New England

''Alternate meaning: New England, a region of Australia

New England at its widest interpretation

The New England region of the United States is located in the upper northeastern corner of the country. Boston is its cultural center, and the region includes the following states:

New England is perhaps the best-defined region of the U.S., with more uniformity and more of a shared heritage than other regions of the country. Together, the Mid-Atlantic and New England regions are generally referred to as the Northeastern region of the United States.

Table of contents

1 The Name New England
2 Historical Significance
3 Politics
4 Education Powerhouse
5 Population
6 Culture
7 Economy
8 Literature
9 Related topics
10 Further reading
11 Links

The Name New England

The name dates to the earliest days of European settlement, and indeed, in 1616 Captain John Smith described the area in a pamphlet "New England." The name received official sanction in 1620 with the grant by James I to the Plymouth Council for New England. The region was subsequently divided through further grants, including the 1629 royal grant of "Hampshire" which was issued "...for ye makeing a Plantation & estahlishing of a Colony or Colonyes in the Countrey called or knowen by ye name of New England in America."

Following the Pequot War in 1637, the Massachusetts Bay, Plymouth, New Haven, and Connecticut colonies 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 the individual colonies to voluntary follow any 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.

In 1686, King James II, concerned about the increasingly independent ways of the colonies, in particular of 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 New York and New Jersey colonies, 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 a popular legend, hid inside an oak tree. Andros' efforts to unify the colonial defenses met little success, and in 1689, after the removal of James II in the Glorious Revolution, the dominion ceased to exist after only three years of existence.

The colonies were not formally united again until 1776, when the remaining ones became part of the United States.

New England is unique as an American region, along with the Canadian province of Nova Scotia, or "New Scotland," to inherit a name of a former kingdom of the British Isles.

Historical Significance

New England has often played a leading role in American history. From the late 18th century to the mid to late 19th century, New England and its colleges were the nation's religious and intellectual center, and the region was a commercial trading powerhouse. During this time, it was a dynamic and productive region, and the city of Boston competed well against New York, Philadelphia and Baltimore. New England, like the Mid-Atlantic and the South, grew rich on agriculture, commerce, trade and general progress. Relatively unscathed by the Civil War, the region continued to prosper into the 20th century.

Politically, New England leaders like Adams joined those in Philadelphia and Virginia to chart the course for the country, and in the Civil War period, New Englanders and Midwesterners joined hands in the anti-slavery cause to stop the expansion of slavery, and eventually end the practice in the entire United States. New England intellectuals became common in Democratic administrations, and from the depression to the Vietnam War, the region remained a source of political thought and intellectual ferment in the nation.

Politics

The earliest European settlers of New England were English Protestants who came in search of religious liberty. They gave the region its distinctive political format — town meetings (an outgrowth of meetings held by church elders) in which citizens gathered to discuss issues of the day. Town meetings still function in many New England communities today and have been revived as a form of dialogue in the national political arena.

Education Powerhouse

Education is another of the region's strongest legacies. The cluster of top-ranking universities and colleges in New England—including Harvard, Yale, MIT, Brown, Dartmouth, Wellesley, Smith, Williams, Amherst, and Wesleyan—is unequaled by any other region. America's first college, Harvard, was founded at Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1636. A number of the graduates from these schools end up settling in the region after school, providing the area with a well-educated populace and its most valuable resource, the area relatively lacking in natural resources, besides "ice, rocks, and fish." True to their enterprising nature, New Englanders have used their brains to make up the gap, for instance, in the 19th century, they made money off their frozen pond water, by shipping ice in fast clipper ships to tropical locations before refrigeration was invented.

Population

As some of the original New England settlers migrated westward to the Midwest, immigrants from Canada, Ireland, Italy, and eastern Europe moved into the region. Today, although the region has attracted Jewish and Asian-American residents, it lags other regions in measures of diversity simply because African-Americans and Hispanic Americans have never immigrated in large numbers there, as they have in the Mid-Atlantic, Midwest, and West. The region has remained consistently openminded towards other backgrounds however, a tradition which has continued from the abolition days to the region's recent leadership on the subject of gay marriage and civil unions.

Culture

New England is also important for the cultural contribution it has made to the nation. As the oldest of the American regions, this area developed its own distinctive cuisine, dialect, architecture and government. New England cuisine is known for its emphasis on seafood and dairy, and clam chowder, lobster, fish and chips (battered codfish), boiled dinner, and ice cream are among some of the region's most popular foods.

Despite a changing population, much of the original spirit of New England 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, its crisp chill, and vibrant colored foliage in autumn. The region is a popular tourist destination. As a whole, the area of New England tends to be progressive in its politics, albeit restrained 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 in relation to the rest of the country.

Economy

In the 20th 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. The gap has been partly filled by the microelectronics, computer and biotechnology industries, fed by those same educational institutions.

Literature

New England has always received a great deal of attention from American writers--Ralph Waldo Emerson's visit to Walden Pond, the work of Nathaniel Hawthorne and Stephen King, and contemporary playwrights like Arthur Miller who brought colonial New England back to the future in his McCarthyism allegory The Crucible.

New England is also the setting for most of the gothic horror stories of H.P. Lovecraft, mostly because he lived his life in Providence, Rhode Island. Places like Dunwich, Arkham, Innsmouth, Kingsport, Miskatonic and Salem are featured quite often in his stories. The Dunwich Horror is a good example.

Historic flag used by Massachusetts Bay militiamen at Bunker Hill in 1775