Border Cultures, the Backcountry, and "North British" Emigration to America

Abstract

B ] ORDERLANDS to Backcountry: The Flight from Britain, 1717-1775, final substantive section of David Hackett Fischer's Albion's Seed, offers a vivid and provocative portrayal of North origins of backcountry culture. The section details many backcountry customs and traits that derived from northern Britain.' It persuasively establishes backcountry as a border society. It would be even more convincing if it did not impose its regional-origins interpretation so rigidly upon diverse territories it considers. Fischer's task in this section is much more ambitious than in earlier parts. The region of emigration, encompassing parts of England, Scotland, and Ireland, is far larger than other regions he examines. The period of settlement and numbers involved are also much greater. Nor does Fischer restrict his focus to any single segment of population, as he does with East Anglian Puritans, Midlands Quakers, or south of gentry. Yet he has far fewer data on actual origins of backcountry settlers than for emigrants from those regions. Accordingly, he relies rather heavily in this section upon work of folklorists and antiquarians, contending that such portraits are closer to realities of northern British culture than are interpretations of professional historians. Those sources are not without biases of their own, however, and their biases help to determine portrayal he offers. The first question to consider is whether vast area that Fischer calls Borderlands of Britain composed a coherent region at all. His discussion moves rather freely between two very different areas-the Borders and northern Britain-depending on needs of moment. At outset he defines borderlands as the north of Ireland, lowlands of Scotland, and northern counties of England (p. 6o6), but in emphasizing their borderlike character he narrows territory under consideration first to seven counties in Scotland and parts of six in