Sunday topic: America's success linked to religion and sex.

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following generations allowed the British culture to take root in America unlike the other European attempts to replicate their culture.

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Thank you for that input - I had never thought of it before - makes sense.

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The British went for religious freedom. The wives were VERY into religion and anxious to join their husbands. So, the male:female ratio of the non-Brits was 90:10 male. The ratio of Brits was 60:40 male. So, the following generations allowed the British culture to take root in America unlike the other European attempts to replicate their culture.

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Good angle that I’ve never seen proposed.

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It’s surprising how the colonies of Spain, France, and Portugal were able to survive around the rest of the world with their 9:1 ratio….

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The 'rest of the world' was a much easier trip than crossing the Atlantic. Their colonies in the west did not retain their culture due to lack of their own women.

I have close friends from Britian who live here, now. They would say Americans don't have any British culture at all. "American Culture" if you're just keeping it to European influences, was from early on just as much Dutch (the Pilgrims originally fled to Holland for a while before striking out for America). The Pilgrims were escaping religious persecution... people in England hated them. Their culture was... odd. And it also has not survived, though I don't doubt some posters here would be up for a good witch burning.

The point about female voyagers is very true... until things were settled and it wasn't a big uncertain risk of a one-way trip. The Pilgrim women were escaping persecution so it was a different scenario from just leaving a nice settled life in exchange for unknown hardship (and we like to conveniently forget things like Jamestown, where early settlers starved to death).

Meanwhile, French culture is VERY present in South Louisiana, although it has degraded and been mixed with a lot of other stuff. Had Napoleon not sold Louisiana?

Can you say there's no "Spanish culture" below the US? The Spanish annihilated any local culture they happened upon, along with working to death or just killing all of the indigenous males... impregnated all of the native women and produced children they raised as Spanish and Catholic. Any former Spanish territory (ESPECIALLY Cuba) has an internal hierarchy struggle over who is more "European (White) Spanish"/lighter-skinned... and those people tend to be the Upper (ruling) classes.

The French are "better than that." They loved to create a "Fusion" culture with the people they colonized... meaning they figured out who was in charge, or who had a decent claim to be, and intermarried with those people, then creating a class thing where anybody who wasn't significantly French, educated and cultured enough was alright to be worked like slaves.

Think about the former Spanish and French colonies around the world using the lenses I just described, and there you have it. Vietnam is the perfect example of a French colony... the last Emperor of Vietnam thought of himself as an exotic-featured Frenchman who'd inherited a giant plantation he didn't particularly like having to be around... so he was absent when the US was trying to save his government. The Dominican Republic is the perfect example of a former Spanish colony. Its people go on raids into Haiti, the western side of its Island, and kidnap Haitians, cut off half of one of their feet, and stick them on sugar cane plantations where they have to harvest so much sugar cane for water (they don't give them food). When asked how they can do this to people who are their ancestral siblings, divided only by colonization of the Island by two different European countries, they say "We are not the same! We're Dominicans... we're Spanish!"

The reason "America" prospered is that we were never really a "good" British colony... we always bristled under British rule, which makes sense since we were formed by outcasts and not enthusiastic loyal servants. In colonies of the other European empires, the ruling elites were dependent on the mother countries, and it was people beneath them who rebelled. In America, the population beneath the governors or whoever sent by England were not subjugated natives, they were Europeans who wanted to sever the umbilical cord from the beginning. America was colonized by people running away from British Royal rule from the start.

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Meanwhile, French culture is VERY present in South Louisiana, although it has degraded and been mixed with a lot of other stuff.

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The big problem for us Cajuns came around 1900. That's when mandatory school attendance hit the small towns and speaking French was forbidden. My grandmother was born in 1890 and when she died in 1970 she still couldn't speak English very well. And a lot of those Cajuns didn't care about learning English because they were working jobs like farming and fishing that didn't require speaking or reading.
If you were a boss back then you had to be bilingual because half of your workers spoke French and half spoke English.

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It’s surprising how the colonies of Spain, France, and Portugal were able to survive around the rest of the world with their 9:1 ratio….

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Survive is a strong word. It morphed into hybrid cultures, like Mexican

The non british colonies have turned out to be shitholes compared to the Anglo ones. Would you rather live in Australia or Canada, or would you rather live in Colombia or Brazil?

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The big problem for us Cajuns came around 1900.

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More than just mandatory school attendance... communities that had long been just on the banks of a river or bayou (or on houseboats) were upended and forced to move ("you can't just live here... you don't own this area")... this is the point where "modernity" landed like a rock on much of America, and you could no longer just "live off the land" and were more and more required to be tax-paying, employed citizens of the “civilized” system. This is when a lot of towns were formed for "Cajuns," in the midst of farms where they could work. And just in time to set everybody up for The Great Depression!

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We really don’t appreciate just how badass those people were.

Watch shows today like Alone where some pretty tough survivalists can’t make it a few months in the wilderness. I don’t know how those people did it back then between the raw wilderness and natives attacking them. It’s honestly amazing if you think about it. To get on a wooden ship for 3 months battling unknown weather, disease, putrid food and water to arrive at untamed unmapped wilderness full of Indians that try to kill you. It’s amazing so many survived that

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Well... here's what I've read. I'll try to find the source again and post it here.

There were several previous attempts at colonies, and several voyages back and forth for decades before the Pilgrims.

The Pilgrim voyages were actually guided by a Native American named Squanto, who had been kidnapped and taken to England as a young teen and sold into slavery. He plotted returning to his village through telling the Pilgrim organizers he could bring them to his people who would help them get established and he would be an intermediary. And he led them here... only to find out that in the decades that he'd been gone the village had perished from diseases transmitted by the British who made contact with them earlier (when they'd kidnapped him). So the Pilgrims actually moved into an existing village with housing and cultivated fields of crops.

As for "Indian attacks..." How well are we taking people crossing our border, again? The problem for the Native Americans is that they were too naive and trusting... until it was too late. Plus, they were the healthiest, quarantined people ever and the first breath a European exhaled around them doomed most of them to death. The "attack the invaders" thing grew because they realized anyone who interacted with them died soonafter and took a lot of people with them.

here... my memory got bits wrong, but not the story were sold in school.

All That's Interesting: Squanto: The True Story Of The Native American Behind The First Thanksgiving

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The British went for religious freedom. The wives were VERY into religion and anxious to join their husbands. So, the male:female ratio of the non-Brits was 90:10 male. The ratio of Brits was 60:40 male. So, the following generations allowed the British culture to take root in America unlike the other European attempts to replicate their culture.

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Eurpeans look on America as a matriarchal society.

I've always figured this was due at least in part to women's large role in US religious life. The thesis you posted seems to back that up

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Eurpeans look on America as a matriarchal society.

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Even in the earliest days. Yankee Doodle was an insult song, and the last line of "and let the girls be handy" illustrated the point.