But rather the founders great, and great great, and great great great grandchildren. Those founders from the 17th century and early 18th century shared very little in common in terms of purpose and intent. Most of our true regional cultures date back to that 17th and early 18th centuries. Here they are, the original clusters on the east coast, where they originally started from, and the light shading is how far out each got through 1775. These original clusters on the eastern seaboard were founded and settled by people from distinct regions of the british isles, france, the netherlands and spain, each with their own religious, political, and ethnographic characteristic. For generations, these discrete euroamerican cultures developed in isolation from one another, consolidating their own cherished principles and fundamental values, and expanding across the eastern half of the country in nearly exclusive settlement bands. The dark section is the 1775 line. This is the expansion out to 1850. This is the expansion out to 1850. Some of these regional cultures championed individualism, others, utopian reform. Some are guided by divine purpose, others champion freedom of conscience and inquiry. Some embrace explicit anglo protestant identity. Others, ethnic and religious pluralism. Some valued equality and democratic participation in politics. Others, deference to a traditional aristocratic order modeled on the slave states of antiquity. Throughout the colonial period in the early republic, they saw one another as competitors for land, settlers, capital, and even as enemies. These cultures you see here took opposing sides in the english civil war of the 1640s, in the american revolution, in the war of 1812. Nearly all of the cultures on the map right now would consider leaving the union in the 80 years following the battle of yorktown. And two of them tragically tried to do so in the 1860s. The point is, there has never been one america, but rather several. Today, there are 11. Im going to briefly introduce them. The book goes into the nuances and subtleties. I will give you the cartoon versions so we can get through them all in 15 minutes. Bear with the shortcomings im going to do. We will start in the top right corner with yankeedom in blue. This was a culture that was founded on the shores of Massachusetts Bay by radical calvinists as the new zion, city on a hill. Since the outset, it has put emphasis on perfecting earthly society, through social engineering, individual selfdenial for the common good, and the aggressive assimilation of outsiders. It has prized education, intellectual achievement, and community rather than individual empowerment, and broad citizen participation in politics and government. This is seen as the public shield against the machinations of grasping aristocrats and other wouldbe tyrants, like strong county governments. I will briefly explain what the map is doing, so you understand what the whole map is doing. I will describe why it is that area is categorized as yankeedom, and it gives you a sense of what it is depicting. The puritans may have come to Massachusetts Bay and absorbed the old colony from cape cod, swallowed up the royalist settlements in maine, and consolidated new england in and their sister colonies in connecticut, and so on. After the dutch were defeated in new netherlands, there was a great controversy about who is was going to have control over what became new york. The controversy was because, remember, back in my era at least, your High School Textbooks would show each of the colonies, and many of the colonies were claiming a strip, about as wide as the colony, of territory going all the way across the map to wherever the next ocean was. And it so happened that massachusetts strip went through an enormous swath of upstate new york that had been taken from the dutch. Massachusetts said, this nuance belongs to us. There was a big controversy. The compromise was everyone by way of compensation, massachusetts will hold land title to this vast area under dispute. It happened that massachusettsbased Land Companies were given by the commonwealth the right to settle those zones and did so, and organized villages on the move with entire groups of people from one town, moving out to this vast area of contested land in new york, led by their clergyman to create new england style villages in upstate new york. This is why so many of the towns in that region resemble those in new england. Fastforward to the creation of the Northwest Territory and the ohio territory, and you run into the same problem. That blue bit of their the lake in ohio around cleveland that is the western reserve, of connecticut. If you match it up, that is connecticuts strip. Connecticut based Land Companies ended up settling the section known as the western reserve. If you look today, pull out your brand mcnally not, a lot of towns had the same place names as connecticut. Another generation, the michigan territory is happening. Many of the initial settlers, who went to the constitutional convention, who were the governors of the initial government, were from the western reserve of ohio. The yankees who settled portions of upstate new york and new england, provided the first five michigan governors. Similar for the wisconsin territory. You are watching this formatting of the hard drive, as it were, as the line of settlement moved forward. These were in separate bands. You can tell a similar story for each of the cultures on the right to thirds of the map. Thats what its depicting. Moving on, into the area and light blue around the big apple. That is new netherlands. It wasnt founded by the british at all, but by the dutch. At the time, the 1640s and 1650s, the netherlands was the most Sophisticated Society in the western world. It displayed characteristics of golden age amsterdam throughout history. A global commercial trading culture. Multiethnic, multireligious, and a profound tolerance for diversity and unflinching commitment to the freedom of inquiry and conscience. Like 17thcentury amsterdam, what became new york city emerged as a leading Global Center of publishing, trade and finance, a magnet for immigrants, and a refuge for those persecuted, by other regional cultures. Very different place from yankeedom. Moving south, the anchor point of this vast culture of the midlands. It formed around the shores of delaware bay. The midlands is americas swing region. It was founded initially by english quakers. One of their tenants was they believe in inner light and the inherent goodness of humans. They welcomed people from many nations on the shores of delaware bay. It was from the very beginning, pluralistic, organized around the middle class, and spawned a culture of Middle America and what we think of as the heartland, where ethnic and ideological. He had never been a priority, where government is seen as an unwelcome intrusion, and political opinion is moderate, even apathetic. It was an ethnic mosaic from the start. Even around the revolution, pennsylvania had a german rather than british majority. It is a swing region because it shares yankee belief that society should be organized to benefit ordinary people, but unlike the yankees, it rejects topdown Government Intervention to achieve this. It ends up being a buffer zone between two traditions in the yankee and appalachians that are at odds. Its no mistake that many maps have a large midlands section. Moving southward into the chesapeake country, southern bits of maryland and delaware, eastern north carolina, you are in the tidewater. This is set up more or less the same time as the expansion of new england, set up by english people. But it was a Different Group of english people. It was settled not by calvinists creating a religious utopia, but by the younger sons of southern english gentry. The semifeudal society, where everything was for aristocrats. The 17th century version of downton abbey. The right people leading the heads of household, but we care about what happens with the hands. That social contract. In the context of the new world, it was a major problem. They found great difficulty in finding people who wanted to stand in for the role of the serfs and peasantry. They turned first to indentured servants, and then to a full on slave system. He did not begin like the entire letter. Like that in tidewater. It was the most powerful nation in the 18th century, but today, it is a nation in decline. Has it been boxed out of westward expansion by boisterous appalachian neighbors, and eating away at the expanding federal halos around the district of columbia, and Hampton Roads in norfolk and virginia, the Worlds Largest naval base. Some people say, the map change 100 years from now, are these rings permanent . No, but the culture has a lot of inertia. Things move very slowly. Sometimes cultures in fact, disappear. There is no babylonia. There is no mesopotamia. If i were to move fast 100 years, the tidewater seems to disappear rather rapidly, being absorbed into something midlandish. The federal government, in the middle of tidewater, with trillions of dollars in spending, means literally millions of people can liv economic and sociale lives without reference to the tidewater, having a cumulative effect over time. Onto the boisterous appalachian neighbors. Much bigger than the appalachian range itself, and the most populous of these nations. This is founded in the early 18th century, somewhat later than the ones we have talked about. It was founded by wave upon wave of settlers from the warravaged borderlands of Northern Ireland and the english marshes, and lowland scotland. It has been lampooned by generations of writers and screenwriters as the home of hillbillies and rednecks. In reality, it is a transplanted culture, formed in a state of near constant danger and upheaval, characterized by a warrior ethic, and deep commitment to personal sovereignty and individual liberty. People of appalachia has been intensely, suspicious their history of the low land aristocrats, and yankee social engineers alike. Said the region has tended to shift alliances based on whoever was the greatest threat to their freedom. Since reconstruction, it has been in alliance with the deep south to undo the federal government ability to override local preferences. Consider this. In the civil war, prior to reconstruction, appalachia was on the union side. Working our way south to the deep red area and the deep south, around charleston and south carolina, this is a regional culture founded in the 1660s and 1670s by slave lords from the english isle of our betas, who were transparent barbados, who were transplanting the slave economy in lower america. This is oligarchic privilege and the emergence of classical republicanism modeled on slave states of the ancient world like ancient greece and rome, where democracy was the privilege of the few, and subjugation and slavery the natural lot of the many. They believed it was the only way a republic could exist. If you had a large class that was subservient and did not have political rights. Those cast systems have been smashed, but the leaders in the federal stage continued to fight against expansions of federal power, taxes targeting the wealthy, and robust environmental labor and consumer safety protections. Working down to the southwest of the country, expanding on both sides of the border. This is actually the oldest of the European American cultures. When i went to school, you had this east to west expansion, manifest destiny. In fact, the oldest european settlements in the United States are in the southwest, and came south to north. This is the borderlands of new spain. The vast and expansive spanishamerican empire. By the time you got to the frontier in the far north, you are so far from the seat of power in mexico city and iberia, that the region about this on characteristics. You can see in the county map what i have marked. We are used to the idea that spain claimed half of the United States. That was on paper. The areas shaded are areas that were actually colonized by spain prior to the u. S. Annexations. This map largely corresponds to the map today with slight exceptions. Essentially, it is the same. Most americans are aware it is a place apart, were hispanic societal norms and language few realize that among mexicans, nortenos have a certain reputation. The north long been a hotbed of democratic reform in revolutionary sentiment. Various parts of the region, before the annexations, try to break off from the rest of mexico and try to form independent buffer states, between the two federations. There was the republic of the rio grande. The republic of texas. It was not austin and his anglo followers. They were backed by the entire spanishspeaking elite of the province of texas. That was the idea, to get away from the exploited relationship with the rest of mexico, and avoid being captured into the u. S. It did not turn out that way. That was the original plan. As you can see, today it stretches for 100 miles on both sides of the border and resembles in many ways, germany during the cold war. Two peoples with a common culture, separated by an increasingly large wall. Next two our secondgeneration nations. They are much younger. The far west and northwest are in the late half of the 19th century. They were not colonized by a European Group coming and setting down a settler society, and expanding hours. But they were settled by the rest of us. They come later. The first one to be settled actually was the left coast, not the far west. It is sandwiched between the coastal mountain ranges in the pacific ocean. Is originally colonized by two groups. Merchants and missionaries and woodsman from new england, who came by the sea. Before the panama canal, the much safer way to get across the continent was to get on a boat in boston or new york and sale around the end of south america, through the great passage. You go all the way up the shore of south america and central and and finally come into the mouth of the Columbia River into San Francisco bay. That was the easy way. The second group of people who came across did it the hard way, going overland, over the incredibly dangerous expense of the far west. Not only was it environmentally and climate wise hazardous, but the native tribes were trying to defend their territory from intruders, sometimes to great effect. These people tended to be miners, for traders, prospectors from the appalachian midwest. They expanded an incredible amount of effort to convert these areas to be a new new england. They put forward schools to save the continent in a yankee way. They were all over the place credit had their own journals. They would report whether they were establishing a way to keep the yankees way. They also expanded considerable effort trying to create new england in the pacific. And new citizen on the hill, a new humanity, we can follow the lessons in new england. They wrote about how their travels around were similar to the mayflower. Despite this, they were not entirely successful. The west coast is not just another yankeedom, because they encountered another settlement. They and up with a hybrid culture. It combines yankee utopianism, the idea that we can and should create a better world, and make the world more perfect, with the appalachian emphasis on individual selfexpression. And ended up being a unique combination. Think of the companies that dominated 20th century life. Apple, microsoft, google, amazon, silicon valley, it is all in that one little strip. That is like the population of romania