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Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN num: 9780195069051
ISBN number: 0195069056
Label: Oxford University Press, USA
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 972
Printing Date: March 14, 1989
Publishing house: Oxford University Press, USA
Sale Popularity Level: 4994
Studio: Oxford University Press, USA
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Product Description:
This fascinating book is the very 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 yesterday 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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Rated by buyers 
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This book looks at the ethnic origins, customs and traditions of America's British immigrants to North America from the early 17th Century to the late 18th Century. The author breaks down this migration in a set of four major immigrations and four different ethnic and social cultures. The four being; 1. East Anglia to Massachusetts: The exodus of the English Puritans, 2. The South of England to Virginia: Cavaliers and Indentured Servants, 3. North Midlands to the Delaware: The Friends Migration, and 4. Borderlands to the Backcountry: The flight from North Britain. While all of these immigrants came from Great Britain they were socially and culturally distant.
When I began reading this book, I thought that I might just skim through it as I do with many of my books of the same subject, picking through it to find the meaty substance of which I deemed of importance or interest. The book itself being 900 pages I thought it too Herculean a task with my limited time and extensive schedule, only to soon realize that I had a work of art in my hands. The author has taken great pains to put into this book such details and facts into the immigration of British peoples to this country that I do think it the definite work on this subject. He has filled the pages with charts and graphs and unlike many social histories I have read, filled its pages with fascinating stories of folk ways.
I can truly identify with this book as it outlines the major differences in these remarkable peoples ways. He includes each chapter with such mini-chapter subjects as: Speech ways, Family ways, Child rearing ways, Naming ways, Religious ways, Learning ways,
Dress ways, Social ways, Wealth ways, Rank ways etc. etc. giving the reader a way to compare the contrast between, New England, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and the backcountry settlements of North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Kentucky.
The author takes special notice to outline the differences between the Puritans, Quakers, Anglicans and Presbyterians if one wishes to put a religious label on the settlers from New England to the Carolina's and their speech patterns or linguistics leaving nothing untouched. Mr. Fischer takes note of the difference in dress, and sexual practices as well. I praise the author for his deep look at the Social rank status structures of the four groups and his continued comparison of their differences, from Puritan & Quaker attempted equality to Virginia's major contrast between the wealthy members of the gentry and its oligarchy structure to its impoverished indentured servants and finally the equally poor across the board North Britons.
I conclude by saying that I truly can find no shortcomings whatsoever in this book. Whenever I read a book on a history topic I normally need to buy two or three of a similar or more in depth study of the subject. For this book there is no need to purchase any more detailed studies on these various cultures. David Fischer's book is indeed a scholarly and masterful work on this very important subject in American History. I would truly recommend this book to anyone interested in American History for this is the definite work on this topic.
Evan Ellis
Rated by buyers -
I'm not an historian nor cultural anthropologist, but I could not put this interesting and even exciting book down. Oh my! And yes, yes, I will endure arthritis in my hands for a few more weeks, need new batteries for the night-light, and have a permanent dent in my stomach where the book rested, but the whole experience was well worth it. Too bad there is not a rating higher than five stars.
Martha Osgood
Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America (America: a Cultural History)
Rated by buyers -
As someone with a keen interest in the American Civil War and its origins, I found Fischer's Albion's Seed to be extremely valuable. Although the period it describes is mostly colonial leading up to the American war for independence from England, the four folkways documented therein clearly delineate the religious, cultural, economic and even environmental forces that lined up to bring about that most seminal event for modern America, the war of 1861-1865.
The origins of slavery and why it took hold in tidewater Chesapeake areas and not Massachusetts are described by Fischer not only in terms of religious and social values but environmental as well in terms of differing mortality rates between African slaves in the two regions, thereby making slavery more economically feasible in Virginia. The regional culture of tidewater Chesapeake created slavery, not the other way around.
The controversy of territorial expansion of the United States in mid-nineteenth century, and whether these new lands would be slave or free, set the stage for the squaring off of the combined ideas of Puritan ordered liberty and Quaker reciprocal liberty (Lincoln was descended from both Puritans and Quakers) against the combination of hierarchical liberty of the tidewater cavaliers and the individualistic liberty of the people of the southern backcountry, who, although they owned few slaves, possessed an acute sense of personal honor and loved to fight.
It is a stretch to say that the American Civil War would have still happened without slavery. However, neither is it "Lost Cause" mythology to say that the North and South represented two distinct cultures, formed primarily by two each of the folkways of Albion's Seed. Had mid-nineteenth century America been one culture, then the slavery issue could certainly have been settled without warfare.
Rated by buyers -
I am a museum director, and this book was recommended to me by one of our docents who is researching her family history. I checked it out from the library, but it was far too thick for me to read in 3 weeks, and it had a huge waiting list so I could not renew it. So I bought my own copy -- and it was well worth it! Admittedly, I am only on the second part of the book (which includes my own ancestry), but I have learned SO MUCH already about the early settlement of America. Part of why it is taking me so long to read it is because I am savoring every word. The histories on regional languages alone make the book worth far more than the asking price. I have recommended this book to countless people, and will continue to do so. Like I said in the title -- this is a FANTASTIC book!
Rated by buyers 
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I have sometimes wondered what I am. I am of course me, but sometimes it seems there is no "we" that quite fits the "me". I am hardly alone in this and there are probably many Americans that feel this way.
Albion's Seed is a grand overview of where America comes from. Where our values and habits were born.
The author traces the history of four intertwining British cultures that he says are the foundation of America. These to put it roughly would be the Yankees, the Phillys, The Southern Gentry, and the Scots-Irish "Rednecks". He gives them all a more or less sympathetic protrayal showing strengths and weaknesses from each culture.
As an Oregonian I am probably more Yankee in blood then anything else. Or at least I would like to think I am a sharp New England son of the cold North Sea though my home state's cultural outlook really seems rather "Philly" by the description of the book. Which is perhaps as well as the "Philly" culture while least congenial to my imagination(though not unattractive even there)is most likely to leave me alone. But in any case I can see elements of all four in my habitual outlook. Some of the customs described I recognize as a relation to the way I was brought up. My Church, for instance, is governed in a New England sort of way with regular "town meetings" of the congregation, to choose deacons and review policy matters. I also recognize the Southern idea that citizenship is a badge of pride(this was corrupted by the way into a justification for slavery; Southerners were not being hypocritical in denying freedom to others-they thought one of the points of freedom was that it was a posession you could brag about), and the glorifying of honor(despite the distastefulness of some aspects of the old honor code). I can also appreciate the famed scots-irish orneryness a little even though I could never manage to live with it. And I very much admire the "Philly" ideal of liberty for all. It is probably an accident of geography but it is wholly fitting that America's very first capital was Philadelphia.
Albion's Seed details the customs of the four strands with their complex adaptation to life. It shows how they confronted the day to day challenges and opportunities. It gives description of the reaction of each group to a series of categories of facets of life that the author believes every culture deals with.
It gives some space to the influence of non-british minorities, though that is not it's main concern. The subject of the book is British folkways after all.
Perhaps the main fault is that it is a little to deterministic. That is an easy fault and many fall into the opposite errors of assuming people are monolithic members of a group and assuming them to be atomistic individuals. A better way to describe life is that we are all who we are but our nature and nurture is part of us and we are part of it. And a way to appreciate yourself and others is to appreciate the background people come from. And when I read this book I can appreciate what it means, not only to be an American but to be an Oregonian and a son of New England's kin.
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