New England

     New England is a geographical region comprising six states of the northeastern United States: Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut. It is bordered by the state of New York to the west and by the Canadian provinces of New Brunswick and Quebec to the northeast and north, respectively. The Atlantic Ocean is to the east and southeast, and Long Island Sound is to the south. Boston is New England's largest city as well as the capital of Massachusetts. The largest metropolitan area is Greater Boston, which also includes Worcester, Massachusetts (the second-largest city in New England), Manchester (the largest city in New Hampshire), and Providence (the capital and largest city of Rhode Island), with nearly a third of the entire region's population.

    In 1620, Puritan Separatist Pilgrims from England first settled in the region, forming the Plymouth Colony, the second successful English settlement in America, following the Jamestown Settlement in Virginia founded in 1607. Ten years later, more Puritans settled north of Plymouth Colony in Boston, thus forming Massachusetts Bay Colony. Over the next 126 years, people in the region fought in four French and Indian Wars, until the British and their Iroquois allies defeated the French and their Algonquin allies in North America. In 1692, the town of Salem, Massachusetts and surrounding areas experienced the Salem witch trials, one of the most infamous cases of mass hysteria in the history of the Western Hemisphere.

     In the late 18th century, political leaders from the New England Colonies known as the Sons of Liberty initiated resistance to Britain's efforts to impose new taxes without the consent of the colonists. The Boston Tea Party was a protest to which Britain responded with a series of punitive laws stripping Massachusetts of self-government, which was termed the "Intolerable Acts" by the colonists. The confrontation led to the first battles of the American Revolutionary War in 1775 and the expulsion of the British authorities from the region in spring 1776. The region also played a prominent role in the movement to abolish slavery in the United States and was the first region of the U.S. transformed by the Industrial Revolution, centered on the Blackstone and Merrimack river valleys.

     The physical geography of New England is diverse for such a small area. Southeastern New England is covered by a narrow coastal plain, while the western and northern regions are dominated by the rolling hills and worn-down peaks of the northern end of the Appalachian Mountains. The Atlantic fall line lies close to the coast, which enabled numerous cities to take advantage of water power along the numerous rivers, such as the Connecticut River, which bisects the region from north to south.

    Each state is principally subdivided into small incorporated municipalities known as towns, many of which are governed by town meetings. The only unincorporated areas in the region exist in the sparsely populated northern regions of Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont. The region is one of the U.S. Census Bureau's nine regional divisions and the only multi-state region with clear, consistent boundaries. It maintains a strong sense of cultural identity, although the terms of this identity are often contrasted, combining Puritanism with liberalism, agrarian life with industry, and isolation with immigration.