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. |
From inside the book
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... Shenandoah Valley, and several were given generous grants. Significant settlement of the Shenandoah followed quickly upon Virginia's decision in 1730 to change her land law and award speculators one thousand acres for each family they ...
... Shenandoah lands was in southeastern Pennsylvania. Within southeastern Pennsylvania between 1681 and 1730 a mosaic ... Valley and Lancaster County and the Susquehanna River. These Germans spread into Maryland, founding Frederick, and ...
... Shenandoah frontier and in southeastern Pennsylvania. Indeed, the cultural balance between Scotch–Irish and German communities was already fairly well established by the time they migrated into Maryland and the Valley of Virginia ...
... Shenandoah Valley, and westward into western Pennsylvania and the Southern Appalachian Mountains. The cultural tensions in the mountain society of the colonial backwoods were considerable as these two separate and very different groups ...
... Shenandoah Valley, and he nourished abolitionist sentiment there during the early eighteenth century. A strong antislavery sentiment also persisted among the Mennonites in the Shenandoah Valley. Furthermore, in East Tennessee in the ...