A History of AppalachiaRichard Drake has skillfully woven together the various strands of the Appalachian experience into a sweeping whole. Touching upon folk traditions, health care, the environment, higher education, the role of blacks and women, and much more, Drake offers a compelling social history of a unique American region. The Appalachian region, extending from Alabama in the South up to the Allegheny highlands of Pennsylvania, has historically been characterized by its largely rural populations, rich natural resources that have fueled industry in other parts of the country, and the strong and wild, undeveloped land. The rugged geography of the region allowed Native American societies, especially the Cherokee, to flourish. Early white settlers tended to favor a self-sufficient approach to farming, contrary to the land grabbing and plantation building going on elsewhere in the South. The growth of a market economy and competition from other agricultural areas of the country sparked an economic decline of the region's rural population at least as early as 1830. The Civil War and the sometimes hostile legislation of Reconstruction made life even more difficult for rural Appalachians. Recent history of the region is marked by the corporate exploitation of resources. Regional oil, gas, and coal had attracted some industry even before the Civil War, but the postwar years saw an immense expansion of American industry, nearly all of which relied heavily on Appalachian fossil fuels, particularly coal. What was initially a boon to the region eventually brought financial disaster to many mountain people as unsafe working conditions and strip mining ravaged the land and its inhabitants. A History of Appalachia also examines pockets of urbanization in Appalachia. Chemical, textile, and other industries have encouraged the development of urban areas. At the same time, radio, television, and the internet provide residents direct links to cultures from all over the world. The author looks at the process of urbanization as it belies commonly held notions about the region's rural character. |
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... England, who remember the Time when the Mohawks made War on their Indians, that as soon as a single Mohawk was discovered in the Country, their Indians raised the cry from Hill to Hill, A Mohawk! A Mohawk! Upon which they all fled.
... England, Portugal, and Holland. Suddenly the Atlantic Ocean became Europe's door to the world, and the society in western Europe that had been a backwater in a Mediterranean-oriented Europe now found itself on a new frontier of trade ...
... England. But particularly after 1688, most of the lands in England came to be controlled by a group of land speculators, old petty nobility and businessmen, who became England's country gentleman class. This “squirearchy” was ...
... England from these aggrieved classes and areas who did not prosper under the “Settlement of 1688,” or from the often overrun Rhineland areas of Germany. David H. Fischer's widely read study of British migration to North America in the ...
... England a large class of landless and powerless people trailed off below the yeomanry. These were the working husbandmen, the farm laborers, “masterless men,” and persons of “the meaner sorte,” probably making up nearly half of England's ...