New England. Consisting of six states (five of them among the nation's smallest), New England, named by Captain John Smith in 1614, is the only U.S. region with clearly defined political boundaries.The region's first substantial European settlement was organized by Puritans in the late 1620s. Despite rapid diversification—Rhode Island and Connecticut emerged as rival colonies to Massachusetts‐Bay within the first decade—and the presence of non‐Puritans from the very beginning, a form of Puritan hegemony was imposed, especially in Massachusetts, by restricting the franchise to a religious elite. This hegemony was successfully challenged by England, which in 1686 imposed a central government, the “Dominion of New England,” on the entire region (plus New York). Although the dominion was dissolved in 1689, only Rhode Island and Connecticut retained political autonomy.

During the eighteenth century, New England came increasingly to resemble England itself. Society polarized economically, and its elite (like that of other regions) aspired to the cultural style of the English gentry, a development sometimes termed “anglicization.” Still, far more than other regions, New England maintained its ethnic homogeneity, in large measure by using the family itself as its primary labor supply—in contrast not only to the South's slave‐labor system but also to the wage labor of the Middle Colonies. Largely for that reason, regional population growth stemmed from natural increase rather than immigration: as late as 1773–1776, less than 1 percent of Britons who immigrated to America landed in New England—a mere 77 out of 9,364 individuals.

One element now deeply associated with New England—the nucleated village gathered around a central common—did not develop until about 1800. Far from being the product of early Puritan settlement, the nucleated village emerged only with the advent of strong regional markets and a protocapitalist rural economy. Nevertheless, the “New England village” and the stable cultural practices it was believed to engender became a model for the social order that many prominent antebellum New Englanders wished to export to the rest of the United States especially to the contested western regions. But in the decades after 1815, New England underwent a radical transformation as the region's mercantile elite (brought low economically by the War of 1812 and politically by their opposition to that war) came to invest in industrial production. The industrial revolution carried New England to a position of national strength and in the process transformed its social structure. By 1860 the region was more highly industrialized and urbanized, and contained more immigrants (mostly Roman Catholics, including many from Ireland), than any other part of the nation—a rapid and dramatic reversal of its ethnic composition and labor system. This same transformation helped generate the various reform movements that swept over New England after 1830: temperance and prohibition, body reform, and antislavery, all linked by a shared commitment to individual self‐discipline and self‐fulfillment.

The Civil War strengthened New England's industrial might. But many native‐born New Englanders found the side effects of industrialization—vast cotton mills and floods of non‐English‐speaking immigrants—deeply disturbing. Some of New England's most prominent reformers disengaged themselves from urban problems. For a new generation of authors, artists, and tourists, the declining villages of northern and coastal New England began to seem quaint and old‐fashioned, the repository of everything industrial society was leaving behind.

By 1920, more than two‐thirds of the Massachusetts population were first‐ or second‐generation immigrants. Old‐stock Yankees began to lose control over the economy. Even the Republican party's long‐standing regional hegemony was crumbling; the Democrat Alfred E. Smith won a majority of Massachusetts votes for president in 1928. The depression of the 1930s continued this development, though slowly. In 1936, when Connecticut, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island joined the New Deal, casting their electoral votes for Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Maine and Vermont became the only two states in the United States to hold out against the Roosevelt landslide.

In the first half of the twentieth century, New England underwent prolonged economic depression, resulting in massive deindustrialization as textile mills were dismantled, textile production moved south, and industrial cities became slums. But World War II fueled the growth of new industries and prosperity. Government contracts led to the rapid expansion of research and development in weapons, electronics systems, and what would later become computer technology. Cambridge, Massachusetts—home of the laboratories of Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology—was at the center of the new expansion. The Cold War fueled this military technology boom. The ripples of economic transformation were felt even in the marginal parts of New England, as those regions were transformed into highly developed tourist destinations catering to the vacation demand of newly leisured workers.
See also Agriculture: Colonial Era; Boston; Factory System; Federalist Party; Hartford Convention; Immigration; Indian History and Culture: From 1500 to 1800; Industrialization; Irish Americans; Italian Americans; King Philip's War; Literature: Colonial Era; Lowell Mills; Pequot War; Pilgrims; Poetry; Puritanism; Roman Catholicism; Salem Witchcraft; Textile Industry; Transcendentalism; Unitarianism and Universalism; Utopian and Communitarian Movements.

Bibliography

Hal Barron , Those Who Stayed Behind: Rural Society in Nineteenth Century New England, 1984.
Stephen Nissenbaum , New England as Region and Nation, in Edward L. Ayers, et al., eds., All Over the Map: Rethinking American Regions, 1989.
Theodore Steinberg , Nature Incorporated: Industrialization and the Waters of New England, 1991.
David A. Zonderman , Aspirations and Anxieties: New England Workers and the Mechanized Factory System, 1815–1850, 1992.
Dona Brown , Inventing New England: Regional Tourism in the Nineteenth Century, 1995.
Joseph A. Conforti , Imagining New England: Explorations of Regional Identity from the Pilgrims to the Mid‐Twentieth Century, 2001.

Stephen Nissenbaum

NEW ENGLAND

NEW ENGLAND. Embracing the six states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut, New England formed a distinct section with a character of its own from the beginning of European settlement in North America. It is significant that New England was the first to develop the idea of complete independence from Great Britain, that it opposed the unrestrained westward expansion of the new nation, and that it was the first to propose secession from the Union (see Hartford Convention). Its sectional identity and local character were deeply rooted in its history.

Geographically, New England is separated from the rest of the United States by the northern spurs of the Appalachian Mountains, and its lack of river systems, such as the Mohawk-Hudson, denies it easy access to the hinterland. Although Puritanism was widespread in all the colonies during the period of early English settlement, New England was settled by the most orthodox Puritans. In Massachusetts the first government was a conservative theocracy, which, owing to the transfer of the charter to Boston, was practically independent of England (1630–1686). Connecticut and Rhode Island colonies never had royal governors. Owing to altered conditions in England, immigration declined sharply for the two centuries after 1640, thus limiting New England's exposure to outside influences. The early establishment of Harvard College in 1636 further increased parochialism, for potential leaders who might have been broadened by an education in England remained in the provincial atmosphere of the colony. The poor soil and rough terrain precluded development of large estates or staple crops, as well as of slavery. The region became a land of small farmers, hardy fishermen, and versatile traders, all ingenious in finding ways of making money.

There were local differences, such as the religious intolerance of Massachusetts and the freedom of Rhode Island, but the "Yankee" character dominated all of New England by 1830. The limited number of immigrants, the lack of outside contacts, and stubborn control by the clerical oligarchy were all major factors in shaping the region. Moreover, when New Englanders migrated, they often did so in groups of families or entire congregations whose group solidarity maintained customs and character.

The typical New England institutions developed in isolation—public schools, Congregational churches, town government, and the "New England conscience"—as did the New England preoccupation with religion and morality. The 1825 opening of the Erie Canal, linking Lake Erie to New York City, further isolated New England, and even the first local railroad lines did not link it to the expanding nation. However, self-reliance, ingenuity, and industrious habits made New Englanders the most skilled workmen in America, and New England merchants developed manufactures to an extent that no other region did. The growth of mills and factories demanded an increase in cheap labor, and by 1840 foreign immigration reshaped the New England population and character. Even Puritan Massachusetts became an overwhelmingly Roman Catholic state.

Despite the arrival of immigrants from Canada and Europe, the New England character, established through two centuries of struggle and separation, persisted, and contributed much to other regions through migration and by example. Among the earliest migrations were those to Long Island, New Jersey, and South Carolina, and later to the Mohawk Valley, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, Michigan, and Oregon. Towns and districts all across the northern United States seem transplanted from New England, possessing as they do New England ideas of education, Congregational churches, town meetings, and Yankee character and attitudes, all introduced by New England migrants. Americans educated in New England colleges and universities also transmitted New England traditions to other states. Sectional as New England's history has been, the region's influence on the rest of the United States is out of all proportion to its size and population.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Brown, Richard D., and Jack Tager.Massachusetts: A Concise History. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2000.

Peirce, Neal R. The New England States: People, Politics, and Power in the Six New England States. New York: Norton, 1976.

Peter C.Holloran

New England was the name given by Captain John Smith in 1614 to the coastline of America north of the Hudson river, between the 41st and 45th degrees. Two years later he published a Description of New England, claiming at least 25 fine harbours. The Mayflower settlers landed at Plymouth in 1620 and the name New England was applied to the colony at Plymouth (later absorbed by Massachusetts), New Haven (later part of Connecticut), Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, and Maine. A New England Confederation, or United Colonies of New England, in 1643, to co-ordinate defence, though ineffective, was an early example of inter-colony collaboration. The New England colonies, with their strong puritan tradition, ultimately became the core of American resistance in the War of Independence and it was to cut them off from their neighbours in 1777 that Burgoyne began his march south from Canada down the Hudson river, which ended with his capitulation at Saratoga.

J. A. Cannon

New England was the name given by Captain John Smith in 1614 to the coastline of America north of the Hudson river. Two years later he published a Description of New England, claiming at least 25 fine harbours. The Mayflower settlers landed at Plymouth in 1620 and the name New England was applied to the colony (later absorbed by Massachusetts), New Haven (later part of Connecticut), Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, and Maine. The New England colonies, with their strong puritan tradition, ultimately became the core of American resistance in the War of Independence.

New England Region in ne USA, comprising the states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island. In 1643, some of the British colonies set up the New England Confederation for the purposes of defence and to establish a common policy towards the Native Americans. New England was the centre of events leading up to the American Revolution. The region became highly industrialized after the War of 1812. It was home to writers such as Emerson, Hawthorne, and Thoreau and the literary movement Transcendentalism.

New England, USA A region that includes the states of Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. It was named by Captain John Smith in 1614 as a tribute to his home country. The first Puritans from England settled in Massachusetts in 1620 when the name was confirmed by James I^†.