Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America (America: a cultural history) 1st Edition

by David Hackett Fischer (Author)

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ISBN-13: 978-0195069051

ISBN-10: 9780195069051

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This fascinating book is the first volume in a projected cultural history of the United States, from the earliest English settlements to our own time. It is a history of American folkways as they have changed through time, and it argues a thesis about the importance for the United States of having been British in its cultural origins.

While most people in the United States today have no British ancestors, they have assimilated regional cultures which were created by British colonists, even while preserving ethnic identities at the same time. In this sense, nearly all Americans are "Albion's Seed," no matter what their ethnicity may be. The concluding section of this remarkable book explores the ways that regional cultures have continued to dominate national politics from 1789 to 1988, and still help to shape attitudes toward education, government, gender, and violence, on which differences between American regions are greater than between European nations.

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Editorial Reviews

Review

"Professor Fischer's careful research and analysis opens a much needed discussion of cultural character and origins in North America. The variety and complexity of historical sources will inform the work of other cultural historians and analysts."--Nadesan Permaul, UC Berkeley

"This is history at a lively pace, peppered with curious details about the origins of families...The author makes a convincing case."--Dolores and Roger Flaherty, Chicago Sun-Times

"A pleasure to read, for it is written with Fischer's characteristic perspicuity. Moreover, the numerous drawings by Jennifer Brody and maps by Andrew Mudryk are a visual treat."--Raymond A. Mohl, Review Essay

"The kind of book one can open to almost any page and immediately become engrossed...[R]eaders will enjoy and benefit from this book...We eagerly await volume two."--Neil R. Stout, Vermont History

"Holds up to readers a mirror in which they can discover in themselves and in their own world the persistence of their heritage...An engrossing work that will whet the appetite for more."--The National Genealogical Society Quarterly

"Ingenious and provocative...Raises matters of cardinal interest."--The Times Literary Supplement

"A splendid work of historical scholarship. . . . based on an original conception of cultural history which I find extremely usable. Eminently readable."--Omer Hadziselimovic, Earlham College [SEE REVIEW CARD FOR ACCENTS ON LAST NAME]

"[A] sprightly analysis....This is history at a lively pace, peppered with curious details about the origins of familiar words and practices....The author makes a convincing case for his claim that `in a cultural sense most Americans are Albion's seed."--Chicago Sun-Times

"One of the most interesting, important, and ambitious books about American cultural and social origins ever written....A richly rewarding book, and one of great significance....It blends the best of new and old scholarship in lucid language designed to attract laymen and students alike. Very simply, Albion's Seed is a splendid achievement."--Michael Kammen, New York Newsday

"David Hackett Fischer's book could not be much bigger or more ambitious. It is the first in a series of volumes that he hopes will eventually constitute a cultural history of the United States....This book starts his series with a bang--a big bang....Remarkable....A revisionist blockbuster."--Gordon Wood, The New Republic

"Beautifully produced, this work should popularize the discoveries of a generation of scholars in the new social history. Anyone interested in these four cultures of the Anglo-American colonists will find here population data, family life, community mores, and achetypical individuals, portrayed in a clear and often lively text, thoughtfully analyzed illustrations, and wonderful maps."--Stephen Saunders Webb, Washington Post Book World

About the Author

David Hackett Fischer is Warren Professor of History at Brandeis University. He is the author of numerous books, including Paul Revere's Ride and Growing Old in America.

Series: America: a cultural history (Book 1)
Paperback: 972 pages
Publisher: Oxford University Press; 1 edition (March 14, 1989)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 9780195069051
ISBN-13: 978-0195069051
ASIN: 0195069056
Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 2 x 6.1 inches
Shipping Weight: 3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 272 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #25,660 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #9 in Anthropology (Books)
- #57 in Ethnic Demographic Studies
- #52 in United States History (Books)

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capucine

I particularly liked the breakdown of each group into their 'folkways' - ...

December 31, 2016

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

I purchased this book after Malcolm Gladwell referenced it in "Outliers". This book is dauntingly large in format, but actually straightforward to read and deeply engrossing. It covers four separate migrations from the British Isles to America, hence the size. I particularly liked the breakdown of each group into their 'folkways' - that is, attitudes about sex, child rearing, education etc. It's not academically dense writing, easy to absorb and ended up being very touching to me seeing how folkway characteristics from hundreds of years ago in England are still perpetuated in my family today.

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Lynne B. Tagawa

a gold mine of information

June 6, 2018

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

This sizable book is invaluable to all serious students of American history. It's not written in narrative fashion as a more popular treatment would be, but in sections, so that a reader can flip easily to the pertinent place.

The author covers four basic people groups that left the British Isles for the New World: the people who colonized New England, those who settled the middle colonies (including Quakers), the class-conscious settlers of the southern tidewater, and the Scots-Irish, who came over in a huge wave after 1700.

It's not a treatment of events but rather culture. How many kids did the average family have in New England? What was a Scots-Irish marriage like? There are lots of statistics that might be boring to the casual reader but serve as a gold mine for someone writing a paper or doing background research for a historical project or novel.

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T. Graczewski

Re-discovering modern America

December 15, 2012

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

David Hackett Fischer's "Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America" is a stunning academic achievement. Each of the four folkways described by the author are book length and authoritative. It is remarkable to read just how unique each of these "great migrations" were and how they have left an indelible cultural imprint on those geographic areas long after the original inhabitants faded into oblivion (when's the last time you've seen a Puritan in Boston or a Quaker in Philadelphia?). Fischer explores each migration in great detail, comparing and contrasting a variety of "ways" that defined their cultures: wealth, elites, sex, sports, architecture, religion, speech, family, aging, death, child-rearing, naming conventions, food, work, supernatural beliefs, philosophy and so on.

The author begins with the Puritans, the vast majority of whom emigrated from the East Anglia region of England, who settled New England from 1629 to 1641. The special features of the Puritan experience, according to Fischer, included a relatively salubrious climate; the immigrants tended to be older and middle class (few poor or aristocrats); wealth distribution remained even (top 10% only owned 20% of property); age was revered over material possessions or social status; literacy and education were highly prized; while "order" and "liberty" were an obsession, although not how we would think of those terms in a modern sense (mostly collective and community restraints on conduct ensuring the ability to live a truly Puritan lifestyle, a sort of fundamentalist Christian society that Al Qaeda would likely approve of).

The cavaliers who settled Virginia in the second great migration from 1642 to 1675 were quite distinct from the Puritans - and in many ways, Fischer writes. The author presents Virginia governor Sir William Berkeley, who served for 35-years, as the embodiment of the cavalier gentleman, just as Puritan leader John Winthrop represented the Puritan culture of New England. What made the Virginia cavaliers unique were that they tended to come from southern England; most were younger sons (and thus disinherited because of primogeniture) of wealthy families who hailed from a hierarchical society of "deep and pervasive inequalities"; nearly three-quarters of the immigrants were servants from the lower class while the top 10% owned 75% of the region's productive assets; they were overwhelmingly Anglican in their religion and passionately so; most lived in rural and widely distributed communities unlike the compact New England Puritan town; families were large, extended and intermingled unlike the Puritan nuclear family; it was a society that honored rank and wealth and seniority, not simply age; there was a cultural focus on "hegemonic liberty" or "dominion over oneself", an ethos that was deeply embedded in the Tidewater and produced sterling examples over the centuries, from George Washington to Robert E. Lee to George Marshall. In one of the author's many keen insights, he writes that "Slavery did not create the culture of Tidewater Virginia; that culture created slavery."

If the Puritans had John Winthrop and the cavaliers William Berkeley, the Quakers, representing the third great migration, who settled the mid-Atlantic region from 1675 to 1725, had William Penn as the embodiment of their migration and culture. The Quakers were generally of humble origin, hailing from the midlands of northern England, many of whom had suffered serious persecution for their beliefs and thus saw the New World in religious terms similar to the Puritans but unlike the cavaliers. The Quaker sense of family extended exclusively to all co-religionists ("Friends"), not just a nuclear or extended family; they enjoyed the closest equality between the sexes of any migration and were much more indulgent toward their children; the aged were not venerated (the Puritans) and neither were patriarchs (the cavaliers), but rather were treated as community mentors, but only if "deserving"; death was welcomed as a fulfillment of life, not something to be feared as by the Puritans and cavaliers; both black magic and higher learning were generally eschewed in Quaker society; sports were almost universally condemned, whereas the Puritans loved their ball games and the cavaliers their horse races; Quakers sought to "redeem" time, rather than "improving" it (Puritan) or "killing" it (cavalier); wealth distribution was even like the Puritans (top 10% owned 25% of productive assets) while social rank and hierarchy were abhorred; if the cavaliers adhered to "hegemonic liberty," Quakers remained faithful to the "inner light," a belief that everyone, man or woman, were capable of embracing Jesus' love and grace.

Unlike the other three great cultural migrations, the backcountry migration flowing from Scotland and Ireland (1717 to 1775) were not looking for religious freedom, although they mostly shared the Presbyterian faith. They were the first American migration focused mainly on finding a better, more prosperous life in the New World. The main theme of this culture, according to Fischer, is violence, which was a product of the British borderlands from whence they came. The author uses Andrew Jackson as the archetype for this culture: proud, principled, hardworking, and physically aggressive. These migrants, who settled the early mid-west, were overwhelmingly poor, but had their own version of the "elite," where local leaders depended on charisma, loyalty, influence, and all too often physical force. Fischer stresses the importance of the warrior culture and the centrality of violence in the backcountry folkway. His section on backcountry "sport ways" is especially fascinating. Wrestling and fistfights, for example, were main events, including "rough & tumble" brawls that allowed biting and eye-gouging. The backcountry was among the most unequal in terms of wealth distribution (top 10% held from 40-80% of productive assets), yet there was a social system that called for the equality of esteem, no matter one's wealth, a need to be recognized as an equal, which may help explain the prevailing system of lex talionis (rule of retribution). This was the culture, after all, that produced the Hatfields and the McCoys.

There are several themes that emerged from this weighty tome: America has been fundamentally shaped by the voluntary nature of the great migrations that populated her regions (unlike the compulsory and centralized migrations engineered for New France and New Spain); slavery developed very slowly in America and was generated by the unique transplanted cultures that grew there, not the other way around; the regional differences in the United States are often more dramatic than between countries in Europe (e.g. the wealth disparity between New England the South in the late 1800s was similar to the difference between Germany and Russia in the same time period); the four folkways had some things in common, but generally speaking they were all antagonistic to one another, which was all too evident from the American Revolution to the present day; these regional differences have often led to omnibus strategies for electing presidents, an attempt to find a candidate who appeals to at least two of the traditional folkways, such as Harrison (1840), Taylor (1848), Pierce (1852), Eisenhower (1952) and Bush (1988).

All told, this book is an eye-opening education. It runs nearly 1,000 pages in length and can be daunting at times; however, the insights and erudition Fischer delivers are worth the effort.

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Jane Hall

important!!!

December 20, 2018

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

Albion's Seed is a beautifully written history of America. It explains regional differences and how difficult these differences are to overcome. Reading about the original settlers of this country helped me understand how and why cultures clash to this day and how cultural folkways are imbedded in our institutions. Only when we understand history can we begin to stop repeating it. I recommend this book to everyone. It is a must read.

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Dan Starr

MP3 version is abridged/truncated

October 17, 2018

Format: MP3 CDVerified Purchase

PSA - the review is for the MP3 version only. Despite the artwork on the disc/case saying it is unabridged, it is only six hours. That should have told me something since the Audible version is ~29 hours. Also, the MP3 disc starts abruptly by saying, "Chapter Four..." so you'll know something's amiss right away.

I thought it might only be my copy, so I asked for a return from Amazon. The second copy they send (free of charge), was exactly the same.

Despite this, I have so far found this version listenable, and after getting over the jarring beginning, I'm still enjoying it.

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