The area of present-day New York had been inhabited by tribes of the Algonquians and the Iroquois Confederacy Native Americans for several thousand years by the time the earliest Europeans arrived.

From the early 19th century, New York's development of its interior, beginning with the construction of the Erie Canal, gave it incomparable advantages over other regions of the United States.

Verrazzano described it as "a vast coastline with a deep delta in which every kind of ship could pass" and he adds: "that it extends inland for a league and opens up to form a beautiful lake.

After their victory, the British occupied present-day New York City, making it their military and political base of operations in North America for the duration of the conflict, and consequently the focus of General George Washington's intelligence network.

Major corporations that got their start in New York during this time include American Express, AT&T, Bristol Myers Squibb, Carrier, Chase, General Electric, Goldman Sachs, IBM, Kodak, Macy's, NBC, Pfizer, Random House, RCA, Tiffany & Co., Wells Fargo, Western Union, and Xerox.

[78] The first permanent immigration depot in New York was established in 1855 at Castle Garden, a converted War of 1812 era fort located within what is now Battery Park, at the tip of Lower Manhattan.

[79] When the federal government assumed control, it established the Bureau of Immigration, which chose the three-acre (1.2 ha) Ellis Island in Upper New York Harbor for an entry depot.

The storm and its profound effects have prompted the discussion of constructing seawalls and other coastal barriers around the shorelines of New York City and Long Island to minimize the risk from another such future event.

[92] During July 2020, a federal judge ruled Governor Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio exceeded authority by limiting religious gatherings to 25% when others operated at 50% capacity.

[97] In contrast with New York City's urban landscape, the vast majority of the state's geographic area is dominated by meadows, forests, rivers, farms, mountains, and lakes.

Western New York, particularly the Tug Hill region, receives heavy lake-effect snows, especially during the earlier portions of winter, before the surface of Lake Ontario itself is covered by ice.

Birds of prey that are present in the state are great horned owls, bald eagles, red-tailed hawks, American kestrels, and northern harriers.

Maritime or shore birds of New York are great blue heron, killdeers, northern cardinals, American herring gulls, and common terns.

The major cities of the state developed along the key transportation and trade routes of the early 19th century, including the Erie Canal and railroads paralleling it.

[136] Major metro areas include New York City, Buffalo, Rochester, the Capital District (Albany, Schenectady, and Troy), Poughkeepsie, Syracuse, Utica, and Binghamton.

[152][153] The leading out-of-state birthplaces in New York were the Dominican Republic, China, India, Puerto Rico, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Russia, Mexico, and Central American countries in 2017.

[165] The New York City neighborhood of Harlem has historically been a major cultural capital for Blacks and African Americans of sub-Saharan descent, and Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn has the largest such population in the United States.

[164][170][171][172][173] Multiple satellites of the original Manhattan Chinatown, in Brooklyn, and around Flushing, Queens, are thriving as traditionally urban enclaves, while also expanding rapidly eastward into suburban Nassau County,[174] on Long Island.

[211] Through another study by the Public Religion Research Institute in 2020, the majority of New York's religious or spiritual population were 67% Christian, followed by the irreligious (22%), Judaism (4%), Islam (2%), Buddhism and Hinduism (1% each), and other faiths (1%).

New York City remains the largest global center for trading in public equity and debt capital markets, driven in part by the size and financial development of the U.S.

[231] In December 2014, the State of New York announced a $50 million venture-capital fund to encourage enterprises working in biotechnology and advanced materials; according to former Governor Andrew Cuomo, the seed money would facilitate entrepreneurs in bringing their research into the marketplace.

Albany,[238] Saratoga County,[239][240] Rensselaer County, and the Hudson Valley, collectively recognized as eastern New York's Tech Valley, have experienced significant growth in the computer hardware ecosystem within the high-technology industry, making great strides in the nanotechnology sector, digital electronics design, and water- and electricity-dependent integrated microchip circuit manufacturing,[239] involving companies including IBM and its Thomas J. Watson Research Center,[241] and the three foreign-owned firms, GlobalFoundries, Samsung, and Taiwan Semiconductor, among others.

[244][245] In April 2021, GlobalFoundries, a company specializing in the semiconductor industry, moved its headquarters from Silicon Valley, California to its most advanced semiconductor-chip manufacturing facility in Saratoga County near a section of the Adirondack Northway, in Malta, New York.

The state also has a large manufacturing sector that includes printing and the production of garments, mainly in New York City; and furs, railroad equipment, automobile parts, and bus line vehicles, concentrated in Upstate regions.

Engineering challenges posed by the complex terrain of the state and the unique infrastructural issues of New York City brought on by urban crowding have had to be overcome perennially.

[262][263] All gasoline-powered vehicles registered in the State of New York are required to have an emissions inspection every 12 months, in order to ensure that environmental quality controls are working to prevent air pollution.

One of the most notable examples is AirTrain JFK which allows rail passengers to travel directly to terminals at John F. Kennedy International Airport and to the underground New York City Subway system.

In 1894, reflecting general racial discrimination then, the state passed a law that allowed communities to set up separate schools for children of African-American descent.

[283] Capital punishment was reintroduced in 1995 under the Pataki administration, but the statute was declared unconstitutional in 2004, when the New York Court of Appeals ruled in People v. LaValle that it violated the state constitution.

Heavily populated suburban areas downstate, such as Westchester County and Long Island, were solidly Republican until the 1990s, but have since shifted to primarily supporting the Democratic Party.