One of the Boston-based public radio superstation’s opinion section editors saw the American Nations model reflected in Europe
WBUR senior editor Chloe Axelson wrote an essay for the public radio superstation’s opinion section on Nationhood Lab’s framework for analyzing regional differences in North America, the American Nations model. In the piece, published July 23, Axelson described seeing some of the regional characteristics during a family vacation, echoed in some of their colonial source regions in England and France.
“One of my 11-year-olds said she couldn’t believe how different London and Paris were, even though they were only two hours apart: ‘Totally different language and food and people. They drive on different sides of the street!’,” she wrote. “Two hours from our home in the Boston suburbs would get us to Connecticut (not so different) or Maine or New Hampshire (still not so different).”
In the model, the New France region, encompasses southern Quebec and parts of New Brunswick, which still has characteristics imparted by the culture of the original settler-colonizers from Northern and Western France. New England is part of Yankeedom, whose founding colonizer-settlers were primarily Puritans from East Anglia.
“I couldn’t help but see snippets of Woodward’s [sic] “Nations” everywhere I looked,” she wrote.
Boston-based WBUR is one of the most widely consumed public radio stations in the country, with 800,000 local listeners, 9 million national listeners, and two million unique website visitors every month.
Nationhood Lab, a project at Salve Regina University’s Pell Center, examines regional issues in American life and has developed a revised civic national story for the 21st century United States tied to the ideals in the Declaration.