Abbreviated as NJ by ABBREVIATIONFINDER, New Jersey is (after Rhode Iceland, Delaware and Connecticut) the fourth smallest state of the United States and also the one with the highest population density. New Jersey was named after the Channel Island of Jersey. The state is nicknamed The Garden State and belongs to the Central Atlantic States.

Geography

New Jersey has a total area of ​​22,588 km², of which 3,377 km² is accounted for by water. The state borders New York to the north and northeast, where the Hudson River forms a natural boundary. To the west, New Jersey is completely separated from the states of Pennsylvania and Delaware by the Delaware River. In the south, in the Delaware Bay, and in the east, New Jersey has shares of the Atlantic.

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

The state is roughly the shape of the head and torso of a person whose head is bent slightly forward. Based on this picture, the head, i.e. the north of the country, is the region with the larger elevations in an otherwise flat country. Here in the Great Appalachian Valley (also Kittatinny Valley ), which differs from the US state of Alabama to the Hudson River extends, located on the border of the State New York of High Point, New Jersey’s highest mountain, with 550 meters the average Land height by more than seven times.

The east of the country, the catchment area of ​​the Hudson and the largest US metropolis of New York City, is densely populated. The metropolitan area west of the Hudson already includes Newark, Jersey City, Paterson and Elizabeth, all four of the country’s major cities.

To the south of it begins the Atlantic coastal plain, which is a popular holiday destination over a length of more than 200 km with its numerous seaside resorts. The coastal strip is relatively heavily populated, especially in the northern and then again in the southern part with its numerous medium-sized towns and cities. The largest cities along the coast are Long Branch in the north and Atlantic City in the south, which is important for tourism.

In the interior to the southern part, dense forests shape the image of the state. Well-known and popular travel destination in this region are the Pine Barrens, which are under conservation and to which the myth of the Jersey Devil is attached.

History

The New Jersey area was originally the settlement area of ​​the Lenni Lenape (Munsee) and other, smaller tribes such as the Hackensack, Haverstraw, Navasink, Raritan and Wappinger. Today’s New Jersey was then colonized by Europeans from 1609 first in the form of Dutch settlements and formed initially with the modern state of New York, the Dutch colony Neuniederland. After a massacre in Pavonia by Governor Willem Kieft in the Wappinger War (1643-1645), the local Indian tribes opposed New Netherlands and its supporters ( Mahican, Mohawkand English settlers) allied. This war was one of the bloodiest and cruelest wars of extermination against the Indians. Together with their allies, the Wappingers had more than 1,600 tribesmen killed. In August 1644, a peace treaty was signed in Fort Orange, in which the defeated Wappinger and Metoac tribes were obliged to pay an annual tribute in the form of wampum to the Mahican. The Mahican and Mohawk suffered no losses of their own, and the Fort Orange Treaty enabled them to control the wampum trade in western Long Islands and the lower Hudson.  When the government in the Netherlands learned of Kieft’s policies and the massacres, he was finally replaced in 1647 and they appointed Petrus Stuyvesant as his successor. The Nieuw Nederlands years were numbered, however, as the Dutch colony was taken over by England in 1664 without a fight. In honor of the Duke of York, their future king, the British named their new colony New York.

In what is now New Jersey, two proprietary lordships (owned by the Lord Proprietors ) were formed, East Jersey and West Jersey. In 1702 East and West Jersey were united into a crown colony and Edward Hyde, 3rd Earl of Clarendon was appointed first governor of the Province of New Jersey. During the American Revolutionary War, New Jersey was the site of around 100 battles, including Trenton in 1776, Princeton in 1777 and Monmouth in 1778. As early as 1776, the first constitution was passed by New Jersey, which guaranteed all residents above a certain level of ownership the right to vote. Thus, male whites and blacks and widows could vote, but not married women, as they were not allowed to own property. For New Jersey, Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart and Abraham Clark signed the Declaration of Independence of the United States on July 4, 1776 in 1776. [11]

New Jersey was the seat of the first United States government to emerge from the Continental Congress for a short time, Princeton in 1783 and Trenton in 1784. As one of the 13 original states, New Jersey joined the Union as the third state in 1787. In 1804, New Jersey became the last northern state to gradually abolish slavery. In 1844 the second constitution was ratified; the current constitution of the country dates from 1947.

After the Civil War, which largely passed New Jersey by, the Industrial Revolution took hold in the country. Until then, New Jersey was largely rural. However, agriculture was never very productive due to poor soil conditions. Personalities like Thomas Edison, who worked for Menlo Park for a long time, contributed significantly to the industrial growth. The growth of the up-and-coming metropolises of New York and Philadelphia also had a positive effect on New Jersey from around 1870. Although both cities were (and are) in neighboring states, both are directly on the state border, so their economic and demographic growth also radiated to New Jersey. Today, almost half of the New York metropolitan area is in New Jersey, which also means that the most important population center of the country is there, i.e. in the northeast.

Economy

New Jersey is one of the leading industrial nations in the United States. New Jersey’s economic output was USD 581 billion in 2016, making it the eighth-highest economic output of any state in the United States and accounting for 3.15% of the total American economy. Counted as a separate country, New Jersey’s economic output would be roughly the same as that of Argentina. The real gross domestic product per capita (English per capita real GDP) was 64,970 US dollars in 2016 (national average of the 50 US states: 57,118 US dollars; national ranking: 8th). [16]

The unemployment rate was 5.1% in November 2017 (national average: 4.1%).