Nine Nations of North America
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The Nine Nations of North America was a book written in 1981 by Joel Garreau. According to the book, North America can be divided into nine regions, or "nations", which have distinctive economic and cultural features. He argues that conventional national and state borders are largely artificial and irrelvant, and his "nations" provide a more accurate way of understanding the true nature of North American society.
The Nine Nations
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Approximate map of the Nine Nations of North America
- New England (also called New Britain or Atlantica) - an expanded version including not only Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Rhode Island, Massachusetts and Connecticut (although omitting the Connecticut suburbs of New York City), but also the Canadian Atlantic provinces of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland and Labrador.
- The Foundry - the then-declining industrial areas of the northeastern United States stretching from New York City to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and including Chicago, Illinois as well as industrial southern Ontario centering on Toronto, Ontario.
- Dixie - the traditional Confederate States of America, which are today the southern and southeastern U.S. states, centered on Atlanta, Georgia, and including most of eastern Texas to Austin. Garreau's "Dixie" also includes Kentucky, which had both Federal and Confederate governments, southern portions of Missouri, Illinois, and Indiana, and the "Little Dixie" region of southeastern Oklahoma. Finally, his "Dixie" includes most of Florida as far south as the city of Fort Myers. Capital: Atlanta, Georgia.
- The Breadbasket - the Midwest states and part of the Prairie provinces: Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, the Dakotas, most of Oklahoma, western Missouri, eastern Colorado, parts of Illinois and Indiana, and northern Texas as well as some of 'near-North' Ontario, and southern Saskatchewan and Manitoba, with its "capital" as Kansas City, Missouri. Capital: Kansas City
- The Islands - the Miami/Fort Lauderdale portion of southern Florida, the Caribbean islands, and parts of Venezuela. Capital: Miami
- Mexamerica - the southern and Central Valley portions of California as well as southern Arizona, most of New Mexico and all of Mexico, centered on either Los Angeles or Mexico City (depending on whom you ask), which are primarily Spanish-speaking. Garreau's original book did not place all of Mexico within Mexamerica, but only Northern Mexico and the Baja peninsula. Capital: Los Angeles
- Ecotopia - the Pacific Northwest coast west of the Cascade Range stretching from Alaska in the north to coastal areas of British Columbia, down through Washington state, Oregon and into California just south of San Francisco. Capital: San Francisco
- The Empty Quarter - most of Alaska, Nevada, Utah, Wyoming, Idaho, Montana and Colorado from Denver west, as well as the eastern portions of Oregon, California, Washington, all of Alberta and Northern Canada, northern Arizona, parts of New Mexico, and British Columbia east of the Coast Ranges. Capital: Denver, Colorado
- Quebec - the primarily French-speaking province of Canada, whose provincial government already calls itself the Quebec National Assembly, and which has run referenda on secession in 1980 and 1995, in both of which the secessionists lost narrowly. Capital: Quebec City
Garreau also discussed several areas that he termed "aberrations":
- Washington, D.C. and its surrounding area, specifically referring to the area "inside the Beltway".
- Manhattan south of Harlem (he placed Harlem firmly within The Foundry).
- Hawaii, which he considered an Asian aberration as much as a North American aberration.
- Northern Alaska, despite its categorization on the front cover as part of the Empty Quarter, was listed in the aberrations section of book.
- West Virginia, which Garreau discussed as a state which had significant aspects of both Dixie (Appalachian geography and historical ties to Virginia) and The Foundry (coal-based and unionized economy closely tied to the fortunes of the Rust Belt), and could be placed in either nation.
External links
- The Nine Nations of North America (http://www.garreau.com/main.cfm?action=book&id=3)
- Garreau's original map and detailed statistics (http://www.harpercollege.edu/~mhealy/g101ilec/namer/nac/nacnine/na9intro/nacninfr.htm)
- Garreau's analysis summarized (http://www.csiss.org/classics/content/18)