By chance I have Albion’s Seed on my To Be Read pile right now. I am intrigued by any discussion of the lingering effects of British culture on American life. I have long maintained the greatest legacy from the mother country, aside from the language of Keats, Milton and Shakespeare, is English Common Law. It is the latter, for example, that distinguishes the lands to the north and the south of the imaginary line we call the US-Mexican border, and is the primary reason thousands of people attempt to cross that border from the south every year, instead of the other way around.
Yes, I am a confirmed Anglophile, which doesn’t mean I am blind to the historical abuses and injustices of perfidious Albion; but that I also recognize the stunning cultural and legal gifts Britain has bestowed on the entire world, such as the notion that government power should be statutorily curbed to protect the rights of the individual (I believe the first Bill of Rights in history was the English one from 1689). Could there be any more succinct expression of the relations between the state and a free subject or citizen than that of William Pitt the Elder, 1st Earl of Chatham?
“The poorest man may in his cottage bid defiance to all the forces of the Crown. It may be frail — its roof may shake — the wind may blow through it — the storm may enter — the rain may enter — but the KING OF ENGLAND cannot enter — all his force dares not cross the threshold of the ruined tenement!”
(If he had still been Prime Minister during the Troubles between Britain and her North American colonies, there would not have been a Revolutionary War, IMHO)
ANYWAY, I was a very active gun rights advocate for about ten or fifteen years (until I gave up when I realized American gun owners were their own worst enemies on the subject: you can’t coherently defend the “right to keep and bear arms” when you don’t actually believe in civil rights). I spent a lot of time looking into homicide rates in different countries and US cities, and arrived at the conclusion long ago that these variances in “acceptable violence” are down to culture and have nothing to do with this or that law attempting to curb it. You reduce violence by getting to work on the culture behind it, and there is no wishing it away by banning this or that contributory behavior (as the utter failure of the War on Drugs makes crystal clear).
One thing that frustrated me was this notion that the US was a particularly violent society when compared to “other countries.” The “other countries” were always European countries (plus Japan and Canada) that had little in common with the historical development of the US. Better comparisons would be with countries that experienced, within generational memory, high levels of immigration; genocide of the indigenous population; civil war; the pushing forward of a wild frontier; and slavery. In short, most of the nations of the Western Hemisphere. And in that regard, the US looks pretty good (Canada looks even better). And again, I submit the essential difference between, say, the US (and Canada) and El Salvador is English Common Law, which among other things provides a moderating influence on inherently violent peoples . . . like the English, Irish and Scottish.
All cultures have their quirks, and compared to Continental Europeans, casual violence has always been more acceptable to Anglo-Saxons and Irish. I lived in the UK for a couple years and saw this first-hand: you are much more likely to get into a bar fight in the UK, if you aren’t careful, than in most of the US, and certainly Continental Europe (I believe this is because Europeans are simply less violent; while American behavior is probably moderated by the very good chance your bar antagonist might be armed). When I returned to the US from the UK and spent a lot of time in Irish bars (which attract British expats as well as Irish and Irish-Americans), I saw much more fighting in the latter than in other bars, partly because most Americans would never expect the sort of escalation that can happen if you casually insult or irritate a drunk Brit or Irishman.
Another fun fact I used to deploy in my criticisms of gun controls: the homicide rate in Britain is (handwaving a little here) four times that of Germany, though both countries have very similar laws regarding weapon ownership. So how do you account for that? Culture. The laws mean nothing.
When you look at the supposedly extremely violent “Old West,” you find that most of the senseless violence between white people was not so much among cowboys of movie legend, but along the railroads, which were built with Irish labor (except for the Central Pacific, which used Chinese). The casual violence and murder was really unbelievable in the mobile labor camps called “Hell on Wheels.”
So what happened to these ultra-violent Scotch-Irish? Somehow, over a period of decades, they were integrated into the broader, less violent American society (there were times and places in US history when it wasn’t even against the law to dispatch a pesky Irishman, so reviled were they). Indeed, by the turn of the 20th century many police forces of large eastern cities were largely Irish-American. It took time.
It’s okay talking about violent Scotch-Irish culture, but for some reason you can’t go there when we have a similar terrible problem in our inner cities. There are two interviews with former Chicago mayor Rahm Emmanuel I’ve seen on YouTube, one early in his, um, reign, and one apparently conducted after he’d already decided not to run again. In both interviews the same question was asked: “Why is there so much killing going on in Chicago?” In the first interview he blamed the (lack of) gun control laws in Indiana (of course the next question out of the mouth of any thoughtful journalist would be, “So how come Indiana doesn’t have anything like Chicago’s level of violence?” but that didn’t happen). Good old Rahm Emmanuel, keeping on message.
In the second interview, he answered the question differently: he suggested (I’m paraphrasing) the culture was broken and needed to be fixed. For this comment he was roundly attacked by the media.
This year Lori Lightfoot was asked the same thing and not only did she blame Indiana, but Michigan and Wisconsin as well. And anyone who disagreed with her was a racist, misogynist and homophobe, so there, case closed. This is a woman who literally does not care how many citizens of her city are murdered every year. But I digress . . .
I have referred to it as “urban black culture” in the past because I couldn’t imagine anyone was stupid enough to believe I or anyone else was suggesting there was a genetic, racial component to it, but as you suggest, there are indeed people that stupid, and lots of them. So referring to it as “street culture” makes a lot more sense (who cares what race the people involved are? I don’t), though that will probably get you attacked for “using white supremacist code.” And are there Scotch-Irish roots to it? Why not? You make a good case. And if any indigenous West African culture remains among urban African-Americans (I doubt it, but anthropologists say some does), well, that’s a part of the world with pretty eye-watering casual violence too.
The late George Macdonald Fraser, in one of his Flashman books, referred to the Scots as “Britain’s own home-grown savages.” He ought to have known; he was of Scottish background himself and was a junior officer in a Highland regiment following the war. He also wrote a book, The Steel Bonnets, about the Scottish Borderlands (which is also on my TBR pile). I recently completed his memoirs of his wartime and postwar military life, and long ago eagerly consumed all his Flashman stories. You might want to check him out.
Sent your book recommend to my grandson in Japan (teaching ESL) and just got this reply: "I just finished reading American Nations by Colin Woodard. Its also about how different settlement patterns continue to influence modern American politics. He mentions Albion's Seed a few times as an influence. It was a very interesting read, I recommend." More to read!
Hi Leighton, nice post but I have to take issue with it.
First, some links. Albion’s Seed was discussed at length by Scott Alexander on Slate Star Codex a few years back. He was reasonably positive in his review but there was some pushback. Albion’s Seed is not settled history (if history can ever be settled) with the prime argument being that the Borderer bit is bad hisory relying on pre-1920’s writings meant to create the that Borderers were beasts.
From the piece I linked below:
“His section on "Borderers" is meant to create an image of a race of uncivilized whites who are habitually violent, chaotic, stupid, and resist attempts by others to "civilize" them, when in fact the Scots-Irish often sought integration, while rural, poor Appalachianers were more often the victims of violence from these supposedly civilized groups.”
Regardless of the truth of Albion’s Seed we’re still left with the question of how meaningful the text is in describing our current racial and cultural climate in America. Being able to trace behaviors and aphorisms to a culture that left Britain 200 years ago is not the same as explaining why we’re still dealing with cultural violence across the continent.
The problem is that “honor societies” are not English inventions, they exist across time and space in the dark closet of all human civilizations. Whether the honor practices in question originated from England, Mongolia, the Arabian Peninsula, Punjab or Sicily, the phenomenon remains consistent and perpetual.
Honor is a form of status based on respect and maintained through violence. Certainly there are other cultural value signals, example include wealth, intelligence and victimization. Honor has the benefit of requiring nothing but the willingness to use force which puts it within reach of anyone (men, if we’re honest) with a gun.
I do not consider myself a materialist, but a far better explanation for honor societies is the ease of access and lack of alternatives. While America may be distinctly influenced by British culture it is also marked by an intense stratification of wealth and opportunity that reaches back just as far. There is little opportunity for poor Americans to distinguish themselves in terms of intelligence or ingenuity as measured in terms of wealth. Honor has no such limitation.
My in-expert opinion is that this issue resides largely in the hearts of (young) men who have little ability to generate status. The solution likely resides in the improvement in the lives of women, for whom all of the status games seek attention. Women who value men with status signifiers other than honor will drive those cultures to change. I believe this has been demonstrated globally many times in the past few decades: improving the lives of women through liberalism improves the life of children and the goals and attitudes of men. This suggestion has the bonus of being testable: we should see more honor cultures in places where status and mobility are restricted, that would include the US in 2022.
Obviously this is a complicated issue that can’t be summarized with a single simple solution but pointing at one historical culture risks acting as a just-so story that allows us to look beyond the deeper and longer term causes poverty and violence.
There is an interesting discussion of borderers, rednecks, etc, and their culture in Thomas Sowell's "Black Rednecks and White Liberals":
"What the rednecks or crackers brought with them across the ocean was a whole constellation of attitudes, values, and behavior patterns that might have made sense in the world in which they had lived for centuries, but which would prove to be counterproductive in the world to which they were going—and counterproductive to the blacks who would live in their midst for centuries before emerging into freedom and migrating to the great urban centers of the United States, taking with them similar values.
The cultural values and social patterns prevalent among Southern whites included an aversion to work, proneness to violence, neglect of education, sexual promiscuity, improvidence, drunkenness, lack of entrepreneurship, reckless searches for excitement, lively music and dance, and a style of religious oratory marked by strident rhetoric, unbridled emotions, and flamboyant imagery. This oratorical style carried over into the political oratory of the region in both the Jim Crow era and the civil rights era, and has continued on into our own times among black politicians, preachers, and activists. Touchy pride, vanity, and boastful self-dramatization were also part of this redneck culture among people from regions of Britain “where the civilization was the least developed.”
Leighton, What you describe below is not just Scoth-Irish culture, but many tribal culture in general. Read Ayaan Hirsi Ali for her experience in Somalia of just how far tribal differences reached and how much hatred and violence they bring about.
"That included this culture’s conception of justice. In a region without a functioning state, order was maintained by the threat of violent retaliation. Your family’s physical security depended upon the assurance that if attacked, you would respond in kind. This material condition of informal deterrence was expressed culturally in the ethic of personal honor. As a matter of self-preservation, one’s reputation for being willing to go to battle over any perceived assertion of dominance by an outside party was paramount. Your life literally depended on it."
Thought-provoking piece, Leighton. Scotch-Irish culture interests me personally (my family heritage) and intellectually, having previously read Nations of America by Colin Woodward (which expands on Albion's Seed) and Poor White Trash by Nancy Isenberg. Both of these books shine a light on the consequences of and political reaction to Scotch-Irish culture in this country, and I remain firmly convinced that both are required reading for anyone who really wants to understand the current state of our national politics. I find it so fascinating how far cultural echoes can carry - those borderlanders have been challenging authority and causing trouble for over two millenia (just ask the Romans)!
It would be interesting to see an analysis of crime as relates to culture in the Anglo-Scottish border areas today. Maybe culture there has progressed and here not so much. IDK. Having spent SOME amount of time in County Fife, in and around Edinburgh, I can safely say that a distinctive culture there does exist and seems to have strong parallels to the things you describe and that are explained in the book you reference BUT places there are nowhere as frightening as they are (to me) in, say, places in Appalachia I have been or inner city zones where I have been scared. Maybe what brings about the violence is the fact of geography and a sense of foreignness all around. So, the brawling homesteaders in Tennessee/Kentucky would live with a severe sense of dread that related to what was "out there" and not the "home culture" (i.e. wilderness, natives, other European-settlers) and that dread would translate into a kind of severe violence. Anyway, culture cannot relate to the absence of Law. I think Cormac McCarthy does a good job of defining Irish-Scotts culture in relation to Mexican/Spanish culture in his novels about the Texas, New Mexico border areas. The book Blood Meridian tells the story of a boy from Tennessee who follows the Southern migration route and along the way begins to enact extreme violence that corresponds to the lawlessness he finds on the frontier. David Milch's Deadwood also does a good job of depicting the lawless/anarchistic of frontier. So, all this is to say I do not know that lawless geographic zones that then create a type of culture is unique to Scotland/Northern England.
Another very thoughtful essay.
By chance I have Albion’s Seed on my To Be Read pile right now. I am intrigued by any discussion of the lingering effects of British culture on American life. I have long maintained the greatest legacy from the mother country, aside from the language of Keats, Milton and Shakespeare, is English Common Law. It is the latter, for example, that distinguishes the lands to the north and the south of the imaginary line we call the US-Mexican border, and is the primary reason thousands of people attempt to cross that border from the south every year, instead of the other way around.
Yes, I am a confirmed Anglophile, which doesn’t mean I am blind to the historical abuses and injustices of perfidious Albion; but that I also recognize the stunning cultural and legal gifts Britain has bestowed on the entire world, such as the notion that government power should be statutorily curbed to protect the rights of the individual (I believe the first Bill of Rights in history was the English one from 1689). Could there be any more succinct expression of the relations between the state and a free subject or citizen than that of William Pitt the Elder, 1st Earl of Chatham?
“The poorest man may in his cottage bid defiance to all the forces of the Crown. It may be frail — its roof may shake — the wind may blow through it — the storm may enter — the rain may enter — but the KING OF ENGLAND cannot enter — all his force dares not cross the threshold of the ruined tenement!”
(If he had still been Prime Minister during the Troubles between Britain and her North American colonies, there would not have been a Revolutionary War, IMHO)
ANYWAY, I was a very active gun rights advocate for about ten or fifteen years (until I gave up when I realized American gun owners were their own worst enemies on the subject: you can’t coherently defend the “right to keep and bear arms” when you don’t actually believe in civil rights). I spent a lot of time looking into homicide rates in different countries and US cities, and arrived at the conclusion long ago that these variances in “acceptable violence” are down to culture and have nothing to do with this or that law attempting to curb it. You reduce violence by getting to work on the culture behind it, and there is no wishing it away by banning this or that contributory behavior (as the utter failure of the War on Drugs makes crystal clear).
One thing that frustrated me was this notion that the US was a particularly violent society when compared to “other countries.” The “other countries” were always European countries (plus Japan and Canada) that had little in common with the historical development of the US. Better comparisons would be with countries that experienced, within generational memory, high levels of immigration; genocide of the indigenous population; civil war; the pushing forward of a wild frontier; and slavery. In short, most of the nations of the Western Hemisphere. And in that regard, the US looks pretty good (Canada looks even better). And again, I submit the essential difference between, say, the US (and Canada) and El Salvador is English Common Law, which among other things provides a moderating influence on inherently violent peoples . . . like the English, Irish and Scottish.
All cultures have their quirks, and compared to Continental Europeans, casual violence has always been more acceptable to Anglo-Saxons and Irish. I lived in the UK for a couple years and saw this first-hand: you are much more likely to get into a bar fight in the UK, if you aren’t careful, than in most of the US, and certainly Continental Europe (I believe this is because Europeans are simply less violent; while American behavior is probably moderated by the very good chance your bar antagonist might be armed). When I returned to the US from the UK and spent a lot of time in Irish bars (which attract British expats as well as Irish and Irish-Americans), I saw much more fighting in the latter than in other bars, partly because most Americans would never expect the sort of escalation that can happen if you casually insult or irritate a drunk Brit or Irishman.
Another fun fact I used to deploy in my criticisms of gun controls: the homicide rate in Britain is (handwaving a little here) four times that of Germany, though both countries have very similar laws regarding weapon ownership. So how do you account for that? Culture. The laws mean nothing.
When you look at the supposedly extremely violent “Old West,” you find that most of the senseless violence between white people was not so much among cowboys of movie legend, but along the railroads, which were built with Irish labor (except for the Central Pacific, which used Chinese). The casual violence and murder was really unbelievable in the mobile labor camps called “Hell on Wheels.”
So what happened to these ultra-violent Scotch-Irish? Somehow, over a period of decades, they were integrated into the broader, less violent American society (there were times and places in US history when it wasn’t even against the law to dispatch a pesky Irishman, so reviled were they). Indeed, by the turn of the 20th century many police forces of large eastern cities were largely Irish-American. It took time.
It’s okay talking about violent Scotch-Irish culture, but for some reason you can’t go there when we have a similar terrible problem in our inner cities. There are two interviews with former Chicago mayor Rahm Emmanuel I’ve seen on YouTube, one early in his, um, reign, and one apparently conducted after he’d already decided not to run again. In both interviews the same question was asked: “Why is there so much killing going on in Chicago?” In the first interview he blamed the (lack of) gun control laws in Indiana (of course the next question out of the mouth of any thoughtful journalist would be, “So how come Indiana doesn’t have anything like Chicago’s level of violence?” but that didn’t happen). Good old Rahm Emmanuel, keeping on message.
In the second interview, he answered the question differently: he suggested (I’m paraphrasing) the culture was broken and needed to be fixed. For this comment he was roundly attacked by the media.
This year Lori Lightfoot was asked the same thing and not only did she blame Indiana, but Michigan and Wisconsin as well. And anyone who disagreed with her was a racist, misogynist and homophobe, so there, case closed. This is a woman who literally does not care how many citizens of her city are murdered every year. But I digress . . .
I have referred to it as “urban black culture” in the past because I couldn’t imagine anyone was stupid enough to believe I or anyone else was suggesting there was a genetic, racial component to it, but as you suggest, there are indeed people that stupid, and lots of them. So referring to it as “street culture” makes a lot more sense (who cares what race the people involved are? I don’t), though that will probably get you attacked for “using white supremacist code.” And are there Scotch-Irish roots to it? Why not? You make a good case. And if any indigenous West African culture remains among urban African-Americans (I doubt it, but anthropologists say some does), well, that’s a part of the world with pretty eye-watering casual violence too.
The late George Macdonald Fraser, in one of his Flashman books, referred to the Scots as “Britain’s own home-grown savages.” He ought to have known; he was of Scottish background himself and was a junior officer in a Highland regiment following the war. He also wrote a book, The Steel Bonnets, about the Scottish Borderlands (which is also on my TBR pile). I recently completed his memoirs of his wartime and postwar military life, and long ago eagerly consumed all his Flashman stories. You might want to check him out.
Sent your book recommend to my grandson in Japan (teaching ESL) and just got this reply: "I just finished reading American Nations by Colin Woodard. Its also about how different settlement patterns continue to influence modern American politics. He mentions Albion's Seed a few times as an influence. It was a very interesting read, I recommend." More to read!
Hi Leighton, nice post but I have to take issue with it.
First, some links. Albion’s Seed was discussed at length by Scott Alexander on Slate Star Codex a few years back. He was reasonably positive in his review but there was some pushback. Albion’s Seed is not settled history (if history can ever be settled) with the prime argument being that the Borderer bit is bad hisory relying on pre-1920’s writings meant to create the that Borderers were beasts.
From the piece I linked below:
“His section on "Borderers" is meant to create an image of a race of uncivilized whites who are habitually violent, chaotic, stupid, and resist attempts by others to "civilize" them, when in fact the Scots-Irish often sought integration, while rural, poor Appalachianers were more often the victims of violence from these supposedly civilized groups.”
Regardless of the truth of Albion’s Seed we’re still left with the question of how meaningful the text is in describing our current racial and cultural climate in America. Being able to trace behaviors and aphorisms to a culture that left Britain 200 years ago is not the same as explaining why we’re still dealing with cultural violence across the continent.
The problem is that “honor societies” are not English inventions, they exist across time and space in the dark closet of all human civilizations. Whether the honor practices in question originated from England, Mongolia, the Arabian Peninsula, Punjab or Sicily, the phenomenon remains consistent and perpetual.
Honor is a form of status based on respect and maintained through violence. Certainly there are other cultural value signals, example include wealth, intelligence and victimization. Honor has the benefit of requiring nothing but the willingness to use force which puts it within reach of anyone (men, if we’re honest) with a gun.
I do not consider myself a materialist, but a far better explanation for honor societies is the ease of access and lack of alternatives. While America may be distinctly influenced by British culture it is also marked by an intense stratification of wealth and opportunity that reaches back just as far. There is little opportunity for poor Americans to distinguish themselves in terms of intelligence or ingenuity as measured in terms of wealth. Honor has no such limitation.
My in-expert opinion is that this issue resides largely in the hearts of (young) men who have little ability to generate status. The solution likely resides in the improvement in the lives of women, for whom all of the status games seek attention. Women who value men with status signifiers other than honor will drive those cultures to change. I believe this has been demonstrated globally many times in the past few decades: improving the lives of women through liberalism improves the life of children and the goals and attitudes of men. This suggestion has the bonus of being testable: we should see more honor cultures in places where status and mobility are restricted, that would include the US in 2022.
Obviously this is a complicated issue that can’t be summarized with a single simple solution but pointing at one historical culture risks acting as a just-so story that allows us to look beyond the deeper and longer term causes poverty and violence.
https://slatestarcodex.com/2016/04/27/book-review-albions-seed/
https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/08/albions-seed-genotyped/
https://www.reddit.com/r/badhistory/comments/8q6krp/albions_seed_the_hillbilly_myth_and_slate_star/
https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780195396607/obo-9780195396607-0160.xml
Fascinating for personal reasons.
There is an interesting discussion of borderers, rednecks, etc, and their culture in Thomas Sowell's "Black Rednecks and White Liberals":
"What the rednecks or crackers brought with them across the ocean was a whole constellation of attitudes, values, and behavior patterns that might have made sense in the world in which they had lived for centuries, but which would prove to be counterproductive in the world to which they were going—and counterproductive to the blacks who would live in their midst for centuries before emerging into freedom and migrating to the great urban centers of the United States, taking with them similar values.
The cultural values and social patterns prevalent among Southern whites included an aversion to work, proneness to violence, neglect of education, sexual promiscuity, improvidence, drunkenness, lack of entrepreneurship, reckless searches for excitement, lively music and dance, and a style of religious oratory marked by strident rhetoric, unbridled emotions, and flamboyant imagery. This oratorical style carried over into the political oratory of the region in both the Jim Crow era and the civil rights era, and has continued on into our own times among black politicians, preachers, and activists. Touchy pride, vanity, and boastful self-dramatization were also part of this redneck culture among people from regions of Britain “where the civilization was the least developed.”
Leighton, What you describe below is not just Scoth-Irish culture, but many tribal culture in general. Read Ayaan Hirsi Ali for her experience in Somalia of just how far tribal differences reached and how much hatred and violence they bring about.
"That included this culture’s conception of justice. In a region without a functioning state, order was maintained by the threat of violent retaliation. Your family’s physical security depended upon the assurance that if attacked, you would respond in kind. This material condition of informal deterrence was expressed culturally in the ethic of personal honor. As a matter of self-preservation, one’s reputation for being willing to go to battle over any perceived assertion of dominance by an outside party was paramount. Your life literally depended on it."
Thought-provoking piece, Leighton. Scotch-Irish culture interests me personally (my family heritage) and intellectually, having previously read Nations of America by Colin Woodward (which expands on Albion's Seed) and Poor White Trash by Nancy Isenberg. Both of these books shine a light on the consequences of and political reaction to Scotch-Irish culture in this country, and I remain firmly convinced that both are required reading for anyone who really wants to understand the current state of our national politics. I find it so fascinating how far cultural echoes can carry - those borderlanders have been challenging authority and causing trouble for over two millenia (just ask the Romans)!
It would be interesting to see an analysis of crime as relates to culture in the Anglo-Scottish border areas today. Maybe culture there has progressed and here not so much. IDK. Having spent SOME amount of time in County Fife, in and around Edinburgh, I can safely say that a distinctive culture there does exist and seems to have strong parallels to the things you describe and that are explained in the book you reference BUT places there are nowhere as frightening as they are (to me) in, say, places in Appalachia I have been or inner city zones where I have been scared. Maybe what brings about the violence is the fact of geography and a sense of foreignness all around. So, the brawling homesteaders in Tennessee/Kentucky would live with a severe sense of dread that related to what was "out there" and not the "home culture" (i.e. wilderness, natives, other European-settlers) and that dread would translate into a kind of severe violence. Anyway, culture cannot relate to the absence of Law. I think Cormac McCarthy does a good job of defining Irish-Scotts culture in relation to Mexican/Spanish culture in his novels about the Texas, New Mexico border areas. The book Blood Meridian tells the story of a boy from Tennessee who follows the Southern migration route and along the way begins to enact extreme violence that corresponds to the lawlessness he finds on the frontier. David Milch's Deadwood also does a good job of depicting the lawless/anarchistic of frontier. So, all this is to say I do not know that lawless geographic zones that then create a type of culture is unique to Scotland/Northern England.