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A region of NE USA, comprising the states of Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Vermont, Rhode Island, and Connecticut. The main area of English settlement in the 17th-c, several of the colonies initially formed themselves into a New England Confederation. A century later, the region was the centre of the independence movement in the years before the American Revolution, and at other times has been a leader in educational and intellectual movements.

For other uses of this name, see New England (disambiguation).

New England is a region of the United States located in the northeastern corner of the country. It comprises the states of Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. The region's most populous city, as well as its business and cultural center, is Boston.
The region was inhabited by indigenous peoples when English Pilgrims, fleeing religious persecution in Europe, arrived nearly four hundred years ago, at the beginning of the 17th century. In the 18th century, New England was one of the first North American British colonies to demonstrate ambitions of independence from the British Crown, although it would later oppose the War of 1812 between the United States and Great Britain. In the 19th century, it played a prominent role in the movement to abolish slavery in the United States, became a source of some of the first examples of American literature and philosophy, and showed the first signs of the effects of the Industrial Revolution in North America."New England," Microsoft速 Encarta速 Online Encyclopedia 2006 encarta.msn.com 息 1997-2006 Microsoft Corporation. Together, the Mid-Atlantic and New England regions are referred to as the Northeastern region of the United States. New England is also a part of the greater U.S.-Canada Atlantic Northeast region.

History

New England has long been inhabited by Algonquian-speaking native peoples, including the Abenaki, the Penobscot, the Wampanoag, and others. The Wampanoag occupied southeastern Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and the islands of Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket.

On April 10, 1606, James I of England chartered the Virginia Companies of London and Plymouth. www.nps.gov/colo/Jthanout/TobaccoHistory.html Captain John Smith, exploring the shores of the region in 1614, named the region "New England"New England. Retrieved June 20, 2006, from Encyclop脱dia Britannica Premium Service: www.britannica.com/eb/article?tocId=9055457 in his account of two voyages there, published as A Description of New England. This name was officially sanctioned on November 3, 1620, when the charter of the Virginia Company of Plymouth was replaced by a royal charter for the Plymouth Council for New England, a joint stock company established to colonize and govern the region."...joint stock company organized in 1620 by a charter from the British crown with authority to colonize and govern the area now known as New England." Retrieved July 13, 2006, from Encyclop脱dia Britannica Premium Service: www.britannica.com/eb/article?tocId=9055458 Shortly afterwards, in December 1620, a permanent settlement was established at present-day Plymouth, Massachusetts by the Pilgrims, English religious separatists arriving via Holland. Banished from Massachusetts, Roger Williams led a group south, and founded Providence, Rhode Island in 1636. At this time, Vermont was yet unsettled, and the territories of New Hampshire and Maine were governed by Massachusetts.

In these early years, relationships between colonists and Native Americans alternated between peace and armed skirmishes. Six years after the bloodiest of these, the Pequot War, in 1643 the colonies of Massachusetts Bay, Plymouth, New Haven, and Connecticut joined together in a loose compact called the New England Confederation (officially "The United Colonies of New England"). The confederation was designed largely to coordinate mutual defense against possible wars with Native Americans, the Dutch in the New Netherland colony to the west, the Spanish in the south, and the French in New France to the north, as well as to assist in the return of runaway slaves. Available at: www.coin-collecting.info/American/early.html (Accessed 14 August 2006). In 1686, King James II, concerned about the increasingly independent ways of the colonies, including their self-governing charters, open flouting of the Navigation Acts, and increasing military power, established the Dominion of New England, an administrative union comprising all of the New England colonies. Two years later, the provinces of New York (New Amsterdam) and the New Jersey, seized from the Dutch, were added. This tension culminated itself in the American Revolution, boiling over with the breakout of the American War of Independence in 1776. copyright expired).

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. Today, the region is more ethnically diverse, having seen waves of immigration from Ireland, Qu辿bec, Italy, Asia, Latin America, Africa, other parts of the United States, and elsewhere. The enduring European influence can be seen in the region, from Massachusetts' use of traffic rotaries to the bilingual French and English towns of northern Vermont and New Hampshire, as innocuous as the sprinkled use of British spelling, and as obvious as the region's unique dialect.

Geography and climate

New England's geography is the result of retreating ice sheets that shaped the landscape thousands of years ago, leaving behind rolling hills, mountains, and a jagged coastline. Mount Washington, at 1,917 m (6,288 ft), in New Hampshire's White Mountains, is the highest peak in New England. Vermont's Green Mountains, which become the Berkshire Hills in western Massachusetts, are smaller than the White Mountains. Valleys in the region include the Connecticut River Valley and the Merrimack Valley.

The region has many rivers and streams. The longest is the Connecticut River, which flows from northeastern New Hampshire for 655 km (407 mi) until it empties into the Long Island Sound. Lake Champlain, between Vermont and New York, is the largest lake in the region.

The climate in New England is known for its unpredictability, and it varies throughout the region. As of 2000, the total population of New England was 13,922,517.www.planning.state.ri.us/census/pdf%20files/pdf/NE1800-2000.PDF If New England were one state, its population would rank 5th in the nation, behind Florida. Western Massachusetts is less densely populated than eastern Massachusetts.
Southwestern Connecticut 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." 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, Newport, Providence, New Haven, and Bridgeport, as well as smaller cities, like Newburyport, Gloucester, Biddeford, Bath, Rockland, 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, the signature hook-shaped peninsula of Massachusetts, also a popular tourist attraction, is lined with sandy beaches and dotted with bed and breakfast tourist lodgings. Indeed, southern New England forms an integral part of the BosWash megalopolis, a conglomeration of urban centers that spans from Boston to

• Providence, Rhode Island: 173,618
  
• Worcester, Massachusetts: 172,648
  
• Springfield, Massachusetts: 152,082
  
• Bridgeport, Connecticut: 139,529
  
• Hartford, Connecticut: 124,558
  
• New Haven, Connecticut: 123,626
  
• Stamford, Connecticut: 117,083
  
• Waterbury, Connecticut: 107,271
  
• Manchester, New Hampshire: 107,006
  
• Lowell, Massachusetts: 105,167
  

During the 20th century, urban expansion has made the New York metropolitan area an important economic influence on Fairfield County and New Haven in southwestern Connecticut.

Economy

Several factors contribute to the uniqueness of the New England economy. Exports consist mostly of industrial products, including specialized machines and weaponry, built by the region's educated workforce.
New England also exports food products, ranging from fish to maple syrup. The U.S. Department of Commerce has called the New England economy a microcosm for the entire United States economy."Background on the New England Economy." The metropolitan statistical area (MSA) with the lowest rate, 2.5%, was Burlington-South Burlington, in Vermont; the MSA with the highest rate, 7.9%, was Lawrence-Methuen-Salem MA NH, in Massachusetts and southern New Hampshire.www.bls.gov/xg_shells/ro1xg02.htm#lf

New England is home to two of the ten poorest cities in the United States: Providence, RI and Hartford, CT www.census.gov/prod/2003pubs/c2kbr-19.pdf. Available at: www.nass.usda.gov/Statistics_by_State/Ag_Overview/AgOverview_VT.pdf and Connecticut and Massachusetts seventh and eleventh for tobacco, respectively.U.S. Department of Agriculture, National Agricultural Statistics Service. Available at: www.bea.gov/bea/newsrel/gspnewsrelease.htm (Accessed 19 July 2005).

Politics

The early European settlers of New England were English Protestants fleeing religious persecution. This is the strongest example of 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. Rotberg review REAL DEMOCRACY: THE NEW ENGLAND TOWN MEETING AND HOW IT WORKS at democraciaparticipativa.net/libros/RealDemocracyNewEnglandTownMeeting.htm (Accessed 19 July 2006).

New England and political thought

During the colonial period and the early years of the American republic, New England leaders like John Hancock, John Adams, and Samuel Adams joined those in Philadelphia and Virginia to assist and lead the newly-forming country. At the time of the American Civil War, New England, the mid-Atlantic, and the Midwest, which had long since abolished slavery, united against the Confederate States of America, ending the practice in the United States. Henry David Thoreau, iconic New England writer and philosopher, made the case for civil disobedience and libertarianism, and has been adopted by the anarchist tradition. A modern example of this spirit is the Free State Project in New Hampshire.

While modern New England is known for its liberal tendencies, Puritan New England was highly intolerant of any deviation from strict social norms. Available at: www.watson.org/~lisa/blackhistory/school-integration/boston/index.html (Accessed 19 July 2006)

Contemporary politics

Today, the dominant party in New England is the Democratic Party, sending six Democrats to the U.S. Senate and sixteen Democrats to the U.S. House of Representatives, compared to five Republican senators and five Republican representatives, respectively. 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."2006 Political Party Breakdown by State." Available at: www.thegreenpapers.com/G06/PPBDTraditional.phtml (Accessed 19 July 2006). Additionally, in both the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections, every congressional district with the exception of New Hampshire's 1st district were won by Gore and Kerry respectively.

New England abolished the death penalty for crimes like robbery and burglary in the 19th century, before much of the rest of the United States did. Available at: www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/state/ (Accessed 19 July 2006). although New Hampshire currently has no death row inmates and has not held an execution since 1939. Available at: www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,145681,00.html (Accessed 19 July 2006).

Vermont was the first state to allow civil unions between same sex couples, and Massachusetts was the first state to allow same-sex marriage between same sex couples. In 2005, Connecticut also began to allow civil unions.

As of 2006, Massachusetts is the only state with a plan to adopt a system of universal health care for its citizens.www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/04/AR2006040401937.html

In 2006, Deval Patrick, an African American, won the Democratic party's nomination for Governor of Massachusetts. The southwestern part of the state is largely suburban, and as part of the New York metropolitan area, is culturally tied more with New York City than the rest of the New England region. The remainder of the state, however, is culturally similar to neighboring Massachusetts and Rhode Island.

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. One of the older American regions, New England has developed a distinct cuisine, dialect, architecture, and government. clam chowder, lobster, and other products of the sea are among some of the region's most popular foods.

Accents

The often-parodied Boston accent (see Mayor Quimby of The Simpsons) is native to the region. Many of its most stereotypical features (such as r-dropping and the so-called broad A) are the result of influence of high-prestige English accents on Boston's upper class. The Boston accent and accents closely related to it cover eastern Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Maine, though there is of course significant dialect variation within this area.

Also found in New England is the distinctively conservative dialect of Rhode Island (parodied by Peter Griffin and Lois Griffin of Family Guy). The accent family of western New England (most of Connecticut, western Massachusetts, and Vermont) differs sharply from the Boston accent to its east and the New York accent to its southwest, but is thought to be closely related to the so-called Inland North accent of the Great Lakes region due west of it, to which western New England contributed many early settlers.

Social activities and music

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. This area also has thriving hardcore, punk, and indie rock music scenes. Surf rock was pioneered by Dick Dale of Quincy, Massachusetts, and the Pixies, of Boston, influenced the grunge movement of the 1990s. Dropkick Murphys, from South Boston, mix hardcore and punk music with Irish music in a style known as Celtic Punk.

In much of rural New England, particularly Maine, Acadian and Quebecois culture also dominate the region's music and dance. Contra dancing and country square dancing are popular throughout New England, usually backed by live Irish, Acadian, or other folk music.

Traditional knitting, quilting and rug hooking circles in rural New England have become less common; church, sports, and town government are more typical social activities.

Media

New England has several regional broadcasting companies, including New England Cable News (NECN) and the New England Sports Network (NESN) as well as the national cable sports broadcaster ESPN in Bristol Connecticut. Its studios are located in Newton, Massachusetts, outside of Boston, although it maintains bureaus in Manchester, New Hampshire; Available at: www.boston.com/news/necn/About/ (Accessed 19 July 2006).

The New England Sports Network covers New England sports teams throughout the region, save for Fairfield County, Connecticut.New England Sports Network. The first such institution, Harvard, was founded at Cambridge, Massachusetts, to train preachers, in 1636. Yale University, in New Haven was founded in 1701 and awarded the first Ph.D. 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 four out of the eight universities in the Ivy League (Harvard University, Yale University, Brown University, and Dartmouth College), Tufts University, Boston College, Colby College, Bates College, Bowdoin College,the College of the Holy Cross, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Middlebury College, Williams College, Amherst College, Wellesley College, Wesleyan University, Trinity College, Rhode Island School of Design, and others.

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 Phillips Academy in Massachusetts, St. Paul's School and Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire, the prestigious Choate Rosemary Hall, Hotchkiss School, Cheshire Academy, Hopkins Grammar School, Avon Old Farms and Loomis Chaffee in Connecticut, and the schools of the prestigious 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.

New England states also fund their public schools well, with high spending rates per student and teacher salaries higher than elsewhere. Taken from the New York Post, available at: www.nypost.com/news/regionalnews/64304.htm (Accessed 19 July 2006).

New England is home to several prominent academic journals and publishing companies, including The New England Journal of Medicine, Harvard University Press, and Yale University Press. Also, many of its institutions lead the open access alternative to conventional academic publication, including MIT, the University of Connecticut, and the University of Maine. Ralph Waldo Emerson was born in Boston, Massachusetts. Henry David Thoreau was born in Concord, Massachusetts, where he famously lived, for some time, by Walden Pond, on Emerson's land. Nathaniel Hawthorne, romantic era writer, was born in historical Salem; Robert Lowell, Confessionalist poet and teacher of Sylvia Plath, was also a New England native. Current U.S. Poet Laureate Donald Hall continues the line of renowned New England poets. New England is also the setting for most of the gothic horror stories of H.P. 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.
The region has also drawn the attention of authors and poets from other parts of the United States. John Updike, originally from Pennsylvania, eventually moved to Ipswich, Massachusetts, which served as the model for the fictional New England town of Tarbox in his 1968 novel Couples. Robert Frost was born in California, but moved to Massachusetts during his teen years and published his first poem in Lawrence; Arthur Miller, a New York City native, used New England as the setting for some of his works, most notably The Crucible.

More recently, Stephen King, born in Portland, Maine, has used the small towns of his home state as the setting for much of his horror fiction, with several of his stories taking place in or near the fictional town of Castle Rock. Just to the south, Exeter, New Hampshire was the birthplace of best-selling novelist John Irving and Dan Brown, author of The Da Vinci Code. 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.

Largely on the strength of its local writers, Boston 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, and was the longtime home of literary magazine The Atlantic Monthly. Merriam-Webster is based in Springfield, Massachusetts. Basketball was invented by James Naismith in Springfield, Massachusetts, in 1891.inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blbasketball.htm Volleyball was invented by William G. Morgan in Holyoke, Massachusetts, in 1895.www.volleyball.org/history.html The earliest known written reference to the sport of baseball is a 1791 Pittsfield, Massachusetts by-law banning the playing of the game within 80 yards of the town's new meeting house.news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3710967.stm

Professional and Semi Professional Sports Teams in New England

• Baseball:
  
  • Major League Baseball
    
    • Boston Red Sox (Boston, Massachusetts)
      
  • International League (AAA)
    
    • Pawtucket Red Sox (Pawtucket, Rhode Island)
      
  • Eastern League (AA)
    
    • New Hampshire Fisher Cats (Manchester, New Hampshire)
      
    • Portland Sea Dogs (Portland, Maine)
      
    • Connecticut Defenders (Norwich, Connecticut)
      
    • New Britain Rock Cats (New Britain, Connecticut)
      
  • New York - Penn League (A)
    
    • Lowell Spinners (Lowell, Massachusetts)
      
    • Vermont Lake Monsters (Burlington, Vermont)
      
  • Atlantic League (Independent)
    
    • Bridgeport Bluefish (Bridgeport, Connecticut)
      
  • Canadian-American Association of Professional Baseball (Independent)
    
    • Brockton Rox (Brockton, Massachusetts)
      
    • Nashua Pride (Nashua, New Hampshire)
      
    • New Haven County Cutters (New Haven, Connecticut)
      
    • North Shore Spirit (Lynn, Massachusetts)
      
    • Worcester Tornadoes (Worcester, Massachusetts)
      

• Football:
  
  • National Football League
    
    • New England Patriots (Foxboro, Massachusetts)
      
  • Af2(Minor League Arena Football)
    
    • Manchester Wolves (Manchester, New Hampshire)
      

• Basketball:
  
  • National Basketball Association
    
    • Boston Celtics (Boston, Massachusetts)
      
  • Women's National Basketball Association
    
    • Connecticut Sun (Uncasville, Connecticut)
      
  • American Basketball Association(Independent Minor League)
    
    • Cape Cod Frenzy (Sandwich, Massachusetts)
      
    • Vermont Frost Heaves (Burlington, Vermont and Barre, Vermont)
      

• Hockey:
  
  • National Hockey League
    
    • Boston Bruins
      
  • American Hockey League(AAA)
    
    • Lowell Devils (Lowell, Massachusetts)
      
    • Bridgeport Sound Tigers (Bridgeport, Connecticut)
      
    • Hartford Wolf Pack (Hartford, Connecticut)
      
    • Manchester Monarchs (Manchester, New Hampshire)
      
    • Portland Pirates (Portland, Maine)
      
    • Springfield Falcons (Springfield, Massachusetts)
      
    • Worcester Sharks (Worcester, Massachusetts)
      
    • Providence Bruins (Providence, Rhode Island)
      

• Soccer:
  
  • Major League Soccer
    
    • New England Revolution (Foxboro, Massachusetts)
      
  • United Soccer Leagues
    
    • New Hampshire Phantoms (Hampstead, New Hampshire)
      
  • USL Premier Development League
    
    • Cape Cod Crusaders (Hyannis, Massachusetts)
      
    • Rhode Island Stingrays (Providence, Rhode Island)
      
    • Vermont Voltage (St. Albans, Vermont)
      

• Lacrosse:
  
  • Major League Lacrosse
    
    • Boston Cannons (Boston, Massachusetts)
      

• NASCAR:
  

New Hampshire International Speedway (Loudon, New Hampshire)

In the southwestern part of the state, many Connecticut residents support the New York Yankees and other New York pro teams.

The region also has a rich heritage in high school and college athletics. The Boston Marathon, run on Patriot's Day every year, is a New England cultural institution. The following places are replete with historic buildings, parks, and streetscapes:

• Boston and its surrounding area
  
• Plymouth, Massachusetts
  
• Providence, Rhode Island
  
• Portsmouth, New Hampshire
  
• Newport, Rhode Island
  
• New Haven, Connecticut
  
• Newburyport, Massachusetts
  
• Gloucester, Massachusetts
  

Educational

New England features four out of the eight historic Ivy League schools:

• Harvard University in Cambridge
  
• Yale University in New Haven
  
• Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire
  
• Brown University in Providence
  

The Five Colleges are a consortium of five affiliated colleges in the Pioneer Valley of western Massachusetts:

• Amherst College in Amherst
  
• Hampshire College in Amherst
  
• Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley
  
• Smith College in Northampton
  
• University of Massachusetts Amherst in Amherst
  

Recreational

The Appalachian Mountains run through northern New England which make for excellent skiing. Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine are home to various ski resorts.

Cape Cod, Nantucket, and Martha's Vineyard in Massachusetts are popular tourist destinations for their small town charm and beaches. All have very restrictive zoning laws to prevent rampant sprawl and overdevelopment.

Acadia National Park, off the coast of Maine, preserves most of Mount Desert Island and includes mountains, an ocean shoreline, woodlands, and lakes. In Connecticut, Fairfield was ranked ninth, while Stamford was ranked forty-sixth. In Rhode Island, Cranston was ranked seventy-eighth, while Warwick was ranked eighty-third.money.cnn.com/magazines/moneymag/bplive/2006/top100/

See also

• Extreme points of New England
  
• Amusement parks in New England
  
• Beaches of New England
  
• Boston accent
  
• Boston slang
  

These were other colonial dominions of the same scale and influence in the U.S. Northeast:

• New Netherland and New Sweden before New England and Pennsylvania ascended.
  

References

• Adams, James Truslow. Retrieved May 11, 2005
  
• The Washington Post, Mass.