On Fri, 16 Jul 2010, an SSRC paper abstrct was quoted
> <http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1621516>
>
> "A History of Violence: Testing the ?Culture of Honor? in the US South"
>
> FEEM Working Paper No. 51.2010
> PAULINE GROSJEAN, University of San Francisco
>
> Using historical data on early settlers to the United States, this paper
> tests and confirms the ?Culture of Honor? hypothesis by
> socio-psychologists Dov Cohen and Richard Nisbett (1994, 1996). This
> hypothesis argues that the high prevalence of homicides in the US South
> stems from the fact that it was a frontier region settled by people
> whose economy was based on herding: the Scotch-Irish.
BTW, although this is a silly and reductionist way to argue (history rarely yields much to universalizing regressions), it is perfectly possible to make the same argument in a subtle way, and to agree with what seem like their three basic points:
1) That there is, or at least was for a long time, a distinctive culture of honor in much of the South;
2) That that made men quicker to take offense and more prone to violence (as well as many other well known traits); and
3) That this was a culture that was transmitted overseas during the principle Scotch-Irish migrations.
IMHO, far and away the best attempt to make this argument is David Hackett Fischer, in _Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America_, part IV, pp. 605-782. It is one of those arguments that is so well made and well-written that even if you don't buy it at the end you'll have enjoyed reading it on the "good war halloweth any cause" principle and you'll think about it often afterwards.
Fischer uses lots of numbers -- he's got a chart every other page -- but uses them imaginatively and non-reductively, very much in the spirit of The LBO, rather than in what looks like the spirit of this paper.
And if you want to revel in the outrageousness of their behavior, Fischer has lots of just jaw dropping vignettes, and lots of connections to key figures in American history. And understanding how this behavior was functional in its original context doesn't make any less amazing or dysfunctional here.
But two minor points, which Joe Catron kind of touched on.
One is that the distinctive thing about the origin culture wasn't that it was a culture of herding. It's that it was a culture of warlords in a constant state of war. Its kind of obvious how a warlord culture would select for proneness to violence. What makes the Rube Goldberg theory of herding extra ludicrous is that it's so unneeded.
Second is that the term "Scotch-Irish" is extremely misleading. If refers to a very short period of time during which no group could acquire such lasting traits.
The origin territory of this group is not in Ireland, but on the border of England and Scotland. And the more accurate name for them is thus the "borderers."
This location is important, because for 800 years this was the site of continual struggle between the English and Scottish crowns. And whenever one king was mad at the other, he would make large scale Braveheart-type massacres across the border to show the other king how he felt. Plus laying waste to the land every time one or the other mounted a full scale invasion.
It was under these conditions of extreme violence and extreme uncertainty that the culture grew. In 800 CE, warlordism was normal. It was called dark age feudalism. But here, because of location, the culture never grew out of this first stage, the Roland stage, of warriors and their retinues. As both kingdoms grew and pacified large parts of their territory elsewhere, life in this swath of land only grew more violent as the two kingdoms contended with greater force and frequency.
Until 1605, when James VI of Scotland became James I of England and the crowns were united. Then it was time to pacify the borderlands. The two kings didn't need the warriors.
But it wasn't easy to do. It was a little like pacifying Afghanistan. But with enough force, it was done.
But for warlords who simply wouldn't be reconciled to the new order (which didn't grant them the same ascendancy), there was a different option: they were co-opted and shipped to Northern Ireland and essentially used as lords to keep down the Irish. This is where we get the phrase "Scotch-Irish" -- the "Scots" (or North Britons) who were sent to Ireland.
This group was notorious from the beginning, as one might imagine, since these were most uncontrollable warlords and their clans selected out from a group of uncontrollable warlord clans. The English vice regents complained that the solution was worse than the problem (these complaints constitute much of their notoriety) annd soon they were compelled to move on again. And mostly they ended up in the hill country, joining earlier waves of their compatriots who had gone there immediately during the original pacification.
But it wasn't mostly by numbers that they exerted their influence. It was rather by social status. The borderers had evolved their own warlord aristocracy, called "The Ascendency." And when they arrived in America, they were looked up to as they were looked up to at home. And just as importantly, they felt they ought to be looked up to, and violently demanded it whenever they felt it was impugned -- which was a lot, because in the new land being "backcountry" was looked down upon even if you had substance.
And this is why honor was so important: it was the basis of their entire identity. In English eyes, and in the eyes of English colonists who weren't from the borderland, these were thieving rustlers, or "reivers." In their eyes, they were noblemen whose pedigree went back centuries, and were purer than any others who had long ago gotten soft. So not only did they feel compelled to avenge insults to their honor and the honor of their clan. They felt compelled to uphold the importance of codes of honor in the first place on which alone their nobility was based, having no king or ancestral homestead to vouch for it.
Direct descendants of the Ascendancy clans include such classic borderer personalities (and faces) as Andrew Jackson and John Calhoun. Also President Polk and Zachary Taylor. If you trace out the clans, it seems pretty clear that they did indeed keep their "ascendancy" in the new land for a remarkably long time.
However part of Fischer's analysis is that this was only one of two dominant cultures in the South. The other was that of the Cavaliers and indentured servants that gave a completely different caste to Virginia, and which gave rise to the culture that marked the first generation of southern founding fathers. And between which there was a famously long standing rivalry. The tidewater types were exactly their worst nightmare of the ones who looked down on them. Jackson's relation to Washington was a case in point.
And of course a million other things are mixed up in it since. So that just regressing for violence seems as silly as regressing for money grubbing among northerners. But in concrete cases of concrete families and individuals, remarkable stories can be unspooled.
Michael