Fischer's Four Seeds of Albion and Today's America

Historian David Hackett Fischer wrote an excellent book: Albion’s Seed, in which he traces four distinct—but fairly contemporaneous—migrations from the British Isles to what is now the United States. The book is well worth a read, and for those who labor over the printed page, you will have 946 pages to labor over! Each of these four groups originated from a distinct region of the British Isles, three uniquely from England, and each carried a distinct culture to the New World.

Fischer details the distinctions of these cultures, and then shows how these cultures have impacted America to this day. Even though only 20 percent of contemporary Americans have British Isles heritage, everyone has British Isles culture, or faces it daily in their neighborhood, workplace, television and so forth.

It would take pages of material to begin to synopsize Fischer’s book. However I can let you know some of my personal reflections. First, three of the cultures: Puritans, Quakers, and Borderers, all correspond to one of the Enneagram Centers! The Puritans correspond to the Head Center. They founded New England, New York, and worked their way across the northern US. The Quakers correspond to the Heart Center. They settled in Delaware, New Jersey and Pennsylvania and rapidly became the most assimilated of the cultures. Finally the Borderers (sometimes called the Scotts-Irish) represent the Gut Center. The Borderers entered through Delaware and Pennsylvania and then migrated down the Appalachian Mountains to Western Virginia, Western North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, Arkansas, Missouri, Oklahoma and Texas.

The Cavaliers don’t fit the Enneagram model as easily. I see their most basic characteristic as pride. This group, who settled in Virginia and spread to Maryland, and south on the coast to South Carolina, and Georgia, were the most like their English forbears. They practiced the same religion, shared the same foods, lifestyles and so on. Their reason for leaving England was primarily economic opportunity, unlike the other groups who fled because of religious persecution or border-war.

Putting aside the Cavaliers for the moment, the other three groups fall prey to the downside of their respective centers as well. I want to point out the Borderers, especially, since the Gut Center has anger as an issue. This is playing itself out in American politics right now. All the current media jocks, like Glenn Beck, are stirring the Borderers’ pot of anger. It is always at a simmer anyway, and now it is boiling rapidly.

Looking closer at the North and South, notice that the North as defined by the Civil War, and in popular culture to this day, is composed of two groups—the Puritans and the Quakers. The South is the other two groups, the Cavaliers and the Borderers. And for the South, this makes strange bedfellows. The Cavaliers are the genteel South of fine mansions, fine cuisine, fine clothes and elaborate social networks. The Borderers are the raw South of football, rednecks, country music and barbecue.

Knowing these four cultures, you can see them play out in public life. Fischer goes through the politics of this election-by-election from our beginning. But it applies to television today. Entire networks appeal to specific groups. One could say that Fox News is targeted to Borderers. HGTV pointed at Cavaliers. Public Broadcasting aimed at Puritans, with some Quaker programming. Other popular networks and television shows creatively appeal to more than one group, such as the popular CSI series which appeals to the Borderers’ love of violence and the Puritans’ love of science.

How have these cultural types effected you?