Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America (America a Cultural History, Vol 1) (Hardcover)

by David Hackett Fischer (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal
This cultural history explains the European settlement of the United States as voluntary migrations from four English cultural centers. Families of zealous, literate Puritan yeomen and artisans from urbanized East Anglia established a religious community in Massachusetts (1629-40); royalist cavaliers headed by Sir William Berkeley and young, male indentured servants from the south and west of England built a highly stratified agrarian way of life in Virginia (1640-70); egalitarian Quakers of modest social standing from the North Midlands resettled in the Delaware Valley and promoted a social pluralism (1675-1715); and, in by far the largest migration (1717-75), poor borderland families of English, Scots, and Irish fled a violent environment to seek a better life in a similarly uncertain American backcountry. These four cultures, reflected in regional patterns of language, architecture, literacy, dress, sport, social structure, religious beliefs, and familial ways, persisted in the American settlements. The final chapter shows the significance of these regional cultures for American history up to the present. Insightful, fresh, interesting, and well-written, this synthesis of traditional and more current historical scholarship provides a model for interpretations of the American character. Subsequent volumes of this promised multivolume work will be eagerly awaited. Highly recommended for the general reader and the scholar.
- David Szatmary, Univ. of Washington, Seattle
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

"As one of the most imaginative historians in contemporay America, David Hackett Fischer has produced a work that may put his fellow scholars' teeth on edge....Yet Fischer's latest book, Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America, will fascinate them as well as the general reading public. Lucid, dramatic, always entertaining, the thick, handsomely illustrated volume may safely be called a modern classic, and comparisons to Tocqueville are inevitable....It inaugurates an ambitious design to reinterpret, rather than merely retell, the whole of American history." --American Heritage
"The finest work of synthesis in early American history in more than fifty years."--Michael Kammen, New York Newsday
"One of the most thought-provoking works of American history to appear in recent years.... What is remarkable is how successful Fischer is in casting colonial America in a new light."--Eric Foner


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Product Details

• Hardcover: 970 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA; illustrated edition edition (October 19, 1989)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0195037944
• ISBN-13: 978-0195037944
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.6 x 2.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (91 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #469,642 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

65 of 65 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Four Themes in Anglo-American Culture, August 20, 2005

By	Leonard J. Wilson (VA United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America (America: a Cultural History) (Paperback)

Albion's Seed by Brandeis University History Professor David Hackett Fischer is the history of the four main regional migrations from Britain to North America in the 17th and 18th centuries. Professor Fischer examines each of these four migrations in great detail, describing the origin, motivations, religion, timing, and numerous cultural attitudes or folkways for dealing with everyday life, including birth, child rearing, marriage, age, death, order, speech, architecture, dress, food, wealth, and time, to cite only a few. He devotes special attention to the different concepts of liberty and freedom held by each of these four British cultural groups.

The first major wave consisted predominantly of the Puritans from East Anglia who settled in New England between 1629 and 1640, the years immediately preceding the English Civil War in which Oliver Cromwell and the Puritan army defeated and beheaded King Charles I.

The second wave consisted of defeated (or soon to be defeated) supporters of the king and the Established (Anglican) Church of England, primarily from the south and west of England, who settled in the Chesapeake Bay regions of Virginia and Maryland between 1642 and 1675.

The third wave was the migration of Quakers from the English midlands (and their religious kin from various German sects) who settled in the Delaware Valley (southeast Pennsylvania, west New Jersey, north Delaware) between 1675 and 1615.

Finally, the "Scotch-Irish", referring collectively to immigrants from the north of England, lowland Scotland, and Ulster, settled the Appalachian backcountry from Pennsylvania southwest through Virginia, the Carolinas, and into Tennessee and Kentucky from 1717 to 1775. Less homogenous in religion than the prior waves, the Scotch-Irish were a mixture of Presbyterians, the dominant group, and Anglicans, a significant minority.

Each of these four folk established an amazingly enduring culture in their region, a culture that successfully incorporated later immigrants from other origins who shared little or none of the dominant folkway that had become established in their new home. Their contrasting concepts of liberty are among the most visible today. The Puritan concept of liberty, "ordered liberty" in Fischer's terminology, focused on the "freedom" to conform to the policies of the Puritan Church and local government. The Virginia concept of liberty, "hegemonic liberty", was hierarchical in nature, ranging from the great freedom of those in positions of power and wealth down to the total lack of freedom accorded to slaves. The Quaker concept of liberty, "reciprocal liberty", focused on the aspects of freedom that were held equally by all people as opposed to the unequal and asymmetric freedoms of the Puritans and Virginians. Finally, the Scotch-Irish concept of liberty, "natural liberty", focused on the natural rights of the individual and his freedom from government coercion.

Albion's Seed was a delight to read, filled with quaint, instructive, and amusing anecdotes that reflect folkways that endure today. It should be equally appealing to those interested in defining and contrasting the cultural histories of different groups, the process and cultural impact of human migrations, the foundations of the Anglo-American world, and the different roots of the concept of liberty.

76 of 78 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Albion's Seed is Seminal in Understanding the USA!, March 15, 2004

By	C. M Mills "Michael Mills" (Knoxville Tennessee) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America (America: a Cultural History) (Paperback)

Freedom's liberty tree is planted in the fertile soil of the many cultural groups who have made our land a "melting pot." In
Fishcer's brilliant work he traces with fascinating detail the transposition from Britain to the American colonies the folkways that have made each region distinctive. The four folk cultures he delineates are:
1. New England-the Puritans came from the East Anglia region of
England. They were pious, hardworking and intoxicated with theology and ordedr.
2. The Middle Colonies-the Quaker influence is profound in this region of Pennsylvania, Delaware and New Jersey. William Penn and the followers of the Quaker founder George Fox were the most liberal minded of the quartet of folk cultures chronicled by Fischer. The Quaker culture was influential in the southwest and midland counties of Britain. Their belief in religous toleration has added much to American democracy.
3. The tidewider and coastal south was settled by southern English natives who were Cavaliers supportive of the Stuart
dynasty. This society was hierarchial and based on honor and
fueled by chattel slavery.
4. the backcountry region was settled by Englishmen from the northern border region of England, Scotland and Ulster Scotch-Irish. Exemplified by such paragons of this violent and emotional culture were men like Andrew Jackson and James Knox Polk. Composed of Hoosiers and Rednecks, Crackers and doughty pioneers this society believed in individual freedom.
The almost 1000 page book is filled with illustrations, population data and election results of Presidential elections which reflect how political choices are reflected in the four major mass migrations made to America by Britishers.
While only about 20% of our nearly 300 million population has direct ties to British ancestry the British influence in America is profound-indeed formative in the formation of American society as it exists today with all its strengths and weaknesses.
This book is essential reading if one wants to understand many aspects of American history and life.
Hackett-Fisher is an esteemed historian and with this work is legacy is assured in American histography for generations to come.
Excellent!

59 of 63 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The cornerstones of our culture, May 24, 2000

By	Stephen M. St Onge "Stephen M. St. Onge" (Mpls, MN USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America (America: a Cultural History) (Paperback)

As with several other people, the biggest complaint I have with this book is that Prof. Fischer hasn't yet followed up with further works on U.S. cultural history.

But what's here is marvelous. Fischer traces the distinctive folkways and religious influence of the four great waves of English emigration to the American colonies, and shows how they combined to make modern USAmerica.

I have 19th century immigrant roots, and have never lived in the South or New England. I can't therefore confirm or dispute what Fischer and the various reviewers say about the distinctive regional U.S. differences that persist there today, and how they go back to the original English immigrants. But as a modern USAmerican from California, I can see the various strands that make up our general culture in each of the four founding regions.

This is a long book, perhaps a bit too long, but I recommend it highly, and since discovering it I automatically read any book Fischer produces. I have yet to read a bad one by him. Now let's have further volumes in the series!