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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... union that he was banished by his own tribe and was forced to live with another. But years of traveling from one Iroquoian nation to another resulted in an unwritten constitution that established a Great Council for the making of ...
... Union also included Appalachian areas—Vermont, Kentucky, and Tennessee. A great post-Revolutionary War migration of people flooded into the Appalachian Mountain area and suddenly changed the society of the mountains. Whereas before 1775 ...
... Union in 1796. In Kentucky, another unusual local governmental scheme—the Transylvania Company—rose in the 1770s, only to collapse in the early 1780s. Transylvania, much of whose area was within Appalachia, was a bold frontier ...
... Union began under a shadow of substantial suspicion. The group that had constructed the Constitution of 1787, a combination styled “the Federalist Party,” was given responsibility for governing the new nation during the first twelve ...
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