History of New England
New England writers and events in the region helped launch the American War of Independence, which began when fighting erupted between British troops and Massachusetts militia in the Battles of Lexington and Concord.
Manufacturing in the United States began to shift south and west during the 20th century, and New England experienced a sustained period of economic decline.
It merged with other settlements to form the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, which became a haven for Baptists, Quakers, Jews, and others, including Anne Hutchinson who had been banished during the Antinomian Controversy.
King James was removed from the throne in the Glorious Revolution of 1689, and Andros was arrested and sent back to England by the colonists during the 1689 Boston revolt.
The Puritan economy was based on the efforts of self-supporting farmsteads which traded only for goods that they could not produce themselves, unlike the cash crop-oriented plantations of the Chesapeake region.
[12] New England became an important mercantile and shipbuilding center, along with agriculture, fishing, and logging, serving as the hub for trading between the southern colonies and Europe.
Most important, colonial legislatures set up a legal system that was conducive to business enterprise by resolving disputes, enforcing contracts, and protecting property rights.
[15] The growing population led to shortages of good farmland on which young families could establish themselves; one result was to delay marriage, and another was to move to new lands farther west.
These factors combined with growing urban markets for farm products and allowed the economy to flourish despite the lack of technological innovation.
He said that every man in New England is a property owner, "has a Vote in public Affairs, lives in a tidy, warm house, has plenty of good Food and Fuel, with whole clothes from Head to Foot, the Manufacture perhaps of his own family.
[18] Lawrence Cremin writes that colonists tried at first to educate by the traditional English methods of family, church, community, and apprenticeship, with schools later becoming the key agent in "socialization".
On June 9, 1772, Rhode Island residents banded together and burned HMS Gaspee in response to that ship's harassment of merchant shipping—and smuggling—in Narragansett Bay.
This Boston Tea Party outraged British officials, and the King and Parliament decided to punish Massachusetts by passing the Intolerable Acts in 1774.
This closed the port of Boston, the economic lifeblood of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and it ended self-government, putting the people under military rule.
British troops were forced back to Boston by local minutemen on the 19th in the Battles of Lexington and Concord where the famous "shot heard 'round the world" was fired.
[26] After independence, New England ceased to be a unified political unit but remained a defined historical and cultural region consisting of its constituent states.
[33] The crops produced included wheat, barley, rye, oats, turnips, parsnips, carrots, onions, cucumbers, beets, corn, beans, pumpkins, squash, and melons.
[33] Hence, much of the New England agricultural economy was characterized by a “lack of exchange; lack of differentiation of employments or division of labor; the absence of progress in agricultural methods; a relatively low standard of living; emigration and social stagnation.”[33] As Bidwell writes, the farming in New England at this time was “practically uniform” with many farmers distributing their land “in about the same proportions into pasturage, woodland, and tillage, and raised about the same crops and kept about the same kind and quantity of stock” as other farmers.
[36] During this period, the industrial jobs created in New England's towns and cities affected the agricultural economy profoundly by generating a rapidly growing non-agricultural urban population.
[38] The increasing specialization of agriculture even led to the production of tobacco, a predominantly southern crop, from central Connecticut to northern Massachusetts, where natural conditions were amenable to its growth.
Historian Peter Temin has pointed out that the “transformation of the New England economy in the middle fifty years of the nineteenth century was comparable in scope and intensity to the Asian ‘miracles’ of Korea and Taiwan in the half-century since World War II.”[45] The extensive changes in agriculture that occurred were an important aspect of this economic process.
[49] Many of these later immigrants were looking for short-term employment that would allow them to make enough money to go back home and settle comfortably, but approximately half of the Canadian settlers remained permanently.
The goal was supported by Morgan's financing and was to purchase and consolidate the main railway lines of New England, merge their operations, lower their costs, electrify the heavily used routes, and modernize the system.
The New Haven purchased 50 smaller companies, including streetcars, freight steamers, passenger steamships, and a network of light rails (electrified trolleys) that provided inter-urban transportation for all of southern New England.
By 1912, the New Haven operated over 2,000 miles (3,200 km) of track, with 120,000 employees, and it practically monopolized traffic in a wide swath from Boston to New York City.
Morgan's quest for monopoly angered reformers during the Progressive Era, most notably Boston lawyer Louis Brandeis who fought the New Haven for years.
Federal and local agencies provided assistance to New Englanders, and the modern disaster relief system was created in the process of that collaboration.
[60] What remained was high technology manufacturing, such as jet engines, nuclear submarines, pharmaceuticals, robotics, scientific instruments, and medical devices.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology invented the format for university-industry relations in high tech fields and spawned many software and hardware firms, some of which grew rapidly.
[61] By the 21st century, the region had become famous for its leadership roles in the fields of education, medicine, medical research, technology, finance, and tourism.
