If you’re like most of my readers, you think you live in the United States (if you’re one of my international readers, so glad you’re here! Read on to find out about our American idiosyncracies). But if you think you live in the United States, think again, according to Colin Woodward in his book, American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America
Mr. Woodward postulates that there are regions in the U.S. with very different world views and political leanings that evolved from separate histories – and they’re not the ones you may think. For example, here in Northern New Jersey, I’m in perhaps the smallest (although most densely populated) “nation” of its own, which he calls “New Netherlands” and which encompasses only New York City and my region of New Jersey. (For all of us who thought we were a nation unto ourselves, I guess we were right). It’s not just Yankees and Southerners, although that’s part of it.
Where does your neck of the U.S. fit into this theory? Are you in Tidewater? Or the region “intensely suspicious of lowland aristocrats and Yankee social engineers alike?” Read the article: click here. Or check out the book in the link below.
