American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America - Colin Woodward
American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America - Colin Woodward
Non-Fiction
Pages: 371
Anyone who wants to understand why America is the way it is, why Americans vote the way they do, why political parties are so adversarial and why political squabbles seem to generate such viciousness and hostility, why these days it seems more like the Divided States of America, than the United, should read this book.
The answer is, to Woodward, because America has never been a united nation to begin with. Never was, probably never will be. Woodward's argument is that America is effectively a confederation of eleven stateless nations that have maintained consistent internal identities over centuries, whilst interacting and allying with one another in different combinations to produce different political outcomes. To quote this book, "it is fruitless to search for the characteristics of an 'American' identity, because each nation has its own notion of what being American should mean." One of the major tensions produced by these differing stateless nations has been the emergence of two effective superpowers, Yankeedom and the Deep South, two regions almost diametrically opposed to one another's cultural, political, moral, civil and religious values. This conflict has been playing out throughout the lifetime of the United States and there seems to be plenty of mileage left.
Reading this book one can't help but feel that it might have been the best thing for the United States as a nation to let the Confederacy go peacefully in 1861, rather than fighting a civil war to preserve the Union. The Deep South bloc, as Woodward calls it, has been a divisive drain on America ever since, consistently obstructing and stymieing progress on everything from civil rights to health care, religious freedom, abortion, environmental issues, labour rights, capitalist exploitation and of course gun control. And because the conflict is not just about politics but about ethnoregional differences with such deep roots that most people are barely even conscious of the existence of these distinct regional groupings, it's hard to see how they could be overcome and result in any kind of consensus or peaceful coexistence.
This was an utterly fascinating read, one I could hardly put down, and it displays a real deep understanding of America's roots and founding, much much deeper than the traditional Yankee-centric mythistory most people learn. If this doesn't end up pored over by political scientists and made required reading in political studies classes, it damn well should be.
Non-Fiction
Pages: 371
Anyone who wants to understand why America is the way it is, why Americans vote the way they do, why political parties are so adversarial and why political squabbles seem to generate such viciousness and hostility, why these days it seems more like the Divided States of America, than the United, should read this book.
The answer is, to Woodward, because America has never been a united nation to begin with. Never was, probably never will be. Woodward's argument is that America is effectively a confederation of eleven stateless nations that have maintained consistent internal identities over centuries, whilst interacting and allying with one another in different combinations to produce different political outcomes. To quote this book, "it is fruitless to search for the characteristics of an 'American' identity, because each nation has its own notion of what being American should mean." One of the major tensions produced by these differing stateless nations has been the emergence of two effective superpowers, Yankeedom and the Deep South, two regions almost diametrically opposed to one another's cultural, political, moral, civil and religious values. This conflict has been playing out throughout the lifetime of the United States and there seems to be plenty of mileage left.
Reading this book one can't help but feel that it might have been the best thing for the United States as a nation to let the Confederacy go peacefully in 1861, rather than fighting a civil war to preserve the Union. The Deep South bloc, as Woodward calls it, has been a divisive drain on America ever since, consistently obstructing and stymieing progress on everything from civil rights to health care, religious freedom, abortion, environmental issues, labour rights, capitalist exploitation and of course gun control. And because the conflict is not just about politics but about ethnoregional differences with such deep roots that most people are barely even conscious of the existence of these distinct regional groupings, it's hard to see how they could be overcome and result in any kind of consensus or peaceful coexistence.
This was an utterly fascinating read, one I could hardly put down, and it displays a real deep understanding of America's roots and founding, much much deeper than the traditional Yankee-centric mythistory most people learn. If this doesn't end up pored over by political scientists and made required reading in political studies classes, it damn well should be.