History

Before the arrival of the English colonizers, six large groups of indigenous people inhabited Massachusetts territory: the Massachuset people, the Wampanoag south of Boston, the Nauset on Cape Cod, the Pennacook and the Nipmuc in northern Massachusetts, and the Pocumtuc in the Connecticut River Valley. Giovanni da Verrazano, a sailor in the service of France, explored the Massachusetts coast in 1524. At the beginning of the 17th century, two Englishmen carried out important explorations: Bartholomew Gosnold landed in Provincetown in 1602, and Captain John Smith sailed along the coast in 1614, naming the region New England. The beginning of the Massachusetts colonial history is marked by the landing at Plymouth, the 21 of December of 1620, the Pilgrim Fathers (‘Pilgrim Fathers’), members of a religious community dissident who had split from the Anglican Church.

In the late 1620s, other settlers arrived in the Boston area. They were the Puritans, religious dissenters who, like the Pilgrims, were dissatisfied with the religious atmosphere of England. In 1630, a fleet of ships carrying approximately a thousand Puritan settlers, led by John Winthrop, began what was called the ‘Great Migration’. These settlers founded the cities of Boston, Charlestown, Dorchester, Lynn, Medford, Roxbury, and Watertown, which became the territorial core of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

Abbreviated as MA by ABBREVIATIONFINDER, Massachusetts maintained a tough resistance to the imposition of taxes by the British in the years before the American War of Independence. The so – called Boston Massacre, which took place on 5 of March of 1770, in which British troops killed five settlers who refused taxes, was the trigger for a major revolt. Three years later, the famous Boston Tea Party accelerated the protests that would lead to the outbreak, in 1775, of the conflict that would culminate in the independence of the colonies. Shortly after the success of the colonists at the Battle of Bunker Hill (June of 1775) in Boston, the British left this city.

After the war overseas commerce was reestablished and Massachusetts became a major industrial state, specializing in the manufacture of textiles and footwear. But what gave Massachusetts its identity was the appearance of a group of prominent personalities in the field of culture and politics, such as the writers Ralph Waldo Emerson, John Greenleaf Whittier, Henry David Thoreau, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Emily E. Dickinson and Herman Melville, who spent a period of his life in this state. Anti-slavery leaders William Lloyd Garrison and Wendell Phillips, Harvard University graduate architect Henry Hobson Richardson, jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes, historians Francis Parkman, Henry Adams, and William Hickling Prescott, sculptor Horatio Greenough, painter John Singer Sargent, and reformers Horace Mann, Dorothea Dix and Lucy Stone.

Geography

Massachusetts has an area of ​​27,337 km². The altitude of its territory varies from sea level, on the coast of the Atlantic Ocean, to 1,063 m at the top of Mount Greylock, in the northwest. In Massachusetts six different physiographic regions can be distinguished:

• the Atlantic coastal plain
• the coastal lowlands
• the highlands of new England
• the lowlands of the Connecticut valley
• the western highlands of New England
• the berkshire valley

The Atlantic Coastal Plain in the east includes Cape Cod and the islands of Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard; In this region, the materials deposited by the glaciers, mainly sands, cover the sedimentary rocks.

• CountryAAH: Offers a full list of cities and towns in Massachusetts, together with postal codes for each of them, and including capital city of Massachusetts.

Rivers

The Charles River is the longest of the river courses that run entirely on Massachusetts land, but the Housatonic and Connecticut rivers are more important. In the northeastern sector of the state, the Merrimack River stands out.

Climate

The climate is humid continental. The summers are quite hot and winters cold, so there is a high temperature range, the greater the more to the inside. Coastal areas are prone to storms, common in the more northeastern sectors, and are often hit by hurricanes.

Flora and fauna

Forests cover approximately 55% of the state’s surface. The most common tree species are birch, beech, maple, oak, larch, and white and red pines. The fauna is varied: the white -tailed or Virginia deer is the main game animal. Small mammals include the skunk, raccoon, beaver, weasel, possum, gray and red squirrel, American marmot, fox and rabbit.

Economic development

Means

Among Massachusetts’ limited mineral resources is coal. The crops most prominent are those of blueberries, hay, apples, snuff, potatoes (potatoes) and vegetables. The main livestock products are dairy, eggs, the meat of cattle and pigs, and turkeys.

Fishing is of considerable importance; Massachusetts ranks second in catches (after Alaska) in the United States. The main species are cod, flounder, hake, swordfish, tuna, clam, shrimp and lobster.

Industry

It is one of the main industrial states of the country. The most prominent manufactures include industrial machinery, textiles, footwear, paper and its derivatives, office equipment, electronic equipment – particularly high-tech components – and precision instruments.