Voyages to NC, Greece, and the 15th and 16th Centuries

We're done with our busy summer of travel, a summer that saw us visit southern New Jersey and the shore, Long Island and Manhattan, Athens, Crete, and the Peloponesos, and finally North Carolina's Outer Banks. I also had a work trip to Seattle in there some where.

I think Ariadne and Evan can safely say they are the only kids to have visited the islands of Manhattan, Crete and Okracoke this summer.

While in North Carolina I read two great books that focused largely on the 15th and 16th centuries: "Empires of the Sea" by Roger Crowley that describes the battles (Malta, Cyprus, Crete and Lepanto) between the Christian west and the Ottoman east after the fall of Constantinople; and "A Voyage Long and Strange" by Tony 'Confederates in the Attic' Horwitz about the forgotten history of the exploration of America between Columbus' voyage of 1492 and the heralded 'first' Thanksgiving of 1620.

[Coincidentally, one reason the Spanish decided to finance Columbus' voyage was to find a western rout to India and China after the old route that headed east was cut off after the fall of Constantinople. So both books were really about the worst day in Greek history, the fall of our city in 1453.]

Horwitz' book in particular is a great and fun read. He mainly answers the question 'why does American history place so much emphasis on the Pilgrims at the expense of Spanish settlements in Florida, New Mexico, etc., and ignore other English settlements like Roanoke Island and Jamestown?' He comes up with some interesting and funny answers.

I started reading 'Empires of the Sea' in Chania, which was cool since Crete and that city featured prominently in that tome, and Horwitz's book on the beach in Avon; of course AVLAS had a chapter on Roanoke Island and the Lost Colony. Reading both books, on location, made me think of place, especially while we were vacationing in my home state.

One of the most interesting paradoxes of Greek-American life is the emphasis on the family. But if the Greek family is so important, why have hundreds of thousands of Greeks left theirs for a better life in America? Family becomes important again in America, but moving and emigrating come first.

Movement and mobility are two of THE most American traits. The Hurwitz book reinforced that for me. Nothing is more American than leaving the Old World for the New World. But of course, many new Americans did not stop there. They kept moving west for a few hundred years, and still do. There have been other migrations, millions of African-Americans moved north during the two World Wars to find work, and Latinos are now moving all over the U.S.. To move, to change, to start again, to be mobile, is to be an American.

That's one reason I think immigrants make such good Americans. Just moving here, leaving your homeland and family, makes you an American.

But sitting in the Tar Heel State reminded me that by that standard, southerners may be the LEAST American of all. I'm not just talking about the fact that at one point the south officially left the United States and took up arms against the flag, Constitution, etc.

I'm referring to a southerners love of place. Southerners came south and stayed put, by and large. No going west, not many (until now) immigrants compared to the rest of the country, not much migration north for work (at least for white southerners except for folks from Appalachia). In that regard, southerners are probably more European than they'd like to admit. If you look at the Civil War, the U.S. fought for ideals: save the Union, demonstrate that democracy could work, end slavery, conclude the unfinished political debates started during the Revolutionary War (federal vs. state power, slavery, etc.). The south fought for a bad ideal - plantation economies based on slave labor, similar to the serf-defined agrarian economies of Europe - but also fought for a place.

And as readers of this blog have read before, I believe that our ideals - not our place - make us Americans.

Just to wrap up this incredibly long blog, one of the interesting thing Hurwitz points out is that pre-Columbian Native Americans in the south - unlike their more nomadic brethren in the plains who followed the bison - were also focused on place.  They generally stayed put.  

So it may just be a southern thing. I guess some folks just love barbeque, humidity, and college football too much to pack up and move.