A number of my own ancestors fall under that same category-- probably a quarter of my family tree on both sides are pre-revolutionary immigrants from what is now Baden-Wurttemberg and surrounding areas, though they all settled in Pennsylvania. Fischer definitely paints with a very broad brush-- but he says as much. In PA it makes more sense, because the ruling regime there was-- call it "Quaker Multiculturalism." The Quakers ran the show but every valley had its own ethnic subculture, Germans here, Welsh there, Scots-Irish over the hill, with the usual cast of 19th and 20th century immigrants (Irish, Italian, Polish, etc) fitting themselves into the picture quite easily later on.
But that's why I like the other books as well. Colin Woodard's American Nations breaks things down on a county-by-county basis, and helps fill in a lot of the details. But another way to look at it is to think of it ecologically-- there is a general ecological pattern in the Northeast, but the region can be subdivided and subdivided, until you get into individual streams and hillsides, as in the maps here: https://www.epa.gov/eco-research/ecoregions-north-america
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2023-05-24 01:37 pm (UTC)But that's why I like the other books as well. Colin Woodard's American Nations breaks things down on a county-by-county basis, and helps fill in a lot of the details. But another way to look at it is to think of it ecologically-- there is a general ecological pattern in the Northeast, but the region can be subdivided and subdivided, until you get into individual streams and hillsides, as in the maps here: https://www.epa.gov/eco-research/ecoregions-north-america