On Albion's Seed

I gobbled down this massive tome in one day, hardly taking time to eat or even drink water. This is a massive accomplishment by historian David Fischer, although I’m not sure that I agree with all of his arguments.

To make sense of this text, Fischer brings us to the single issue that looms the largest in American historiography: What are the origins of American institutions (however they may be defined)? The fact of the matter is that, in spite of changes throughout history, the United States has remained persistently libertarian in society, democratic in government, capitalist in economy, and conservative in the face of radical change. Three large answers have been given to this question throughout the history of American historical writing. In the nineteenth century, the consensus among historians (primarily on the East Coast) was that American institutions emerged out of a “Teutonic germ.” American ideas of liberty emerged out of the forests of western Germany before making their way to the British isles and, then, North America. By the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, historians began to push back on this thesis, instead arguing that American institutions came out of a uniquely American landscape. The most prominent historian to argue this line of thought was Frederick Jackson Turner, who argued that the engine of American history can be found in the frontier. This argument then came under fire in the mid-twentieth century, led above all by Oscar Handlin (see The Uprooted: The Epic Story of the Great Migrations that Made the American People), who argued that American institutions came out of the United States’s pluralism. Contacts between Europeans, Native Americans, and Africans alongside later waves of immigration is the source of American institutions.

In this book, Fischer is ultimately reviving the “Teutonic germ” argument, although recognizing that both the American landscape and the pluralist nature of the United States must be taken into account. In doing so, he argues that what is today the United States came out of four “folkways,” or systems of culture and society, from the British isles. These “folkways” arrived in waves of immigrants, each of which led to the European settlement of a different region. The first consisted primarily of immigrants from East Anglia and they made their way to Massachusetts Bay. The second was made up of Cavaliers and servants out of southern England, and they made their way to the Chesapeake Bay. The third came out of the Midlands and northern England, and they primarily settled in the Delaware Valley. Finally, immigrants from Scotland and Ulster generally settled in the “backcountry” (generally, Appalachia).

In making this argument, Fischer spends time in each group discussing numerous features that constitute a given folkway. A comprehensive list of the aspects Fischer examines are here:

• Origins (Social, religious, ethnic, etc.)
• Speech ways
• Building ways
• Family ways
• Marriage ways
• Gender ways
• Sex ways
• Child-rearing ways
• Naming ways
• Age ways
• Death ways
• Religious ways
• Magic ways
• Learning ways
• Food ways
• Dress ways
• Sport ways
• Work ways
• Time ways
• Wealth ways
• Rank ways
• Social ways
• Order ways
• Power ways
• Freedom ways

The book comprehensively discusses each of these aspects for each “folkway,” to the extent that this could really be four separate books.

In the conclusion, Fischer examines the continuing importance of these folkways, along three new ones, which he argues the United States is made up of seven regions today. He also examines the importance of the four folkways to American history, which was probably the weakest part of the entire book. In addition, he examines a number of factors associated with each folkway (crime rates, ethnic background, religion, and language, for instance) to see their continuing relevance to American history.

I don’t agree with Fischer that these folkways continue to be relevant. They have certainly shaped the course of American history, especially in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, but they’ve also largely crumbled and have been reshaped into fundamentally new institutions. We can still see elements of them in specific regions (for instance, the class/race structure of the Tidewater region or the importance of education to New England), but I don’t think these are nearly as discrete as Fischer makes them out to be. Moreover, while he does take the American context into account, it seems to me that he undervalues the importance of cultural, religious, ethnic, racial, sexual, and social pluralism to the United States. I’m certainly in favor of the pluralist argument for the development of American institutions. While the British legacy is certainly important, I don’t find it nearly as important as Fischer makes it out to be. I have to say, though, with each work I read, I find my respect for the Puritans rises (especially when compared with the Cavaliers of the Chesapeake Bay or the Celts of the backcountry).

Nevertheless, this is a must read for those interested in learning more about colonial American history.