New England and the Atlantic Provinces

New England and Canada’s Atlantic Provinces (Figure 2.39) were among the earliest parts of North America to be settled by Europeans. Of all the regions of North America, this one may maintain the strongest connection with the past, and it holds a reputation as North America’s cultural hearth, meaning the place from which much American culture has emanated. Philosophically, New Englanders laid the foundation for religious freedom in North America through their strong conviction, which eventually became part of the U.S. Constitution, that there should be no established church and no requirement that citizens or public officials hold any particular religious beliefs. New England in particular is the source of a classic American village style that is arranged around a town square, or “common.” Once used for grazing animals, many commons are now public parks, such as Boston Common. (Figure 2.40). Many interior furnishing styles also originated in New England; in all classes of American homes today, there are copies of New England–designed furniture and accessories.

FIGURE 2.39 New England and the Atlantic Provinces subregion.

FIGURE 2.40 A New England common. Most towns in New England are centered around an open space called a “common.” Once used for grazing animals, most commons are now parks used for recreation and community events. This common is in Boston, Massachusetts.
Courtesy Joe Raedle/Getty Images

The Past Lives in the Present

Many of the continuities between the present and past economies of New England and the Atlantic Provinces derive from the region’s geography. During the last ice age, glaciers scraped away much of the topsoil, leaving behind some of the finest building stone in North America but only marginally productive land. Although farmers settled here, they struggled to survive. Today, many areas try to capitalize on their rural and village ambiance and historic heritage by enticing tourists and retirees, but economically, northern New England and the Atlantic Provinces of Canada remain relatively poor.

After being cleared in the days of early settlement, New England’s evergreen and hardwood deciduous forests have slowly returned to fill in the fields abandoned by farmers. Some of these second-growth forests are now being clear-cut by logging companies, and, in rural areas, paper milling from wood is still supplying jobs as other blue-collar occupations die out.

Abundant fish was the major attraction that drew the first wave of Europeans to New England. In the 1500s, hundreds of fishermen from Europe’s Atlantic Coast came to the Grand Banks, offshore of Newfoundland and Maine, to take huge catches of cod and other fish. The fishing lasted for over 500 years, but eventually the Grand Banks fish stocks were depleted by modern industrial fishing practices (some of these large, factory-type vessels came from Japan and Russia) that have a severe impact on marine ecosystems. Canada and the United States extended their legal boundaries to 200 miles offshore, but unsustainable fishing practices were retained until, in the 1980s, there was a crash in cod and other fish species. Tens of thousands of New England and Atlantic Province fishers had to find alternative employment. By 2012, science-based catch limits, set by the New England Fishery Management Council, had failed to curtail the crash of cod fisheries, and the annual allowable catch was cut by 22 percent.

Strong and Diverse Human Resources

Many parts of southern New England now thrive on service- and knowledge-based industries that require skilled and educated workers: insurance, banking, high-tech engineering, and genetic and medical research, to name but a few. New England’s considerable human resources derive in large part from the strong emphasis placed on education, hard work, and philanthropy by the earliest Puritan settlers, who established many high-quality schools, colleges, and universities. The cities of Boston and Cambridge have some of the nation’s foremost institutions of higher learning (Harvard, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Boston University, for example). The Boston area has capitalized on its supply of university graduates to become North America’s second-most important high-technology center, after California’s Silicon Valley.

At present, New Englanders are confronted by some startling discontinuities with their past. Although cities (such as Boston, Providence, and Hartford) have long been important in the region, New England is now becoming yet more urban and more ethnically diverse. The remaining agricultural enterprises and rural industries have become increasingly mechanized, so rural New Englanders are flocking to the cities for work. There they discover that New England is not the Anglo-American stronghold they expected. Anglo-Americans have long shared New England with Native Americans, African Americans, and immigrants from Portugal and southern Europe. But today, in the suburbs of Boston, corner groceries may be owned by Koreans or Mexicans; Jamaicans may be law students or street vendors selling meat patties and hot wings; restaurants serve food from Thailand; and schoolteachers may be Filipino, Brazilian, or West Indian. The blossoming cultural diversity of New England and the entrepreneurial skills of new migrants are helping New England keep pace with change across the continent. These trends are less obvious in the Atlantic Provinces of Canada, but there too, immigrants from Asia and elsewhere are influencing ways of life.