Climates, Cultures, and Founding Myths

2000 ◽  
Author(s):  
William B. Meyer
Keyword(s):  
Social Order ◽  
The United States ◽  
Atlantic Seaboard ◽  
The North ◽  
Mediterranean Countries ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
Stuart England ◽  
The One ◽  
North And South ◽  
Different Climates

The size, scope, and variety of changes in weather-society relations that history records are a great embarrassment to climatic determinism, for they have occurred without the weather itself becoming drastically different. But if determinism cannot account well for change, it surely holds more promise in explaining continuity. And indeed a pattern that goes back to the earliest years of Anglo-American settlement has long been a favorite illustration for climatic determinists of how environments shape societies. The Atlantic seaboard communities in the North and South of what is now the United States have for centuries differed markedly in their political culture and social structure. The environment has often been held responsible according to a general law supposedly governing such matters. Here as elsewhere, the enduring influence of heat made the South "traditional and conservative"; that of cold made the North "innovative and progressive." But it is conceding nothing to determinism to note that those contrasts do indeed have something to do with climate. They are merely related to it by another and far more tortuous pathway, time- and place-specific rather than universal, than the one suggested. The contrasts were not imposed by different climates molding originally similar groups of settlers and their descendants. Rather, the mixes of resources and hazards that different climates seemed to offer in one particular period attracted different kind of colonists and colonization, giving rise to different institutions and societies whose effects are still apparent. The contrasts between North and South do not bear out any timeless truth about climate-society relations, nor do they reflect anything that higher and lower latitudes always mean for their inhabitants. They reflect, rather, what those latitudes happened to mean in a certain time and place and social order, what they meant to the elites of Tudor and Stuart England. Late-sixteenth-century England was not in an enviable position economically. It could feed and clothe itself, but its surplus productions for export were few and unimpressive. The most important of them was woollen cloth, which was not an article much in demand in the warmer Mediterranean countries that supplied England with many of its necessities and luxuries: wine, sugar, olive and other oils, citrus fruits, silks, and spices.

Towards a Bourgeois Revolution? Explaining the American Civil War

2011 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 193-205 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Ashworth
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Civil War ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Other ◽  
Class Conflict ◽  
The North ◽  
Wage Labour ◽  
The One ◽  
The Cost ◽  
North And South

Abstract This paper introduces arguments from Slavery, Capitalism, and Politics in the Antebellum Republic1 to suggest that the Civil War arose ultimately because of class-conflict between on the one hand, Southern slaves and their masters and, on the other, Northern workers and their employers. It does not, however, suggest that either in the North or the South these conflicts were on the point of erupting into revolution. On the contrary, they were relatively easily containable. However, harmony within each section (North and South) could be secured only at the cost of intersectional conflict, conflict which would finally erupt into civil war. The Civil War was a ‘bourgeois revolution’ not only because it destroyed slavery, an essentially precapitalist system of production, in the United States but also because it resulted in the enthronement of Northern values, with the normalisation of wage-labour at their core.

American Immigration: A Very Short Introduction

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
David A. Gerber
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
Illegal Immigration ◽  
The United States ◽  
American Identity ◽  
National Character ◽  
Short Introduction ◽  
Anglo American

American Immigration: A Very Short Introduction traces three massive waves of immigration from the mid-nineteenth century to the present, and analyzes the nature of immigration as a purposeful, structured activity, attitudes supporting or hostile to immigration, policies and laws regulating immigration, and the nature of and prospects for assimilation. There have been some dramatic developments since 2011, including the crisis along the southwestern border and the intense conflict over illegal immigration. The population of the United States has diverse sources: territorial acquisition through conquest and colonialism, the slave trade, and voluntary immigration. Many Americans value the memory of immigrant ancestors, and are sentimentally inclined to immigrant strivings. Alongside this sits the perception that immigration destabilizes social order, cultural coherence, job markets, and political alignments. The nearly 250 years of American nationhood has been characterized by both support for openness to immigration and embrace of a cosmopolitan formulation of American identity and for restrictions and assertions of belief in a core Anglo-American national character.

Postbellum America

2000 ◽  
Author(s):  
William B. Meyer
Keyword(s):  
Internal Migration ◽  
The Other ◽  
National Unity ◽  
Climatic Zones ◽  
The North ◽  
Human Trait ◽  
The One ◽  
North And South ◽  
The U.S ◽  
Over Time

One of the earliest historians of the Civil War saw it as a fundamental clash between the peoples of different latitudes. Climate had made the antebellum North and South distinct societies and natural enemies, John W. Draper argued, the one democratic and individualist, the other aristocratic and oligarchical. If such were the case, the future of the reunited states was hardly a bright one. But Draper saw no natural barriers to national unity that wise policy could not surmount. The restlessness and transience of American life that many deplored instead merited, in his view, every assistance possible. In particular, he wrote, Americans needed to be encouraged to move as freely across climatic zones as they already did within them. The tendency of North and South to congeal into hostile types of civilization could be frustrated, but only by an incessant mingling of people. Sectional discord was inevitable only if the natural law that "emigrants move on parallels of latitude" were left free to take its course. These patterns of emigration were left free, for the most part, but without the renewed strife that Draper feared. After the war as before it, few settlers relocating to new homes moved far to the north or south of their points of origin. As late as 1895, Henry Gannett, chief geographer to the U.S. Census, could still describe internal migration as "mainly conducted westward along parallels of latitude." More often as time went on, it was supposed that race and not merely habit underlay the pattern, that climatic preferences were innate, different stocks of people staying in the latitudes of their forbears by the compulsion of biology. Thus, it was supposed, Anglo-Saxons preferred cooler lands than Americans of Mediterranean ancestry, while those of African descent preferred warmer climates than either. Over time, though, latitude loosened its grip and exceptions to the rule multiplied. As the share of the population in farming declined, so did the strongest reason for migrants to stay within familiar climates. Even by the time Gannett wrote, the tendency that he described, though still apparent, was weaker than it had been at mid-century. It weakened because a preference for familiar climates was not a fixed human trait but one shaped by experience and wants, and capable of changing as these variables changed.

Epilogue

2018 ◽  
pp. 123-126
Author(s):  
David J. Bodenhamer
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Democratic Republic ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Regime ◽  
Bill Of Rights ◽  
Health Safety ◽  
Plural Noun ◽  
Atlantic Seaboard ◽  
The One

The United States does not operate today under the Constitution ratified in 1788 or the Constitution as completed by the Bill of Rights in 1791 or even the one revised by the Reconstruction amendments. Nor is it the same nation. The United States, then a plural noun and now a collective one, has grown from thirteen states hugging the Atlantic seaboard to fifty states spread across a continent and beyond. It has experienced a civil war that ended one social and political regime and ultimately ushered in another far different from anything most people could have imagined in 1776 or even in 1865. From its beginnings as a second-rate country with a tiny navy and army, it has grown to become a global economic and military superpower. It is a democratic republic in which democracy weighs far more heavily in its constitutional and societal calculus than the framers would have endorsed. Its citizens vest government with the responsibility for safeguarding their prosperity, health, safety, and welfare in ways alien to the experiences of the founding generation....

Sectionalism and Policy Formation in the United States: President Carter's Welfare Initiatives

1996 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 337-367 ◽  
Author(s):  
Desmond King
Keyword(s):  
Family Support ◽  
The United States ◽  
Policy Formation ◽  
Jimmy Carter ◽  
Archival Material ◽  
The North ◽  
Family Support Act ◽  
The Family ◽  
The Us ◽  
North And South

President Jimmy Carter twice attempted to enact major reforms of the US welfare system. Using archival material from the Carter Presidential Library, this article argues that one major reason for the failure of both initiatives was the persistence of regional divisions between representatives from the north and south in the Congress. This factor is as germane to the welfare failure as poor presidential-congressional relations and changes to the committee seniority system in the Congress. American welfare programmes were institutionalized in such a way that, from the 1930s, building a coalition across sectional interests (as represented by members of the Congress) was nearly impossible: gains to one region constituted losses to the other. The consequence of the way Carter pursued and failed to achieve welfare reform was to enhance the priorities, particularly ‘working for welfare’, exploited by Reagan in the final year of his administration when the Family Support Act was enacted.

scholarly journals A System Dynamics Simulation to Estimate Roundabout Entry Capacity by Adopting Three Different Methods

2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 35-45
Author(s):  
Raquim N. Zehawi
Keyword(s):  
System Dynamics ◽  
The United States ◽  
Dynamics Simulation ◽  
Traffic Data ◽  
Dynamics Model ◽  
The North ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Transportation Agencies ◽  
North And South ◽  
Observation Period

Many models were introduced to estimate the  roundabout entry capacity from 1980s until  now. In the United States, transportation  agencies adopted three different models from  1994 until 2010. The Austroads, the UK, and  the HCM 2010 methods. In this paper, these  three methods were used to analyze the field  traffic data of Al-Quds roundabout, located  near Baqubah City, simultaneously by utilizing  a system dynamics model. The collected data  included turning movements, circulating flows,  and field calculated entry capacities whenever  possible during the observation period which  lasted for 14 consecutive hours. A comparison  is then conducted on the resulting entry capacities and their variation over time. The  results showed that the calculated capacity  according to Austroads method is the highest at all times while the UK method was always a little lower and the HCM 2010 method was  always the least on all entries. The UK method  capacity estimates were the closest to the field  measured capacities for they returned the least  RMSE on all entries. Field capacities showed some tendency towards the Austroads results  in the north and south bound entries which  carry about 66% of the total traffic. While, field capacities showed more proximity  towards the HCM capacity results in the east  and the west bound entries which carry 34% of  the total traffic.

The Political Economy of NAFTA/USMCA

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gustavo A. Flores-Macías ◽  
Mariano Sánchez-Talanquer
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Free Trade ◽  
Free Trade Area ◽  
Trade Agreement ◽  
The United States ◽  
Trade Area ◽  
The North ◽  
Positive Side ◽  
The One ◽  
United States Mexico

When the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) came into force on January 1st, 1994, it created the largest free trade area in the world, and the one with the largest gaps in development between member countries. It has since served as a framework for trilateral commercial exchange and investment between Canada, Mexico, and the United States. NAFTA’s consequences have been mixed. On the positive side, the total value of trade in the region reached $1.1 trillion in 2016, more than three times the amount in 1994, and total foreign direct investment among member countries also grew significantly. However, the distribution of benefits has been very uneven, with exposure to international competition reducing economic opportunity and increasing insecurity for certain sectors in all three countries. Twenty-four years later, the three countries renegotiated the terms of NAFTA and renamed it the United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement (USMCA). The negotiation responded in part to the need to modernize the agreement, but mostly to President Donald Trump’s concerns about NAFTA’s effect on the U.S. economy and the fairness of its terms. Although the revised agreement incorporated rules that modernize certain aspects of the institutional framework, some new provisions also make trade and investment relations in North America more uncertain.

Between European and American Dominance: Mexican Foreign Trade in the Nineteenth Century

Itinerario ◽  
1997 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 115-141
Author(s):  
Walther L. Bernecker
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Foreign Trade ◽  
North Atlantic ◽  
The United States ◽  
Geographic Proximity ◽  
The North ◽  
Economic Ties ◽  
North And South ◽  
Economic Considerations

Conventional accounts of economic links between the North Atlantic nations (USA/Europe) and Mexico state that the Europeans clearly dominated Mexican foreign trade in the first decades after national independence while the United States only achieved significance in Mexico's import-export trade in the Porfiriato during the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Such studies suggest that the United States only gradually discovered an interest in Mexico so that in previous decades the Europeans ruled the field unchallenged. It is generally overlooked that from quite early on Mexico was a part of North American foreign and trade policy because of geopolitical and economic considerations. The geopolitical component was the result of the geographic proximity of Mexico to its northern neighbour; the economic ties due to Mexico's silver mines, the intensive smuggling between North and South from the outset, and the constant increase in trade volume.

scholarly journals North–South relations and human rights

2015 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
Soosaipillai Keethaponcalan
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Sri Lanka ◽  
National Interest ◽  
The United States ◽  
Economic Assistance ◽  
The South ◽  
The North ◽  
The Us ◽  
Human Rights Standards ◽  
North And South

There are apparent differences between the developed North and the economically weak South. The relations between the North and South are marked by dichotomies and in order to deal with the challenges posed by the South, the North choses control and cooperation. The North uses several instruments including economic assistance to achieve its objectives. One of the new tools that is increasingly taken advantage of is human rights. Although there exists a genuine concern about human rights standards in the South, action on these issues almost always depends on national interest of the states in the North. This paradigm is proved true by the present human rights campaign the United States is undertaking against Sri Lanka in the United Nations Human Rights Council. The US and its Western allies believe that serious human rights violations have been committed during the last phase of the war in Sri Lanka. Promoting accountability and insisting on an international investigation, the US has successfully presented three resolutions on Sri Lanka since 2012. This paper argues that the US action is motivated primarily by its national interest. At the secondary level the US is interested in curtailing what is called the Sri Lanka model of conflict resolution and promoting reconciliation.

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