(See a map here.)
Woordard’s thesis is that North America is divided into eleven nations, culturally speaking. The nations that comprise the US have competing—and opposed—values and goals, which is what results in its fractious politics. Woordard demonstrates how the alliances between nations accounts for major events in American politics over two hundred years.
The first nation to be founded was El Norte, the northern area of Spanish rule, encompassing northern Mexico and the southern portions of California, New Mexico, Arizona, and Texas. This area was remote, and consisted mostly of missions to the native peoples and garrisons. It produced little, and what little it produced it was required to ship through Mexico City, 1500 miles south, instead of through a nearby coast. As a result it was sparsely populated, poorly developed, and had a culture quite independent from the rest of Mexico.
The second nation to be founded was New France, in what is now eastern Canada. The French settlers took a partnership approach with the native peoples, with the result that they intermarried with each other and had good relationships.
The Virgina Company founded what Woodard calls Tidewater. The poorly sited Jamestown colony took an antagonistic relationship with the natives, but with the settlers constantly being replenished, they eventually won the conflict. After it was discovered that tobacco grew well, it became an export crop, but one which required a lot of tedious work. Those who could pay for passage would get 50 acres of land upon arrival, plus another 50 for each servant, but you could also sell yourself into a three year servitude, and if you survived to the end you got land. This incentivized people to buy up indentures, and early settlers amassed large tracts of land. Due to the many rivers, these landowners could ship goods in and out directly, so there was no need for cities.
During the English Civil War period, Sir William Berkeley unapologetically supported the king (against the Puritans), and brought over comrades who also supported the king. These recreated the English manor life in Tidewater, where the landowner was a mini-king. He was responsible for justice, and ran the local church, but was also supposed to provide benevolently for his workers by creating cottage towns and the like. However, they expected deferrence from their “inferiors”, and they punished being out of line very severely.
It became increasingly difficult to recruit laborers for the tobacco plantations, so Tidewater slowly turned to slavery to maintain its way of life. Yet Tidewater founders talked a lot about liberty; this is not a contradiction, because they used the Greek and Roman model of liberty. The default condition of man is bondage; liberty is only for the few, that is, the elite.
The next nation was Yankeedom, founded by the Calvinist Puritans in Boston. Having been on the receiving end of aristocracy and the Anglican Church, they founded their City on a Hill utopia on principles opposing those of Tidewater, trying to avoid aristocracy. These were fairly well-educated, middle-class people who valued diligent work and community. Their idea of freedom was community freedom, not individual freedom. They were, in fact, intollerant of dissenting ideas (they exiled or killed Quakers and others). Furthermore, while they very much believed in the idea of self-government via local councils, they thought that after the vote you needed to whole-heartedly support the government. If you disagreed, vote for other people next time, but do not voice your dissent.
These characteristics have carried on to this day. Ever since their founding Yankees have been pushing to convert others to their way of thinking and living. Since people’s salvation was predetermined, all that was left for us to do was improve society. Thus, they have been activists for most of the social changes in US history. They pushed to remove slavery, they pushed for the vote for women, they were the largest supporters of the temperance movement, and they are pushing the LGBTetc agenda now. The other nations dislike the Yankee messianic impulse and generally ally to oppose them.
The next nation was New Netherland, which is pretty much limited to New York City and some of New Jersey. Founded by Dutch traders, New Netherland has always been multicultural, diverse, and tolerant, with strong values of free inquiry and private enterprise. There weren’t many people in the Netherlands who wanted to come to the New World, so the colony was small, and run by the Dutch East India Company. (This company introduced slavery to the Americas in 1655.) In 1664 the Duke of York surprised the Dutch with an attack, and they negotiated a surrender that preserved the Dutch system. (In the 1680s, all the American colonists revolted against this Duke when he became King James II, who tried to take away the colonists’ self-government.)
The Deep South was founded in Charleston in 1670, by sons of Barbados landowners. Barbados was already known for inhuman treatment, and this system was replicated in the new colony. These were new gentry, who kept power to themselves and lived in luxury in the city while their manager ruled the slaves on the land. The Deep South had a high slave to free ratio (5:1; compare Tidewater at 1:1.7). Punishments for slaves were severe, and the whites militarized themselves out of fear of a slave revolt. It was also expansionist, expanding south and west but stopped at Texas, which was largely too dry to grow cotton.
The Midlands were founded in the 1680s by Quakers, and are tolerant and multicultural. (The original Quakers were sort of activist: the refused to bow to their betters because God made all men equal, they rejected church hierarchies, they had violent fits of ecstatic quaking, and one Quaker rode a donkey naked into a large English city on Palm Sunday.) Many of the early settlers following the Quakers were Germans who were tired of the religious wars and just wanted to live in peace. The Germans were small, expert farmers who farmed the land with an eye for longevity. Quaker ideals of the inherent goodness of man as well as challenging convention did not result in good governance, nor did their pacifism help, which led to large parts getting incorporated into other nations. To this day the Midlands are multicultural and just want to be left alone.
Greater Appalachia was founded by the Scots and the Irish who were tired of constant warfare. Aggressive, individualistic, and independent, they tended to recreate the strife they tried to leave behind. They were disliked by the colonial governments, who sent them off to the unoccupied land in the mountains. Even there, when another family came within five miles they tended to move on to somewhere else. They did not play well with the Midlanders, nor any one else. In the Revolutionary War they allied themselves against their nearest competitor, resulting in some for England and some against. In later wars they tended to be supportive of having a fight.
The Revolutionary War saw a very uneasy alliance of these nations. Voting was largely by national values: the Yankees voted against a southern proposal for a universal tax to pay officers (generally southern aristocrats) in the army, on the grounds that taxing the poor to pay the rich was unfair. The middle nations tended to tie-break and they voted for the measure because it seemed expedient to be able to actually continue the fight for liberation. The Yankees were the quickest to fight for their values, and being organized, had defeated the British in about a year. The Deep South were not terribly revolutionary and were quickly occupied, but the Appalachians had little representation on the government, and they took the opportunity to savagely battle the government (now the British), with the result that the countryside was devastated, and Britain had few friends by the end of the war.
The newly liberated country had to integrate nations with very different value systems. Yankeedom and the southerners had fundamentally opposed values. Both talked about libery, but the Yankees meant communal liberty and a democracy where everyone participates, while the southerners meant a more Roman type of liberty—non-liberty as the default but liberty for the privileged few. The Yankees contributed the Senate, so that small states would get a useful vote. New Netherlands would not even vote on the constitution without a Bill of Rights enshrining the values they had negotiated to keep. The Midlands insisted on state sovereignty to avoid Yankee meddling and rule by southern aristocrats. They all tried to limit Greater Appalachia.
After the war, the Yankees spread west, eventually to Minnesota. The Scandanavians that settled there were also frugal and sober, so they worked well with the Yankee Puritans. However, the western frontier of Yankeedom (New York, at the time), emphasizing personal connection with God, resulted in a lot of unorthodox religions. The Seventh-Day Adventists, the Mormons, and the Oneida Community (featuring communal property and sexual relations) all came from there.
The Midlands spread west, too, but in a small strip south of Yankeedom, broadening out later in Iowa and Missouri. Appalachia also spread west, south of the Midland strip, and hemmed in Tidewater, which was limited to Maryland and Virginia (with the Midlands slowly eating away at it up to the present). These independent-minded settlers quickly moved on as new settlers came in. Greater Appalachia tended to vote against the meddling Yankees, championing people who knew what hard work was, and generally allying with the south. They did not like slavery, but they could not stand the Yankees. Appalachian Borderlander Andrew Jackson, typically, spoiled for a fight, and viciously expelled the Cherokees, with whom the country had had generally peaceable relations. Greater Appalachia was also the site of revivals (such as Cane Ridge in 1801) focusing on a populist, direct connection with God.
Yankee traders also settled the west coast, which is the next nation, the Left Coast. Via the fur trade, Yankees had the most extensive knowledge of the Pacific Northwest, and they set off of Puritanize it (and also prevent Britain from getting it), with the result that Oregan became Yankee. California was already El Norte, but only south of Monterey, and Yankees settled the north. When gold was discovered, all manner of adventurers and short-term oriented dig-and-spenders came from Appalachia and around the world. The Yankees sent another wave of people to convert these godless miners to Yankee values. This worked on the coast, but it failed in the interior, because the short-termist, adventurer culture was resistant to Yankee values. The result, however, was that the California combined Yankeed utopian idealism with individualism, but which is split into two nations: the Left Coast and Far West in the interior. The Left Coast allies with Yankees in national politics, which created a voting block that threatens the other nations.
Seeing that it had no room to expand and it would be outvoted by the other, nations, the Deep South seceeded to protect its slavery-driven aristocratic culture. It might have been able to succeed, too, as places like New Netherlands were happy to be rid of it. Likewise, the Midlands was conflicted, since while they were opposed to slavery, they were even more pacifist. Even Greater Appalachia was ambivolent: they hated both the Yankees and the aristocratic southerners. (Greater Appalachia came up with the idea that states should choose whether to be free or slave.) But the unwise decision of the Confederacy to attack Fort Sumpter settled the ambiguity. Appalachians, in particular, felt that the attack was treason, and over 250,000 men from Greater Appalachia volunteered to fight, just from the southern areas, much to the surprise of the white supremist Deep South, who assumed they would unite over race. In reality, the Appalachians saw the Deep South aristocrats as a greater threat to their liberty. Although the Deep South was defeated, the Yankee occupiers were unable to fundamentally change the culture, and after they left the southerners undid all their reforms.
The Far West was too dry for independent settlements to be very viable (“rain follows the plow” was an ecological disaster enabled by fortuitous weather; in 1886 a harsh winter killed most of the cattle, and then there was no rain for the next two years, but by that time the topsoil was already eroded). Instead much of it was settled around the railroads and mining companies. These Yankee-owned corporations ruled the Far West for a century, monopolizing jobs, keeping transportation prices for goods in and out expensive, and dominating state politics. It was not until World War II, when the federal government set up manufacturing facilities and research labs in the Far West, because it was a good distance from either coast, that the region had a chance to become somewhat economically self-sufficient. Its primary political goal is autonomy, and it sees the corporations and federal government (which enabled them) as its opponents, so it allies with the authoritarian Deep South against them. At present, the politians get their election funds from the corporations, but they express the goal of the corporate interests in libertarian language of freedom from government meddling.
It is interesting that immigration did not change the nations’ fundamental values. Immigrants tended to assimilate into the existing culture. In fact, even Yankees arriving in El Norte assimilated into El Norte culture, rather than succeeding in their constant plans to perfect the world through replication of Yankee society.
Post Civil War Yankee social-engineering did bind the South into a coherent polity, however, uniting even the Appalachians who fought against the Confederacy. Southern resistance came via the church, since it was the one place they had left during Reconstruction. This was where the Lost Cause explanation was created: God allowed the Confederacy to be defeated to test the sanctity of its nation of believers. Also, southern Christianity emphasized personal salvation to escape from the world, rather than the Yankee social gospel of perfecting the world in preparation for Christ’s return. “Private Protestants had no interest in changing society but rather emphasized the need to maintain order and obedience.” (264)
A coalition of Yankeedom, Midlands, and New Netherland emphasized improving society as a Christian essential. For instance, the south saw alcoholism as a personal moral failing, while the north saw it as a failing of society. Reconstruction was the first social-engineering project, but the Temperance movement, Prohibition, unionization, child labor laws, and women’s suffrage were all lead by Yankees. The New Netherland settlment of Groenwijck (now Greenwich Village) harbored social experiments and became a haven for counter-cultural movements such as feminism, homosexuality, impoverished writers, free verse, etc. It moved to the Left Coast in the 1950s. Social improvement improvement became more important than actual belief, with the result that New England flipped Unitarian in the mid-1800s, supported by the Midlands and New Netherlands (since a state church would oppose dissenters). In the reactionary South, fundamentalism took hold in opposition to the Yankees.
Generally Yankeedom opposes wars (student protests against the Vietnam War were almost all in Yankeedom), at least initially, while the South generally supports them. Midlanders tend to be ambivalent. Appalachia tends to be ambivalent unless there is a possibility of expansion or the need for revenge. Once a fight is started, however, Applachia provides the men. As an example of these dynamics, G. W. Bush was a Southerner, and enthusiastically started two wars and cancelled a bunch of treaties. “The Yankees—idealistic, intellectual, and guided by the Public Protestant mission—have sought foreign policies that would civilize the world and, thus, has often dominated the Foreign Affairs Committees on Capitol Hill. The Dixie-bloc—martial and honor-bound—has generally aimed to dominate the world and has traditionally controlled the federation’s Armed Services Committee. ‘U.S. foreign policy,’ Michael Lind has argued, is merely ‘civil war by other means.’” (294)
In American Nations, Woodard describes a very different America from what is commonly portrayed. The marketed traits and values of America are, indeed there, but each from different nations. Yes, the U.S. is multicultural and tolerant, but mostly in the Midlands and New Netherland. Yes, the U.S. loves democracy, but it flourishes mostly in Yankeedom and is opposed in the South. Yes, the U.S. is a crusader state, as John Maesheimer says, but by the Yankees. Yes, the U.S. is individualistic, but mostly in Greater Appalachia, the Left Coast, and the Far West. The nations he describes strike me, a US native, as pretty accurate, which is unsurprising, since he determined the boundaries by analyzing voting information on the county level.
Woodard’s history of the U.S. from standpoint of cultural nations fighting for their values is both intriguing and filled with “oh... that makes more sense” moments. It also is full of details that I had never heard before; I felt like I did not know what was going to happen, even though I know how the history turns out!
The book was published in 2011, but it also explains more recent politics. Why are the Progressives so quasi-religious and intolerant? Because Yankees have always been insufferably self-righteous and intolerant, from the utopian Puritan start. Why are Republicans so into crazy conspiracy theories? Because the Far West is anti-government for historical reasons, and Greater Appalachia has never been trusting. Why are the Republicans so unreasonably anti- anything-Democrat? Because the South’s values are fundamentally opposed to the values of Yankeedom, which is Democrat. Only it’s said in political terms (“own the libs”) rather than what’s really going on.
Woodard does a pretty good job of being neutral, but betrays his Yankeedom roots on a few occasions. Although he does identify Yankees as being insufferable crusaders, he observes a lot of good aspects. He says nothing good about the Deep South, however, despite southerners—even non-elites—as well as non-southerners others, having positive things to say about the culture. For sure, Southern slavery was an abomination, but surely the region has some positives. And at the end, he briefly mentions the last nation, First Nations, as a positive hope for the future due to their traditional ways and matriarchial societies. That virtue-signals well in Portland, Maine (where he signs the epilogue), but women have just as many failings as men, plus traditional First Nation culture is simply incompatible with a high population density, so its impact on most of North America is going to be limited at best.
Woodard has written an incisive and engaging book which will deeping your understanding both of North American culture as well as clarify U.S. politics both historically and at present. I have lived in Far West, Texas/El Norte, and Yankeedom, and have strong connections to the Midlands culture, so I can vouch for the accuracy of those cultural descriptions. The others are consistent with what I have observed. This review hardly does the book justice, as it must, of necessity, leave out so much. I highly recommend this book, not only for the different perspective on history and politics, but especially for the clarity it brings to understanding the U.S.