The Simplification of Europe Overseas

Datos Bibliográficos

ID8375672
AutoresR Cole Harris (University of British Columbia, autor de correspondencia)
Año1977
Volumen67
Número4
Páginas469-483
Fecha de publicación1977-12-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaAnnals of the Association of American Geographers (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0004-5608 • E-ISSN: 1467-8306
EditorialInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/j.1467-8306.1977.tb01156.x
OpenAlexW1994266887
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas48

The structure of northwestern European societies overseas had more to do with the nature of access to land in colonial settings than with the particular backgrounds of emigrating Europeans. The crucial European inheritance—a strong sense of the nuclear family supported by a desire for the private control of land—was common to most northwestern Europeans. When these assumptions were introduced to areas where land was cheap and markets were poor, as in early Canada, South Africa, and New England, remarkably homogeneous and egalitarian rural societies of subsistent farmers emerged quickly. Regional differences in the settlers’collective background were lost in a process of simplification and generalization. Similar farms and farmhouses spread across the landscape, the reflection but also substantially the cause of the simple societies that inhabited them. When access to land was restricted, society quickly restratified. Even in the nineteenth century most newly settled rural areas went through this cycle in some form

Agriculture · Archaeology · Colonialism · Economic geography · Economics · Economy · Ethnology · Geography · Homogeneous · Inheritance (genetic algorithm) · Land tenure · Political science · Cultural History and Identity Formation · History · Rural development and sustainability