonized by two groups: merchants, missionaries, and woodsmen from New England (who arrived by sea and controlled the towns) and farmers, prospectors, and fur traders from Greater Appalachia (who arrived by wagon and dominated the countryside). Today it combines the Yankee faith in good government and social reform with a commitment to individual self-exploration and discovery, a combination that has proven to be fecund. The birthplace of the modern environmental movement and the global information revolution. The closest ally of Yankeedom.
The Far West: The one region where environmental factors truly trumped ethnic ones. High, dry, and remote, the interior west presented conditions so severe that they effectively destroyed those who tried to apply the farming and lifestyle techniques used in Greater Appalachia, the Midlands, or other nations. With minor exceptions this vast region couldn't be effectively colonized without the development of vast industrial resources: railroads, heavy mining equipment, ore smelters, dams, and other irrigation systems. As a result, the colonization of much of the region was facilitated and directed by large corporations headquartered in distant New York, Boston, Chicago, or San Francisco, or by the federal government itself, which controlled much of the land. Even if they didn't work for one of the companies, settlers were dependent on the railroads for transportation of goods, eople, and products to and from far-off markets and manufacturing centers. Unfortunately for the settlers, their region was treated as an internal colony, exploited and despoiled for the benefit of the seaboard nations. Despite significant industrialization during World War II and the Cold War, the region remains in a state of semi-dependency. The region tends to revile the federal government for itnerfering in its affairs, while it rarely challenges its corporate masters.
The First Nation: A vast region with a hostile climate. The indigenous inhabitants still occupy the area in force and still retain cultural practices and knowledge that allow them to survive in the region on its own terms. Recently begun reclaiming sovereignty.
The premise of the book is that the first eight continually fought with each other to try to expand at another's expense and that the only time this country has really been united in ideology was during the Revolutionary War. I won't go into any more details than I have, but I was wonder if anyone had any thoughts.
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