The Eleven Nations

Colin Woodard in “American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America” (2011) says the deepest divisions of American history are not ones of race, religion, politics or class but of region, what he calls nations.

Listed in the order of their founding:

1. First Nation – northern Canada and Greenland, North America as a set of native societies.
2. El Norte, founded in the late 1500s by the Spanish in northern Mexico, a different place than Mexico further south. Anglos cut El Norte in half in the middle 1800s. Anglo-Latino culture. Long a hotbed of democratic reform and revolutionary feeling.
3. Tidewater, early 1600s, English, eastern parts of Virginia and North Carolina. Founded by the second sons of rich landowners in southern England. Aristocratic, run by and for the rich. The servant class turns into a caste of black slaves. The Electoral College and the Senate were its idea.
4. New France, early 1600s, founded by peasants from northern France and the native peoples of southern Quebec. Down-to-earth, egalitarian, big on consensus and negotiation. Very liberal. Spreads to northern New Brunswick and southern Lousiana.
5. New Netherland, early 1600s, Dutch, New Amsterdam, now metropolitan New York. Freedom for money, trade, speech and thought. Bill of Rights. Pluralism: no one ethnic group is a shining model for others.
6. Yankeedom, early 1600s, English Puritan, New England, spreads west across upstate New York, Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota. Utopian: making man and society perfect through education, law and good government. Big on democracy and equal rights, the greater good. Abolition, prohibition. Assimilationist.
7. Deep South, late 1600s, English, Charleston, South Carolina, spreads across Georgia, northern Florida, Alabama, Mississipi, northern Louisiana, East Texas. Founded by slave owners from Barbados, modelled on ancient Rome. Blacks as a caste. Those at the top know best. One-party rule.
8. Midlands, late 1600s, English and German, starts in Pennsylvania, spreads west across Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas – and southern Ontario. Middle America. Society should be arranged to benefit ordinary people. Suspects heavy-handed government. Politics are moderate to apathetic.
9. Greater Appalachia, early 1700s, Scottish, Scotch-Irish, northern English, starting in the mountains of Virginia, spreading south-west all the way to Texas. Rednecks, NASCAR, the Klan, country music, Christian fundamentalism. God and country. Distrusts government, hates aristocrats, strong on personal freedom for white men, weak on education.
10. Left Coast, late 1800s, founded by Yankees and Appalachians. The west coast from Anchorage, Alaska to Monterey, California. Both Appalachian individualism and Yankee utopianism. Sixties counterculture, hippies, personal computers, big on green issues.
11. Far West, late 1800s, mountain country from Arizona and Colorado to Alaska. An inner colony that depends on big government and big business. Mining, irrigation, the Hoover Dam, the Alaskan pipeline.

Mormons, the Navajo and the African Diaspora are arguably separate nations.

In the late 1700s some of these nations formed the United States of America to throw off British rule. It has been badly divided ever since by the very different values of Yankeedom and the Deep South, as shown by the Civil War and culture wars.

As of July 17th 2012 Romney is strong in the Deep South, Greater Appalachia, the Far West and has a fighting chance in the Tidewater.

 See also:

• Patchwork Nation – sociological rather than historical. Cool map!
• Facebookistan – American regions according to Facebook data
• The Four Englands of America - a post based on David Hackett Fischer’s “Albion’s Seed” (1989), upon which Woodard builds:
  1. Northern Tier => Yankeedom
  2. Coastal South => Tidewater + Deep South
  3. Midland => the Midlands
  4. Southern Highlands => Greater Appalachia
• Joel Garreau’s Nine Nations of North America – Woodard builds on this to flesh out Fischer
• American ethnic groups - another way to slice it