Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America: VOLUME I (America: A Cultural History)

Product Information

b) The movements happened at different times. The first two occurred before 1688 and the last two after that date, up to the 1770's. They were each the product of periods of economic, political or religious troubles in England that convinced their "victims" to leave the Mother Country in large numbers and seek a better life elsewhere. Describing 'the exhilarating appeal of Protestantism,' historian Simon Schama notes, 'If there was the destruction of false gods and idols, it was only so that the purity of gospel truth could be brilliantly revealed.' The idea of 'purity' is central to the religious debates of the era and especially to the beliefs of Winthrop and other passengers on Arbella. They strived to create a church and to live lives that shone with the spirituality of early Christianity. From these beliefs, they took the name Puritan. Six months after the Declaration of Independence, the American Revolution was all but lost. A powerful British force had routed the Americans at New York, occupied three colonies, and advanced within sight of Philadelphia. With all its freedom from the license, laxity, and oppression of England, Massachusetts did not suit everybody who went there. The early days of living in tents and huts were harsh. Massachusetts is a rainier climate than East Anglia, and its winters much colder. Lady Arbella's husband Isaac Johnson noted that things were 'dolorous' at first, and many regretted their 'voluntary banishment.' When the immigrant ships sailed for England, hundreds of would-be settlers returned home. So it would seem that Smith was originally an Irish Indentured servant to someone called Smith, or his original Irish name had been McGowan (where Gowan is the anglicization of the Gaelic word for Smith) and it was rendered Smith.

All plants take 22 hours to grow (regardless of premium status) and will return a randomized amount of crops varying from 3-6 plants (double for Premium Characters: 6-12 ). But Fischer argues that Quakerism continued to shape Pennsylvania long after it had stopped being officially in charge, in much the same way that Englishmen themselves have contributed disproportionately to American institutions even though they are now a numerical minority. The Pennsylvanian leadership on abolitionism, penal reform, the death penalty, and so on all happened after the colony was officially no longer Quaker-dominated. Illustrated in full color with a rich variety of images, Liberty and Freedom is, literally, an eye-opening work of history–stimulating, large-spirited, and ultimately, inspiring.EDIT: Okay, actually I guess I still dislike them for a lot of reasons not necessarily related to politics, but I DO try to be nice and get along with everyone I meet.

A Reddit search confirms for me that Albion's Seed is still taught in universities. It's a book with some fun elements, especially about the Puritans of New England and the Cavaliers who formed the origins of slaveholding Southern society. The author, David Fischer, pushes the idea that English immigrants self-sorted into different cultural communities. All of this is very speculative, with some obvious flaws. What do we make of other countries like Britain or Germany with superficially similar splits but very different histories? Why should Puritans lose their religion and sexual prudery, but keep their interest in moralistic reform? There are whole heaps of questions like these. But look. Before I had any idea about any of this, I wrote that American society seems divided into two strata, one of which is marked by emphasis on education, interest in moral reforms, racial tolerance, low teenage pregnancy, academic/financial jobs, and Democratic party affiliation, and furthermore that this group was centered in the North. Meanwhile, now I learn that the North was settled by two groups that when combined have emphasis on education, interest in moral reforms, racial tolerance, low teenage pregnancy, an academic and mercantile history, and were the heartland of the historical Whigs and Republicans who preceded the modern Democratic Party. Fischer asks why these similar countries went different ways. Both were founded by English-speaking colonists, but at different times and with disparate purposes. They lived in the first and second British Empires, which operated in very different ways. Indians and Maori were important agents of change, but to different ends. On the American frontier and in New Zealand’s Bush, material possibilities and moral choices were not the same. Fischer takes the same comparative approach to parallel processes of nation-building and immigration, women’s rights and racial wrongs, reform causes and conservative responses, war-fighting and peace-making, and global engagement in our own time–with similar results. And I wrote about another stratum centered in the South marked by poor education, gun culture, culture of violence, xenophobia, high teenage pregnancy, militarism, patriotism, country western music, and support for the Republican Party. And now I learn that the South was settled by a group noted even in the 1700s for its poor education, gun culture, culture of violence, xenophobia, high premarital pregnancy, militarism, patriotism, accent exactly like the modern country western accent, and support for the Democratic-Republicans who preceded the modern Republican Party.

BHT newsletter

On the other hand, they were also opposed to other sports for what seem like kind of random reasons. The town of Morley declared an anathema against foot races, saying that they were “unfruitful works of darkness”. Likewise, Fischer reported, after the war for independence these established preeminent Anglo-American groups rapidly grew, and by the nineteenth century “overspread the nation” (p. 832). Moreover, he added, these varied clans were “highly complex, involving differences of British region, religion, rank, and generation, as well as of the American environment” (788), which in turn, continued to shape our budding country. Massachusetts passed the first law mandating universal public education, which was called The Old Deluder Satan Law in honor of its preamble, which began “It being one chief project of that old deluder, Satan, to keep men from the knowledge of the scriptures…” The Exodus of the English Puritans ( Pilgrims and Puritans influenced the Northeastern United States' corporate and educational culture) [4]

Louis Hartz's "fragment thesis" which proposes that the political cultures of the New World countries depends on when, and by whom they were colonized of adult Puritan men were married, compared to only 73% of adult Englishmen in general. Women were under special pressure to marry, and a Puritan proverb said that “women dying maids lead apes in Hell”. Then there are five “assimilated immigrant clusters” which account for 60% of the total sample, which flow from east to west petering out about where Americans had settled in 1865. The following issue of this journal contains an article by Michael Ellis, "On the Use of Dialect as Evidence: "Albion's Seed" in Appalachia," which presents a greater amount of damning detail, as follows:

The second wave (1642-1675) brought a small Royalist elite and large numbers of indentured servants from the South of England to Virginia. To make his point Fischer has somewhat overstated his case for the continuity of British culture in America. Certainly the formative or constitutional period of America was overwhelmingly the work of British peoples. Many of their values and institutions remain. But how much of mass culture; the products of the entertainment industry and the mass media, can still trace its origins to 17th and 18th century England? Perhaps the last volume ( Albion's Seed is the first of a five volume cultural history of America) will deal with these concerns.