New England (region)

New England refers to the geographic and cultural region of the United States located in the nation’s far northeastern corner, which is bordered by the Canadian provinces of Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia to the north and the mid-Atlantic state of New York to the west. The New England region consists of the states of Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. According to 2023 estimates from the US Census Bureau, these six states have a total population of 15,159,777. Boston, the capital city of Massachusetts, remains the region’s largest metropolis and serves as the social, political, economic, and cultural heart of New England.

Brief History

Although New England was not the first region of the present-day United States to be colonized by the British, it is the oldest geographically defined and labeled region of the country. In 1622, a group of English settlers known as the Pilgrims, sailing aboard the Mayflower, founded the Plymouth Colony along the Atlantic coast of present-day eastern Massachusetts. Two years later, a Pilgrim named Thomas Weston and sixty followers founded the Wessagusset Colony northwest of Plymouth, although the colony was disbanded within six months as a result of fighting with Native Americans and the relocation of many of Weston’s original founders to nearby Plymouth or back to Britain. By 1628, the Massachusetts Bay Colony had been formed by English settlers, which consisted of present-day Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Maine.

Unlike other colonial English settlements in Virginia, which were driven primarily by economic motives and the establishment of cash crop plantations, pursuit of religious liberty fostered much of the migration and settlement from England to New England during the 1600s. The two largest religious groups who settled in the region were the Pilgrims and Puritans, two Protestant denominations who had fled England over disagreements with the Church of England (also known as the Anglican Church). The Pilgrims wished to separate from the Church of England, while the Puritans sought to "purify" the Church of England through the enactment of certain reforms. Since the English monarch is the official head of the Church of England, dissent from the church was seen as an affront to the king of England and interpreted as political opposition.

Pilgrim and Puritan settlers encountered many different Native American cultures throughout New England, including the Pequot, Wampanoag, Mohegan, Narragansett, and Massachuset (from whom the Bay Colony would ultimately take its name). Although the popular tale of Thanksgiving emphasizes friendship and cooperation between Native Americans and Pilgrims, in reality conflict between Indigenous peoples and the English settlers in the region was fairly common.

During the 1600s and 1700s, Boston emerged as one of the most important port cities of the thirteen colonies, ranking with the likes of New York City, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Charlestown. Lumber from New England’s forests became one of the region’s most profitable industries, and by the mid-1700s approximately one-third of British ships had been built in New England. The Salem witch trials, one of the most notorious incidents in colonial American history, occurred during the spring and summer of 1692 in Salem, Massachusetts. All told, more than 150 men and women faced accusations of practicing witchcraft, and nineteen people were convicted of witchcraft and executed by hanging. Another man was crushed to death as his punishment. By September 1692, the witch trials had been called off.

New England’s significance to the American Revolution cannot be understated, as the region served as the setting for some of the key events in the colonists’ struggle for independence, including the Boston Massacre in March 1770, Boston Tea Party in December 1773, Paul Revere’s famed "midnight ride" in April 1775, and the Battle of Bunker Hill in June 1775. New England’s role in the Civil War is not nearly as widely acknowledged as is its centrality in the American Revolution, but the region, especially Massachusetts, was the heart of the antislavery abolitionist movement. Harriet Beecher Stowe, a native of Connecticut, authored Uncle Tom’s Cabin in 1852. Uncle Tom’s Cabin remains one of the most socially important works of literature in American history, and the novel’s powerful narrative depicting the mistreatment of enslaved people helped galvanize abolitionist sentiments in the northern states. Another Connecticut native, John Brown, held strong abolitionist views and was executed in 1859 for attempting to incite a failed rebellion by enslaved people in Harpers Ferry, Virginia.

New England Today

With an estimated population of 653,833 in 2023, Boston ranks as the 25th largest city in the United States. New England holds a national reputation for its important role throughout the early history of the United States, particularly during the colonial era, and the region is well known as a popular tourist destination for its scenic landscape, historical landmarks, famous ski and summer resorts, and the tremendous success of the area’s professional sports teams. Within the past decade, the Boston Bruins (National Hockey League), Boston Celtics (National Basketball Association), Boston Red Sox (Major League Baseball), and New England Patriots (National Football League) have each won the league championship within their respective sport. The region is home to many of the top colleges and universities in the country, including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, four of the nation’s eight Ivy League colleges and universities, and four "seven sisters" universities—Harvard and Radcliffe, Wellesley, Smith, and Mount Holyoke (Massachusetts), Yale (New Haven, Connecticut), Brown (Providence, Rhode Island), and Dartmouth (Hanover, New Hampshire).

In the popular imagination, New England is well known for its prominently White Anglo-Saxon Protestant heritage, even though Anglo-Protestants live throughout the continental United States. The phrase "White Anglo-Saxon Protestant" or WASP has historically been used to refer to Americans who are the descendants of British colonialists who settled in the American colonies prior to independence. Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, however, millions of mostly Catholic immigrants—most notably Irish, Italian, Portuguese, and French Canadian—settled throughout New England. Since the 1960s, the Latino population of New England has grown considerably with the arrival of Puerto Rican, Dominican, and Mexican residents. A sizable Asian American population has also settled in New England, and Boston features its own Chinatown neighborhood. Boston is also home to one of the nation’s largest Brazilian American populations.

Bibliography

"American Community Survey 1-Year Data (2005-2023)." US Census Bureau, 12 Sept. 2024, www.census.gov/data/developers/data-sets/acs-1year.html. Accessed 5 Dec. 2024.

"Boston & New England." Swedish-American Chamber of Commerce, New England, www.sacc-ne.org/boston-new-england. Accessed 5 Dec. 2024.

Daniels, Bruce C. New England Nation: The Country the Puritans Built. New York: Palgrave, 2012. Print.

Foulds, Diane. Death in Salem: The Private Lives Behind the 1692 Witch Hunt. Guilford: Globe Pequot, 2013. Print.

Harrison, Blake, and Richard W. Judd, eds. A Landscape History of New England. Boston: MIT, 2011. Print.

Miller, Joel. The Revolutionary Paul Revere. Nashville: Nelson, 2010. Print.

"New England and the Civil War." All Things New England. allthingsnewengland.com. 2014. Web. 5 June 2015.

Newell, Mararet Ellen. Brethren by Nature: New England Indians, Colonists, and the Origins of American Slavery. Ithica: Cornell UP, 2015. Print.

Puleo, Stephen. A City So Grand: The Rise of an American Metropolis, Boston 1850–1900. Boston: Beacon, 2010. Print.

Vrabel, Jim. A People’s History of the New Boston. Amherst: U of Massachusetts P, 2014. Print.