Part II american regionalism

Introduction

On every coin issued by the government of the United States there are three words in Latin: E plubirus unum. In English it means “out of many, one”, and this phrase is an American motto, as the United States is one country made up of many parts. It is a spacious country of varying terrains and climates. To get from New York to San Francisco one must travel almost 5 000 kilometers across regions of geographical extremes. Between the coasts there are forested mountains, fertile plans, arid deserts, canyons, and wide plateaus. Much of the land is uninhabited. The population is concentrated in the Northeast, the South, around the Great Lakes, on the Pacific Coast, and in metropolitan areas dotted over the remaining expanse of landing the agricultural Midwest and Western Mountain and desert regions. Americans often speak of the United States as a country of several large regions. Each of the country’s main regions maintains a certain degree of cultural identity. People within a region generally share common values, economic concerns, and a certain relationship to the land, and they usually identify themselves to some extent with the history and traditions of their region. These regions are cultural rather than governmental units. They have been formed out of the history, geography, economics and literature. Today regional identities are not as clear, as they once were because the United States has seen its regions converge gradually.

The development of culturally distinctive regions within a country is not unique to the United States. Indeed, in some countries regionalism has acquired political significance and has lead to domestic conflict. In the United States, however, there are no easily demarcated borders between the regions. For this reason, no two lists of American regions are exactly alike. One common grouping creates six regions:

• New England (Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Vermont);

• The Middle Atlantic Region (New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware and Maryland);

• The South (Arkansas, Louisiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Florida);

• The Midwest (Illinois, Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri, North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana);

• The Southwest (western Texas, portions of Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, and Oklahoma);

• The West (Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, Utah, California, Nevada, Idaho, Oregon, Washington, Alaska and Hawaii).

New England

New England has a precisely defined identity. It consists of Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Vermont. This hilly region is the smallest in area of all those listed above. It does not have large expanses of rich farmland or a climate, mild enough to be an attraction in itself. Yet, New England played a dominant role in development of modern America. The earliest European settlers of New England were English protestants; many of them came in search of religious liberty, arriving in large numbers between 1630 and 1830. These immigrants shared a common language, religion and social organization. Among other things, they gave the region its most famous political form, the town meeting. In these meetings, most of a community’s citizens gathered in the town hall to discuss and decide on the local issues of the day. It allowed New Englanders a kind of participation in government that was not enjoyed by people of other regions before 1790.

New Englanders often describe themselves as thrifty, reserved, dedicated to hard work, shrewd and inventive, qualities they inherited from their Puritan forefathers. These traits were tested in the first half of the 19th century when New England became the center of America’s Industrial Revolution. All across Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island new factories appeared, they produced clothing, rifles, clocks and many other goods. Most of the money to run these businesses came from Boston, then the financial heart of the nation.

The cultural life of the region was very active as well. A sense of cultural superiority still sets New Englanders apart from others. New England’s colleges and universities are known all over the country for their high academic standards. New England’s schools of higher learning, such as Harvard University (Massachusetts), Yale University (Connecticut), Brown University (Rhode Island) and Dartmouth College (New Hampshire), were originally religious in their purpose and orientation, but gradually became more secular. Harvard is widely considered the best business school in the nation; the Massachusetts Institute of Technology surpasses all others in economics and practical sciences.

Much of the older spirit of New England still survives today. It can be seen in the simple, woodframe houses and white church steeple that are features of many small towns. It can be heard in the horn blasts from fishing boats, as they leave their harbors on icy winter mornings.

The inhabitants of this region call coffee with cream “regular” and carbonated beverages “tonic”. Those who live in Boston, which most New Englanders recognize as their regional capital, eat hot dogs, beans and black bread on Saturday evening, and on Halloween they drink apple cider.

Living may be easier in some other regions, but most New Englanders envy none of them. Whatever the future brings, there is not much doubt that the region will face it with pride. True New Englanders do not think of their hills and valleys merely as home but also as a center of civilization. A woman from Boston was once asked why she rarely traveled. “Why should I travel,” she replied, “when I am already there?”

The Middle Atlantic Region

The Middle Atlantic States, together with New England, have traditionally been at the helm of economic and social progress. The largest states of the region, New York and Pennsylvania, became major centers of heavy industry. A number of the nation’s greatest cities and most of the factories producing iron, glass and steel were here.

The Middle Atlantic region had been settled by a wide range of people. Dutch made their homes in the woodlands along the lower Hudson River in what is now New York. Swedes established tiny communities in present-day Delaware. English Catholics founded Maryland, and Quakers, an English Protestant sect, settled Pennsylvania. In time, the Dutch and Swedish settlements fell under British control, yet the Middle Atlantic region remained an important early gateway to America for people from many parts of the world.

Early settlers of the region were mostly traders and farmers. In the early years the Middle Atlantic region was often used as a bridge between New England and the South. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the mid-point between the northern and southern colonies, became the home of the Continental Congress, a group that led the fight for independence. The same city was the birthplace of the Declaration of Independence in 1776 and the US Constitution in 1787.

At about the same time, some eastern Pennsylvania towns first tapped the iron deposits around Philadelphia. Heavy industries sprang up throughout the region because of nearby natural resources. Cities like New York, Philadelphia and Baltimore expanded into major urban areas.

Industries needed workers and many of them came from overseas. New York City was port of entry for most newcomers. In the 1890s and early 1900s millions of them sailed past the Statue of Liberty in New York harbor on the way to a fresh start in the US. Today New York ranks as the nation’s largest city, a financial and a cultural center for the US and the world.

The South

If all regions of the US differ from one another, the South could be said to differ most. Perhaps the basic difference between the South and other regions is geographic. This region was once described as a land of yellow sunlight, clouded horizons and steady haze. The first Europeans to settle this region were, as in New England, mostly English Protestants. However, few of them came to America in search of religious freedom. Most of them were looking for the opportunity to farm the land and live in reasonable comfort. Their early way of life resembled that of English farmers. Most farming was carried out on single family farms, but some settlers grew wealthy by raising and selling tobacco and cotton. In time they established large farms, called plantations, which required the work of many laborers. African slaves, shipped by the Spanish, Portuguese and English, supplied labor for these plantations. These slaves were bought and sold as property.

Even after the North began to industrialize in the 800s, the South remained agricultural. The economic interests of the manufacturing North became divergent from those of the agricultural South. Economic and political tensions began to divide the nation and eventually led to the Civil War (1861 – 1865). When the South finally surrendered in 1865 it was forced to accept many changes during the period of Reconstruction.

In the first half of the 20th century coastal sections of Florida and Georgia became vacation centers for Americans from other regions. In cities such as Atlanta and Memphis the population soared. The South was booming as never before.

Recent statistics show that the South differs from other regions in a number of ways. Southerners are more conservative, more religious and more violent than the rest of the country. Because fewer immigrants were attracted to less industrialized Southern states, Southerners are the most “native” of any region. Most black and white Southerners can trace their ancestry in this country back to before 1800s. Southerners tend to be more mindful of social rank and have strong ties of hometown and family.

Americans of other regions are quick to recognize a Southerner by their dialect. Southern speech tends to be much slower and more musical; Southerners say “you all” as the second person plural.

Flannery O’Conner, a novelist, once said: “When a southerner wants to make a point, he tells a story; it’s actually his way of reasoning and dealing with experience.” So the South has been one of the most outstanding literary regions in the 20th century. Novelists such as William Faulkner, Robert Penn Warren, Thomas Wolf and Tennessee Williams wrote stories of southern pride and nostalgia for the rural Southern past.

The South is also known for its music. In the cotton fields and slave quarters of the region, black Americans created a new folk music, Negro spirituals. These songs were religious in nature and similar to a later form of black American music, blues and jazz.

The Midwest

The Midwest is known as a region of small towns and huge tracts of farmland where more than half of the nation’s wheat and oats are raised. The key to the region is the mighty Mississippi river; in the early years it acted as a lifeline, moving settlers to new homes and great amounts of grain to market. In 1840s, Mark Twain spent his boyhood here. He later described the wonders of rafting on the river in his novel “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn”.

As the Midwest developed, it attracted not only easterners but also Europeans. People from Germany, Sweden, Finland, Ireland, Poland and Ukraine settled here. Gradually the Midwest became a region of small towns, barbed-wire fences to keep in the livestock, and huge fields of wheat and corn. A hectare of land in central Illinois could produce twice as much corn as a hectare of fertile soil in Virginia. For these reasons, the region was nicknamed the nation’s breadbasket. Mid-westerners are seen as “down-to-earth”, commercially-minded, self-sufficient, friendly and straightforward. Class divisions are felt less strongly here than in other regions. Their politics tend to be cautious, though the caution could sometimes be peppered with protest. The region gave birth to the Republican Party formed in 1850s to oppose the extending of slavery into western lands.

The region’s position in the middle of the continent, far removed from the east and west coasts, has encouraged Midwesterners to direct their concerns to their own domestic affairs, avoiding matters of wider interest. Today the hub of the region remains Chicago, Illinois, the nation’s third largest city. This major Great Lakes port has long been a connecting point for rail lines and air traffic crossing the continent.

The Southwest

The Southwest differs from the Midwest in three primary ways. First, it is drier. Second, it is emptier. Third, the population of several southwestern states comprises a different ethnic mix. In spring the rain may be so abundant that rivers rise over their banks. In summer and autumn, however, little rain falls in much of Arizona, New Mexico and the western sections of Texas. Partly because this region is drier, it is much less densely populated than the Midwest. Outside the cities the region is a land of wide open spaces. One can travel for miles in some areas without seeing signs of human life.

Parts of the Southwest once belonged to Mexico; the US gained this land after the war with its southern neighbor between 1846 and 1848. Today three southwestern states lie along the Mexican border – Texas, New Mexico and Arizona. All have a large Spanish-speaking population.

The West

Americans have long regarded the West as a “last frontier”. Scenic beauty exists on a grand scale here. All eleven states are partly mountainous, and in Washington, Oregon and northern California the mountains present some startling contrasts. To the west of the mountains winds of the Pacific Ocean carry enough moisture to keep the land well watered, to the east, however, the land is very dry. In many areas the population is sparse. Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, Utah, and Idaho – the Rocky Mountains states – occupy about 15 percent of the nation’s total land area. Yet these states have only about 3 percent of the nation’s total population. Except for Hawaii, the western states have been settled primarily by people from other parts of the country. Thus, the region has an interesting mix of ethnic regions. In southern California people of Mexican descent play a role in nearly every part of economy. In the valleys north of San Francisco, Italian families specialize in growing grapes, bottling and selling California wine. Americans of Japanese descent traditionally managed truck farms in northern California and Oregon. Chinese Americans were once mostly known as farmers, laborers and owners of laundries and restaurants.

California is usually associated with sunshine, luxury and relaxed lifestyle. Life is more flamboyant here. Some observers trace this quality to the Gold Rush of 1848, which first brought many Americans west in search of gold discovered there. Others say that the California experience is mostly the result of sunny climate and the self-confidence that comes of success. Today California is the most populated of the US states and one of the largest. Many people think of California as the state that symbolizes the American dream.

Different places, different habits

What makes one region differ from another? There are many answers to this question and the answers vary from place to place. As a case in point, consider the role of food in American life. Most foods are quite standard throughout the nation. That is a person can buy packages of frozen peas bearing the same label in Idaho, Missouri or Virginia. Cereals, rise, candy bars and many other foods appear in standard packages. The quality of fresh fruits and vegetables generally does not vary from one state to another. A few foods are not available on national basis. They are regional dishes, limited to a single territory. In San Francisco, one popular dish is abalone, a large shellfish from the Pacific Waters. Another is a pie, made of boysenberries, a cross between raspberries and cranberries. Neither of these dishes is likely to appear on a menu in a New York restaurant, however. And if you ask a Boston waiter for either dish, you might discover he has never heard of it.

Another example is the way Americans use the English language. For many years experts have been writing rule for standard American English, both written and spoken. With coming of radio and TV, this standard use of the English language has become much more generalized. Both within several regions and subregions local ways of speaking, or dialects, still remain quite strong. In some farming areas of New England the natives are known for being people of few words. When they speak at all they do it so in short, rather choppy sentences and clipped words. Even in the cities of New England there are definite styles of speech. Southern dialect tends to be much slower and more musical. People of this region refer to their slow speech as a “southern drawl”.

Regional differences extend beyond food and dialects. Among more educated Americans, these differences center on attitudes and outlooks. An example is the stress given to foreign news in various local newspapers. In the East, where people look out across the Atlantic Ocean, papers turn to show greatest concern with what is happening in Europe, North Africa and Western Asia. In the towns and cities that ring the Gulf of Mexico, the press tends to be more interested in Latin America. In California, bordering the Pacific Ocean, news editors give more attention to events in East Asia and Australia.

DISCUSSION

1. How can we explain the presence of Latin phrase E plubirus unum on every American coin? What do these words stand for?

2. Where is most of the nation’s population concentrated? What can be said about the rest of the land?

The country is divided into several regions. What are they? Are borders between them strongly demarcated?

3. In what aspects do American regions differ from one another?

4. How can describe the spirit of New England?

What was the role of the Middle Atlantic region in the development of nation’s industry, economy and politics?

What was the basic difference between the development of the American South and the rest of the nation?

5. What is the Mid-Western states economy based on?

6. What are the particular features of the Southwestern states?

7. How does the climate differ to the east and to the west of the Rockies?