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In order to truly understand this article, it helps to have read Albion's Seed. It's true that Spanish influence isn't taken into account enough in this articl

In order to truly understand this article, it helps to have read Albion's Seed. It's true that Spanish influence isn't taken into account enough in this article, but the article is still pretty sound in the importance it puts on Puritan and Borderer (Scots-Irish) cultural influence, as these are the two foremost cultural forces at odds with one another to this day, not just in California, but across the United States. The Okies in this case would be Borderers. And again, although we see other non-Anglo cultural forces, immigrants typically align and integrate more or less with either the Puritan or the Borderer ethos.

082349872349872 2y ago
The immigrants, in this case, were all the anglos who showed up after the original hispanic settlement, and filibustered their way into Statehood. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Republic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Republic
- alephnerd 2y ago
  Also, Anglo (as in Anglo-Saxon) settlers aren't even that prominent demographically in California. Irish (eg. Kearny), German (eg. Haas, Levi, Sutter), Southern Italians, Russian, and Chinese settlers were much more prominent than Anglos during the frontier era along with the obviously large Hispanic population in a region that has been under Spanish rule longer than it has been under American rule.
Gimpei 2y ago
I haven’t read Albion’s seed, so maybe I’m missing something. But… I don’t see any evidence for anything in the piece. Just because you can make a narrative about the similarities between puritans and certain facets of California policy doesn’t mean that one caused the other. I could point out parallels between the puritans and Japanese culture too, or Venezuelan culture. This doesn’t seem like history to me so much as fiction writing.
- VoodooJuJu 2y ago
  Right, this article doesn't make a case tracing Puritan and Borderer settlement to modern day California, but the book Albion's Seed does, and it makes a very convincing case. The book examines a variety of folkways, naming conventions, and lineages in the cultural regions throughout old England, discovers those same things present in regions throughout America, and then follows the continued expression of those folkways and lineages all the way up to the present day. And although we can find similarities between Puritans or Borderers with other cultures around the world, we can't make a convincing case that, for example, the Japanese had a significant influence on American culture and politics, because again, the primary sources revealing the folkways examined in Albion's seed are quite distinct and can be accurately traced from old England, to American settlement, and again up to the present day. Puritan architecture, food, naming conventions, and ancestry is quite distinct and well-understood, and we see evidence of those things throughout the United states, whereas there's not much Japanese architecture, food, place-names, or influential dynasties here in America. Anyway, Albion's Seed is a very good book that I highly recommend reading.
alephnerd 2y ago
> The Okies in this case would be Borderers. Okies were not uniformly Scotch Irish - it was a generic term for internal migrants from North Texas and Southern Oklahoma which was very ethnically diverse with German, Czech, Russian, and Southern settlers along with Native Americans and Hispanics.

082349872349872 2y ago

The immigrants, in this case, were all the anglos who showed up after the original hispanic settlement, and filibustered their way into Statehood. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Republic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Republic

alephnerd 2y ago
Also, Anglo (as in Anglo-Saxon) settlers aren't even that prominent demographically in California. Irish (eg. Kearny), German (eg. Haas, Levi, Sutter), Southern Italians, Russian, and Chinese settlers were much more prominent than Anglos during the frontier era along with the obviously large Hispanic population in a region that has been under Spanish rule longer than it has been under American rule.

Gimpei 2y ago

I haven’t read Albion’s seed, so maybe I’m missing something. But… I don’t see any evidence for anything in the piece. Just because you can make a narrative about the similarities between puritans and certain facets of California policy doesn’t mean that one caused the other. I could point out parallels between the puritans and Japanese culture too, or Venezuelan culture. This doesn’t seem like history to me so much as fiction writing.

VoodooJuJu 2y ago
Right, this article doesn't make a case tracing Puritan and Borderer settlement to modern day California, but the book Albion's Seed does, and it makes a very convincing case. The book examines a variety of folkways, naming conventions, and lineages in the cultural regions throughout old England, discovers those same things present in regions throughout America, and then follows the continued expression of those folkways and lineages all the way up to the present day. And although we can find similarities between Puritans or Borderers with other cultures around the world, we can't make a convincing case that, for example, the Japanese had a significant influence on American culture and politics, because again, the primary sources revealing the folkways examined in Albion's seed are quite distinct and can be accurately traced from old England, to American settlement, and again up to the present day. Puritan architecture, food, naming conventions, and ancestry is quite distinct and well-understood, and we see evidence of those things throughout the United states, whereas there's not much Japanese architecture, food, place-names, or influential dynasties here in America. Anyway, Albion's Seed is a very good book that I highly recommend reading.

alephnerd 2y ago

> The Okies in this case would be Borderers. Okies were not uniformly Scotch Irish - it was a generic term for internal migrants from North Texas and Southern Oklahoma which was very ethnically diverse with German, Czech, Russian, and Southern settlers along with Native Americans and Hispanics.