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+--- Thread: How the Scotch-Irish community (rednecks) transformed the American South (/thread-14769.html)
How the Scotch-Irish community (rednecks) transformed the American South - C C - Oct 5, 2023
PREVIOUS INSTALLMENT (scivillage): Redneck poverty: Why Southern whites were poorer than Northerners in the US
THOMAS SOWELL
https://youtu.be/9V97QEd8U10
VIDEO EXCERPT: Although the Ulster Scots had neither socially nor biologically amalgamated with the indigenous Irish, they became known initially as Irish in the United States. But they made a point of calling themselves Scotch-Irish in 19th century America to distinguish themselves from the indigenous Irish immigrants who began arriving in large numbers at that time.
The term Scotch-Irish has also been applied loosely to include not only Ulster Protestants in general -- some of whom were in fact English -- but also many people from the turbulent borderlands between England and Scotland. Who often settled in the southern United States, interspersed with the Ulster Scots, and sharing much of their ethos. Having come from a similarly stormy and backward frontier region of Britain.
Both came from places which in the pre-industrial era were thinly settled and desperately poor. The borderers from a part of England where the civilization was least developed. In the words of later scholars, the same description would be as apt for the Appalachian region of the United States, where the same two people settled and amalgamated to produce one of the most enduring pockets of poverty among white Americans.
Most of the white population of the American South as a whole came not only from what has been loosely called the "Celtic fringe", but also from that fringe at a particular time and particular stage of its cultural evolution.
Had the South been peopled by 19th century Scots Welshman and Ulsterman the course of Southern history would doubtless have been radically different...
How the Scot-Irish transformed the American South