Talk:New England/Temp

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is about the region in the United States of America. For other uses, see New England (disambiguation).

The states of New England are Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. Together, they form the northeasternmost point of the United States.

The New England region of the United States is located in the northeastern corner of the country. Boston is its business and cultural center and its most populous city. The region is made up of the following states:

New England is a cultural, historical, political, and formerly politically-unified region of the United States. It is one of the oldest regions of European settlement in the United States, resulting in a great store of cultural heritage.

Together, the Mid-Atlantic and New England regions are generally referred to as the Northeastern region of the United States.

1 History
2 Politics
3 Education
- 3.1 Higher education
- 3.2 Culture and education
4 Population
5 Culture
6 Economy
7 Literature
8 Notable New Englanders
9 Major Professional Sports Teams
10 See also
11 References
12 External links

[edit] History

[edit] The indigenous peoples of New England

New England has long been inhabited by Algonquian-speaking native peoples, including the Abenaki, the Penobscot, the Wampanoag, and many others. During the 15th and 16th centuries, Europeans such as Giovanni Verrazano, Jacques Cartier and John Cabot (known as Giovanni Caboto before being based in England) charted the New England coast. They referred to the region as Norumbega, named for a fabulous native city that was supposed to exist there.

[edit] Early European settlement (1610s-1630s)

A seventeenth century map shows New England as a coastal enclave extending from Cape Cod to New France while its interior is rendered New Belgium, New Netherland and Irocoisia

Note: For the early history of the Connecticut Colony, see New Netherland.

On April 10, 1606, King James I of England chartered two Virginia Companies, headquartered in different cities, to establish colonies along the coast of North America, including islands within 100 miles and, by implication, extending inland 100 miles: The Virginia Company of London, assigned coast between 34 degrees and 41 degrees north Latitude (between Columbia, South Carolina and Greenwich, Connecticut); and the Virginia Company of Plymouth, assigned coast between 38 degrees and 45 degrees north Latitude (between Fredericksburg, Virginia and Montreal, Quebec). Colonies of the two companies were to be at least 100 miles apart, even where the grants overlapped. The former charter granted what today are Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina, while the latter granted what today are the Northeastern States north of that point, and eastern Canada. This included New England.

The Dutch East India Company established the beginnings of New Netherland in 1613, when they established trading posts on the Hudson River, and claimed all territory between the Connecticut River (72 Degrees, 41 Minutes East Longitude) and the Delaware River (38 Degrees, 46 Minutes, north Latitude). They claimed as far north and east as they could hold, and so they never really expected to go father west/south than the Delaware, or north of what today is the Canadian border. This meant that they claimed what today are western Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, southeast Pennsylvania, and Delaware, and placed them in conflict with both Virginia Companies. That the English did not immediately move in and extinguish New Netherland was a mark of fear based on the fact that the Dutch were militarily superior to the English at the time, and the two powers were in competition elsewhere on the planet. England was militarily over-extended for the time being.

In 1616, Captain John Smith described the area in a pamphlet "New England." The name was officially sanctioned, on November 3, 1620, when the charter of the Virginia Company of Plymouth was replaced by a charter for the Plymouth Council for New England "...to establish colonies in a region between 40 Degrees and 48 Degrees north Latitude and extending from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean, including present New York." (Swindler, 5:16-26) The region was subsequently divided through further grants, including the 1624 formal establishment of the Dutch colony of New Netherland, which included Fort Orange (today's Albany, New York), and followed in two years by the establishment of New Amsterdam (today's New York City). Conflict over this establishment included the over-running of the Dutch portion of Connecticut, and Suffolk County on Long Island; the March 4, 1628 charter of the Massachusetts Bay Company "...to establish a colony in the region streching from 3 miles south of the Charles River, and extending westward from the Atlantic coast to the Pacific Ocean, including present central New York" (Swindler, 5:32-42; Andrews, 1:359); the 1629 royal grant of "Hampshire" which was issued for "makeing a Plantation & establishing of a Colony or Colonyes in the Countrey called or knowen by ye name of New England in America."

[edit] The New England Confederation (1630s-1650s)

On March 3, 1636, the Connecticut Colony established its own government, which establishment left Vermont and Maine the only New England colonies left to be formed.

Following the Pequot War, in 1637, the colonies of Massachusetts Bay, Plymouth, New Haven, and Connecticut joined together in a loose compact called the New England Confederation. The confederation was designed largely to coordinate mutual defense against the Dutch in the New Netherland colony to the south and the French in New France to the north, as well as to enforce the return of runaway slaves. The confederation had a council comprising two delegates from each of the four colonies, but it had no formal enforcement powers and relied on the individual colonies to voluntarily follow council decisions. The confederation disintegrated, in the 1650s, when the powerful Massachusetts Bay Colony refused to follow decisions of the confederation council regarding the conflict with the Dutch. King Philip's War (1675-1676), the bloodiest Indian war of the early colonial period, had a devastating effect on the colonies of southern New England, but effectively ended the power and influence of the Native Americans in the region.

On March 12, 1663, King Charles II granted the Duke of York a charter for all territory between the Connecticut River and the Delaware River, Long Island; Martha's Vinyard; Nantucket; and the area between the Kennebec River and the St. Croix River, extending inland from the Atlantic coast to the St. Lawrence River. This grant not only directly confronted the New Netherland colony, but also included most of present-day Maine, and part of Quebec.

[edit] The Dominion of New England (1686-1689)

In 1686, King James II, concerned about the increasingly independent ways of the colonies, in particular their open flouting of the Navigation Acts, decreed the Dominion of New England, an administrative union comprising all the New England colonies. Two years later, the provinces of New York and New Jersey, which had been acquired from the Dutch, were added. The union, imposed from the outside, was highly unpopular among the colonists. In 1687, when the Connecticut Colony refused to follow a decision of the dominion governor Edmund Andros, he sent an armed contigent to seize the colony's charter, which the colonists, according to popular legend, hid inside the Charter Oak tree. Andros' efforts to unify the colonial defenses met little success and the dominion ceased after only three years, after the removal of King James II in the Glorious Revolution in 1689.

[edit] Modern New England (1689-present)

England's enduring influence over New England is evident in the architecture of Boston College, originally dubbed Oxford in America

The colonies were not formally united again until 1776, when they became part of the United States; however, especially in the 18th century and the early 19th century, New England was still considered to be a very distinct region of the country, as it is today. During the War of 1812, there was talk of secession from the Union, as New England merchants opposed the war with Great Britain.

Aside from the Canadian province of Nova Scotia, or "New Scotland", New England is the only North American region to inherit the name of a kingdom in the British Isles. New England has largely preserved its regional character, especially in its historic sites. Its name is a reminder of the past, as many of the original English-Americans have migrated further west.

[edit] Politics

The early European settlers of New England were English Protestants fleeing religious persecution. This, however, did not prevent them from establishing colonies where religion was legislated to an extreme, and where those who deviated from the established doctrine were persecuted greatly.

[edit] Town meetings in New England

A derivative of meetings held by church elders, town meetings were an integral part of governance and remain so today in towns across New England. At such meetings, any citizen of the town may discuss issues of the day with other members of the community, and vote on them. This is the most direct democracy in the United States today, and the form of dialogue has been adopted under certain circumstances elsewhere, most strongly in the states closest to the region, such as New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Such a strong democratic tradition was even apparent in the early 19th century, when Alexis de Tocqueville wrote in Democracy in America that:

In New England, where education and liberty are the daughters of morality and religion, where society has acquired age and stability enough to enable it to form principles and hold fixed habits, the common people are accustomed to respect intellectual and moral superiority and to submit to it without complaint, although they set at naught all those privileges which wealth and birth have introduced among mankind. In New England, consequently, the democracy makes a more judicious choice than it does elsewhere.

[edit] New England and political thought

Samuel Adams embodied the revolutionary spirit that, in many ways, is still alive and well in New England today.

In the colonial period and the early time of the republic, New England leaders like John Hancock, John Adams, and Samuel Adams joined those in Philadelphia and Virginia to direct the country. At the time of the American Civil War, New England, the mid-Atlantic, and the Midwest combined against slavery, eventually ending the practice in the United States. Henry David Thoreau, one of New England's most iconic thinkers, made the case for civil disobedience, libertarianism, and even had some anarchist tendencies; this spirit is still alive in the Free State Project and occasional discussions of secession. New England led the rest of the country in abolishing the death penalty for crimes like robbery and burglary in the 19th century. In the 20th century, the region remained a source of political thought and intellectual ferment in the nation, eventually becoming the forefront of the issue of same sex marriage, with Vermont being the first state to allow civil unions between same sex couples, and Massachusetts being the first state to allow marriage between same sex couples. In 2005, Connecticut also began to allow civil unions.

While well known for its liberal tendencies, the region still has a history similar to the rest of the country. Puritan New England was highly intolerant of any deviation from the strict social norms. Arguments against slavery, at first, were not moral, but economic, since owning slaves was expensive and not very useful in the northern climate. During the civil rights era, Boston brewed with tension over school busing to end de facto segregation of its public schools. Despite these examples, the region is still known as one of the more liberal regions of the United States.

[edit] Contemporary New England politics

Today, the dominant party in New England is the Democratic Party, though most states have a significant Republican electorate, especially New Hampshire and Maine which are both represented in the U.S. Senate by two Republicans. As of the 2004 state elections, Maine is the only state that has its executive and legislative branches controlled by the same party (the Democrats). In the 2000 presidential election, Democratic candidate Al Gore carried all of the New England states except for New Hampshire, and in 2004, John Kerry, a New Englander himself, won all six New England states.

New Hampshire and Connecticut are the only New England states that allow capital punishment, although New Hampshire currently has no death row inmates and has not held an execution since 1939. Connecticut held an execution in 2005, the first in New England in forty-five years.

The change in predominant political party affiliation is probably more attributable to the fact that the parties have in essence exchanged party platforms than any real change in political timbre of the region. As a whole, New England has remained true to the ideals of the federalist party, namely a strong centralized federal government, a loose construction of the Constitution allowing subsequent interpretation, progressivism towards women and minorities, an emphasis on education, the promotion of free trade, and fiscal responsibility (albeit sometimes based upon higher taxes).

[edit] Education

[edit] Higher education

New England contains four of the eight Ivy League universities. Pictured here is Dartmouth Hall on the campus of Dartmouth College.

New England contains some of the oldest and most renowned institutions of higher learning in the United States. The first such institution, Harvard, was founded at Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1636. According to US News and World Report, 8 of the nation's top-50 universities and 13 of its top-50 liberal arts colleges are located in New England. These include the four out of the eight universities in the Ivy League, Boston University, Bowdoin College, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Tufts University, Wesleyan University, and others. A number of the graduates settle in the region after school, providing the area with a well-educated population and one of its most valuable resources.

[edit] Culture and education

New England is the national and world leader in higher education, with numerous world-class universities, and many high-prestige undergraduate colleges. Boston alone has over 30 colleges and universities, plus more in the suburbs. As a result, the region is a world leader in science, engineering, medicine, law, business research, humanities and social sciences, as well as in libraries and research centers. The higher learning sector is a major factor in the region's economy, attracting students, scholars, researchers and grants from around the world. Closely related are the many orchestras, art institutes, art schools, music schools and museums that make the region the cultural center of the nation.

At the pre-college level, New England is home to a majority of the most prominent American independent schools (also known as private schools), such as Deerfield Academy, Northfield Mount Hermon School and Phillips Academy in Massachusetts, St. Paul's School and Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire, and Hotchkiss School, Loomis Chaffee, Canterbury School in Connecticut, and the schools of the Independent School League. The concept of the elite "New England prep school" and the "preppy" lifestyle is an iconic part of the region's image.

The public K-12 school systems, usually locally funded, are also well regarded. A recent government-funded survey of the 50 states ranked Connecticut as number one in public education. The renowned Boston Latin School is the oldest public high school in America.

Culturally, education is considered to be very important, especially in southern New England.

[edit] Population

In 1910, 6,552,681 people lived in New England. Today, the total population of New England is 13,922,517. If New England were one state, the population would rank 5th in the nation, behind Florida. The total area in this scenario (181,440 sq km) would rank 20th behind North Dakota.

[edit] Regional population layout

[edit] Southern New England

The bulk of the region's population is concentrated in southern New England, which comprises Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut. The most populous state is Massachusetts, with the population centered mostly around its political and cultural capital, Boston. Western Massachusetts is less densely populated. The resulting effect is a minor cultural divide between urban New Englanders, from Boston and the smaller cities, including Hartford, Connecticut, and rural New Englanders living in western Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine.

Connecticut is more of a cultural paradox compared to the other states in the region. The southwestern part of the state (which contains about 1/2 the state's population and can roughly be drawn as everything south and west of an imaginary line from just north of Danbury to New Haven) are essentially suburbs of the New York metropolitan area. This area has grown rapidly in population since 1970, as many corporations formerly headquartered in Manhattan moved to nearby Fairfield County to take advantage of lower taxes while still staying within the general region, bringing jobs and "New York transplants". Therefore, culturally, this region of the state is more like that of neighboring New York than the rest of the New England region. The remainder of the state (and other half of its population) is very similar culturally to that of the neighboring states of Massachusetts and Rhode Island. The wealth in western Connecticut, the Hartford and New Haven suburbs and the shoreline all contribute to the state having the state's highest per capita income of any in the United States.

An example of this cultural dichotomy can be found in residents' allegiance to sports teams. Western Connecticut residents may root for either Boston or New York teams, unlike other New England residents who tend to be staunchly loyal to Boston teams. Television broadcasts in Hartford and New Haven typically give equal coverage to sports teams in both Boston and New York.

[edit] Coastal New England

The coastline is more urban than western New England, which is typically rural, even in urban states like Massachusetts. These characteristics of the region's population are due mainly to historical factors; the original colonists settled mostly on the coastline of Massachusetts Bay. The only state without access to the Atlantic Ocean, Vermont, is also the least-populated. After nearly 400 years, the region still maintains, for the most part, its historical population layout.

New England's coast is dotted with urban centers, such as Portland, Portsmouth, Boston, New Bedford, Fall River, Providence, New Haven, and Bridgeport, as well as smaller cities, like Newburyport, Gloucester, Biddeford, Bath, and New London. The smaller fishing towns, like Gloucester, are popular tourist attractions, as they tend to retain their historical character, and often have colorful pasts.

Cape Cod, also a popular tourist attraction, is lined with sandy beaches and dotted with bed and breakfast tourist lodgings. The picturesque and rugged coast of Maine is best known for its beauty and for lobster. New Hampshire, which has the smallest coastline of all of the coastal New England states, is home to Hampton Beach, also frequented by visitors to the region.

[edit] Urban New England

Boston is considered to be the cultural and historical capital of New England. Above is an aerial photo of Boston's Back Bay neighborhood, with Cambridge on the northern bank of the Charles River.

Providence is the second-largest city in New England and claims the largest contiguous area of National Historic Society-designated buildings in the U.S.

Worcester is the third-largest city in New England and by far the largest urban area in the more rural mid- to northwestern part of the region.

Three of the four most densely populated states in the United States are in New England. In order, the four most densely populated states are: New Jersey, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and Connecticut. Indeed, southern New England forms an integral part of the BosWash megalopolis, a conglomeration of urban centers that spans from Boston to Washington, D.C.

The Greater Boston metropolitan area has a total population of approximately 5.8 million. Within this region are the following cities in decreasing order of population size:

The largest cities by population in New England are:

[edit] Regional nomenclature

A person from New England is known as a New Englander. Sometimes, New Englanders may also be referred to as Yankees, although this term has grown to refer to the people of the greater region of the northeastern United States.

[edit] Culture

See Cuisine of New England

[edit] Historico-cultural roots

The first European colonists of New England were focused on maritime affairs such as whaling and fishing, rather than more continental inclinations such as surplus farming.

As the oldest of the American regions, New England has developed a distinct cuisine, dialect, architecture, and government. New England cuisine is known for its emphasis on seafood and dairy; clam chowder, lobster, and other products of the sea are among some of the region's most popular foods.

[edit] New England's unique culture

Despite a changing population, much of the original spirit of the region remains. It can be seen in the simple, woodframe houses and quaint white church steeples that are features of many small towns, and in the traditional lighthouses that dot the Atlantic coast. New England is also well known for its mercurial weather and its crisp chill. (Mark Twain is quoted as saying "If you don't like the weather in New England, just wait a few minutes.") For its vibrant colored foliage in autumn, the region is a popular tourist destination. As a whole, New England tends to be progressive in its politics, although somewhat Puritan in its personal mores. Due to the fact that so many recent European immigrants live in the region and due to the influence of the many universities, the region often shows a greater receptivity to European ideas and culture than the rest of the country.

The region has remained consistently openminded towards other backgrounds, a tradition which has continued from the abolitionist days of William Lloyd Garrison and Charles Sumner to the region's recent controversial legal battle in regarding relationships between homosexual couples. As of 2005, Massachusetts permits same sex marriages, and Vermont and Connecticut allow for civil unions between gay couples. Although New England has always been one of the more socially progressive regions of the United States, its internal cultural and social battles have always been somewhat paradoxical. Its fervent abolitionism, for instance, was often met with intense racism on the part of the recently-immigrated Irish segment of its population, which resented the control of native born Protestants over the region, and often competed economically with African-Americans. It was Alexis de Tocqueville who noted, in 1835, that New England was the only region of the United States at the time to have properly separated religion from its government, an ironic mixture of the region's heavy Puritan heritage and strong tradition of direct democracy.

[edit] Social life in New England

Bars and pubs, especially those with Irish themes, are popular social venues. Closer to Boston, musicians from Ireland often tour pubs, playing traditional Irish folk music, usually with a singer, a fiddler, and a guitarist.

In much of rural New England, particularly Maine, Acadian & Quebecois culture also dominate the region's music and dance. "Contra Dancing" is popular and common community activity similar to square-dancing that is usually backed by irish, acadian, or 'old time' folk music.

Knitting, quilting and rug hooking circles are also a common activity in much of rural New England, as well as the more typical activities such as church, sports, and town government.

[edit] The continuing European influence

The overall feeling of the region can be described as decidedly European, with the region's colonial past still alive and thriving through tourism, the hundreds of historic sites that dot the region, and the rich cultural traditions that have endured and developed over centuries. Long-time and native residents are typically knowledgeable of the history of the region, and proud of it, as well. The often-parodied dialect of the region is most commonly known as the Boston accent and Boston English, although, in reality, this accent is reserved mostly for the coasts of Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and Maine. It is the result of an incomplete transition from 17th century British English, which the standard American dialect imitates, and modern British English. There are also other regional accents as well, such as the Boston Brahmin accent, said to be typical of the Boston Brahmin artistocracy. This accent is also often heavily parodied.

[edit] Economy

In the twentieth century, most of New England's traditional industries have relocated to states or foreign countries where goods can be made more cheaply. In more than a few factory towns, skilled workers have been left without jobs. Largely around Boston in the ring of Route 128, the gap has been partly filled by high technology industries, in particular software and biotech. Education, high technology, financial services, tourism, and medicine, continue to drive the local economy.

In the southwestern Connecticut counties of Fairfield and New Haven the economy is more closely associated with New York City, and the economy is more often viewed as an extension of the New York Metropolitan Area. For years many residents of southwestern Connecticut have crossed the state line each day to work in Manhattan. More recently, New Yorkers have begun to travel into Connecticut as part of a reverse commute to many of the job centers developed in the suburbs.

In rural New England the economy still revolves around fishing, farming and forestry, as well as small hometown businesses that serve the rural populations. Much of the landscape of New England is comprised of small, family farms: typically dairy, fiber, and diversified market vegetable farms which are sold at the many small farmers markets throughout the region. There is a growing movement toward organic farming, particularly in Vermont and Maine.

Forestry is primarily a large-scale operation in the northernmost regions of New England. Nearly 25% of the land mass of Maine is privately held by paper companies. Logging this land and processing the timber are an important piece of this regions economy, with many paper mills along major rivers in the region.

In coastal New England, fishing comes primarily in the form of lobstering, with groundfishing, and shellfish digging also being important contributors to the fishing economy. Aquaculture is a growing industry. Herring seining (baitfish for lobstering) is also important.

The GDP of New England is approximately $649 billion; per capita it is $45,786

[edit] Literature

New England has always received a great deal of attention from American writers like Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe, John Updike, John Irving and Arthur Miller. Largely on the strength of local writers like Thoreau, Boston, Massachusetts was for some years the center of the U.S. publishing industry, before being overtaken by New York in the middle of the nineteenth century. Boston remains the home of publishers Houghton Mifflin and Pearson Education, among others, as well as (until recently) the literary magazine The Atlantic Monthly.

New England is also the setting for most of the gothic horror stories of H.P. Lovecraft, most probably because he lived his life in Providence, Rhode Island. Real New England towns such as Ipswich, Newburyport, Rowley, and Marblehead are given fictional names such as Dunwich, Arkham, Innsmouth, Kingsport, and Miskatonic and then featured quite often in his stories.

More recently, author Stephen King has also used the small towns of the New England state of Maine as the setting for much of his horror fiction, with much of the action taking place in or near the fictional town of Castle Rock.

Modern author Rick Moody has set many of his works in southern New England, focusing on wealthy families of suburban Connecticut's Gold Coast and their battles with addiction and anomie.

The novel Ethan Frome was written in 1911 by Edith Wharton. It is set in turn-of-the-century New England, in the fictitious town of Starkfield, Massachusetts. Like much literature of the region, it plays off themes of isolation and hopelessness.