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book1989

Albion's Seed

Disciplines:
american history
history/fischer
colonial
anthropology/folkways

Summary

David Hackett Fischer's 1989 magnum opus arguing that four distinct British regional cultures (Puritans from East Anglia to Massachusetts, Cavaliers from south/west England to Virginia, Quakers from North Midlands to Delaware, Borderland Scots-Irish to the Backcountry) brought their specific folkways to America — and that these four cultures still fundamentally structure American regional differences.

Core Contribution

Demonstrates the long continuity of American regional cultures — the cultural differences between New England, the South, the Quaker Mid-Atlantic, and the Scots-Irish Backcountry that manifest in contemporary political and cultural conflicts trace to the specific British origins of the first settlers, not to American history itself.

Historical Influences

David Hackett Fischer

Intellectual Lineage

David Hackett Fischer Oxford University Press

Allied Works

American Colonies African Founders

Contemporaries & Peers

American Colonies The Barbarous Years

Minds Influenced

American colonial historiographyAmerican regional culture analysisHistory 102

Intellectual Posterity

Albion's Seed Four British folkwaysAmerican regional culturesScots-Irish backcountry

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