document_title: History of New England

question_text: near what geographic feature were most of the early settlements in new england started

question_tokens: near what geographic feature were most of the early settlements in new england started

text: History of New England

text: Indigenous people[edit]

text: New England has long been inhabited by Algonquian-speaking native peoples, including the Abenaki, the Penobscot, the Pequot, the Wampanoag, and many others. During the 15th and 16th centuries, Europeans such as Giovanni da Verrazzano, Jacques Cartier and John Cabot (known as Giovanni Caboto before being based in England) charted the New England coast. They referred to the region as Norumbega, named for a fabulous native city that was supposed to exist there.

text: The earliest known inhabitants of New England were Native Americans who spoke a variety of the Eastern Algonquian languages.[1] Some of the more prominent tribes include the Abenaki, the Penobscot, the Pequot, the Mohegans, the Pocumtuck, and the Wampanoag.[1] Prior to the arrival of Europeans, the Western Abenakis inhabited New Hampshire and Vermont, as well as parts of Quebec and western Maine.[2] Their principal town was Norridgewock, in present-day Maine.[3] The Penobscot were settled along the Penobscot River in Maine. The Wampanoag occupied southeastern Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and the islands of Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket; the Pocumtucks, Western Massachusetts. The Connecticut region was inhabited by the Mohegan and Pequot tribes prior to European colonization. The Connecticut River Valley, which includes parts of Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and Connecticut, linked different indigenous communities in cultural, linguistic, and political ways.[1]

text: According to archaeological evidence, the indigenous people of the warmer parts of Southern New England had started agricultural endeavors over a thousand years ago. They grew corn, tobacco, kidney beans, squash, and Jerusalem artichoke. Trade with the Algonquian peoples of Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine, where the growing season was shorter, likely provided for a robust economy.[1]

text: As early as 1600, French, Dutch, and English traders, exploring the New World, began to trade metal, glass, and cloth for local beaver pelts.[1][4] The traders and sailors brought previously unknown European diseases, especially smallpox, measles, malaria, and yellow fever, which quickly spread along trade routes and killed a majority of the Native Americans in the region by the 1630s.[5]

text: Colonial era[edit]

text: Early European settlement (1607–1620)[edit]

text: On April 10, 1606, King James I of England issued two charters, one each for the Virginia Companies, of London and Plymouth, respectively.[6][7] Due to a duplication of territory (between Chesapeake Bay and Long Island Sound), the two companies were required to maintain a separation of 100 miles (160 km), even where the two charters overlapped.[8][9][10] The London Company was authorized to make settlements from North Carolina to New York (31 to 41 degrees North Latitude), provided there was no conflict with the Plymouth Company’s charter. The purpose of both was to claim land for England and trade.

text: Under the charters, the territory allocated was defined as follows:

text:
Virginia Company of London: All land, including islands within 100 miles (160 km) from the coast and implying a westward limit of 100 miles (160 km), between 34 Degrees (Cape Fear, North Carolina) and 41 Degrees (Long Island Sound, New York) north latitude.[6][7]
Virginia Company of Plymouth: All land, including islands within 100 miles (160 km) from the coast and implying a westward limit of 100 miles (160 km), between 38 Degrees (Chesapeake Bay, Virginia) and 45 Degrees (Border between Canada and Maine) north latitude.[6][7] Its charter included land extending as far as present-day northern Maine.
For more details on this topic, see Popham Colony.

tag: ol

text: These were privately funded proprietary ventures, and the purpose of each was to claim land for England, trade, and return a profit. The Virginia Company of London successfully established the Jamestown Colony in Virginia in 1607. The region was named "New England" by Captain John Smith, who explored its shores in 1614, in his account of two voyages there, published as A Description of New England.

text: Plymouth (1620–1643)[edit]

text: The name "New England" was officially sanctioned on November 3, 1620, when the charter of the Virginia Company of Plymouth was replaced by a royal charter for the Plymouth Council for New England, a joint stock company established to colonize and govern the region. In December 1620, a permanent settlement known as the Plymouth Colony was established at present-day Plymouth, Massachusetts by the Pilgrims, English religious separatists arriving via Holland. They arrived aboard a ship named the Mayflower and held a feast of gratitude which became part of the American tradition of Thanksgiving. Plymouth, with a small population and limited size, was absorbed by Massachusetts in 1691.

text: In 1638, a "violent" earthquake was felt throughout New England, centered in the St. Lawrence Valley. This was the first recorded seismic event noted in New England.[11]

text: Even during the early stages of English colonization, relations with the indigenous peoples of New England began to sour.[1] Preliminary trade with Europeans had already significantly reduced and weakened native populations via disease and epidemic. The fur supply was soon exhausted, forcing hunters to travel farther into the territories of neighboring tribes, such as the Mohawk and the Haudenosaunee (known to European settlers as the Iroquois) of Eastern New York.[1] As demand for local goods, like beaver pelts, by English companies rose, so did tensions between existing indigenous communities. Permanent English settlement, through which colonists seized or claimed land and began to apply Puritan laws to native peoples, exacerbated the situation.[1]

text: Massachusetts Puritans[edit]

text: The Massachusetts Bay Colony, which would come to dominate the area, was established in 1628 with its major city of Boston established in 1630.

text: The Puritans, a much larger group than the Pilgrims, established the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1629 with 400 settlers. They sought to reform the Church of England by creating a new, pure church in the New World. By 1640, 20,000 had arrived; many died soon after arrival, but the others found a healthy climate and an ample food supply. See Migration to New England (1620–1640).

text: The Puritans created a deeply religious, socially tight-knit, and politically innovative culture that still influences the modern United States.[12] They hoped this new land would serve as a "redeemer nation". They fled England and in America attempted to create a "nation of saints" or a "City upon a Hill": an intensely religious, thoroughly righteous community designed to be an example for all of Europe.

text: By 1723, Puritan cultural and religious influence had declined substantially in Boston. One of Ben Franklin's first printed works decried frivolity among Harvard students.[13]

text: Other New England colonies[edit]

text: Roger Williams, who preached religious toleration, separation of Church and State, and a complete break with the Church of England, was banished from Massachusetts for his theological heresies and led a group south to found Providence in 1636. It merged with other settlements to form Rhode Island Colony. This region became a haven for Baptists, Quakers, and other refugees from the Puritan community, such as Anne Hutchinson who had been banished during the Antinomian Controversy.[14]

text: On March 3, 1636, the Connecticut Colony was granted a charter and established its own government. The nearby New Haven Colony was absorbed by Connecticut.

text: Vermont was then unsettled, and the territories of New Hampshire and Maine were then governed by Massachusetts.

text: Early colonial wars[edit]

text: Relationships between colonists and Native Americans alternated between peace and armed skirmishes, the bloodiest of which was the Pequot War in 1636, which resulted in the Mystic massacre. Six years later, the colonies of Massachusetts Bay, Plymouth, New Haven, and Connecticut joined together in a loose compact called the New England Confederation (officially "The United Colonies of New England"). The confederation was designed largely to coordinate mutual defense, but was never effective and soon collapsed.[citation needed]

text: In 1675, King Philip's War pitted the colonists and their Native American allies against a widespread Native American uprising, resulting in massacres and killings on both sides. The colonists won in the south decisively, however, they were forced to sign peace treaties in the North in present-day New Hampshire and Maine.[citation needed]

text: The Dominion of New England (1686–1689)[edit]

text: In 1686, King James II, concerned about the increasingly independent ways of the colonies, in particular their self-governing Charters, open flouting of the Navigation Acts and their increasing military power decreed the Dominion of New England, an administrative union comprising all the New England colonies. Two years later, the provinces of New York (New Amsterdam) and the New Jersey, which had been confiscated by force from the Dutch, were added. The union, imposed from the outside, and removing nearly all their popularly elected leaders, was highly unpopular among the colonists. In 1687, when the Connecticut Colony refused to follow a decision of the dominion governor Edmund Andros to turn over their charter, he sent an armed contingent to seize the colony's charter. According to popular legend, the colonists hid the charter inside the Charter Oak tree. Andros' efforts to loot the colonies, replace their leaders and to unify the colonial defenses under his control met little success and the dominion ceased after only three years. After the very popular removal of King James II in the Glorious Revolution of 1689, Andros was arrested and sent back to England by the colonists during the 1689 Boston revolt.[15]

text: Later colonial wars[edit]

text: From 1688 to 1763, there were six colonial wars that took place primarily between Great Britain and New France (see the French and Indian Wars as well as Father Rale's War and Father Le Loutre's War). Throughout these wars, New England was allied with the Iroquois Confederacy and New France was allied with the Wabanaki Confederacy. After the New England Conquest of Acadia in 1710, mainland Nova Scotia was laid claim to by the British, but both present-day New Brunswick and virtually all of present-day Maine remained contested territory between Great Britain and New France. During the final French and Indian War, New England deported the Acadians from Nova Scotia and replaced them with New England Planters. After the British won the war in 1763, the Connecticut River Valley was opened up for settlement into western New Hampshire and what is today Vermont.

text: Government of the colonies[edit]

text: After the Glorious Revolution in 1689 the charters of most of the colonies were significantly modified with the appointment of Royal Governors to nearly each colony. An uneasy tension existed between the Royal Governors, their officers and the elected governing bodies in the colonies. The governors wanted essentially unlimited arbitrary powers and the different layers of locally elected officials resisted as best they could. In most cases the local town governments continued operating as self-governing bodies as they had before the Royal Governors showed up and to the extent possible ignored the Royal Governors. This tension eventually led to the American Revolution when the states formed their own governments. The colonies were not formally united again until 1776 as newly formed states, when they declared themselves independent states in a larger (but not yet federalist) union called the United States.

text: Regional character[edit]

text: Aside from the Canadian province of Nova Scotia, or "New Scotland", New England is the only North American region to inherit the name of a kingdom in the British Isles. New England has largely preserved its regional character, especially in its historic sites. Its name is a reminder of the past, as many of the original English-Americans have migrated further west.

text: Population and demographics[edit]

text: The New England States were initially colonized by about 30,000 settlers between 1620 and 1640, a period now referred to as "The Great Migration". There was little additional immigration until the Irish influx of the 1840s and '50s in the wake of the potato famine.

text: The regional economy grew rapidly in the 17th century, thanks to heavy immigration, high birth rates, low death rates, and an abundance of inexpensive farmland.[16] The population grew from 3000 in 1630 to 14,000 in 1640, 33,000 in 1660, 68,000 in 1680, and 91,000 in 1700. Between 1630 and 1643, about 20,000 Puritans arrived, settling mostly near Boston; after 1643 fewer than fifty immigrants a year arrived. The average size of a completed family 1660-1700 was 7.1 children; the birth rate was 49 babies per year per 1000 people, and the death rate was about 22 deaths per year per thousand people. About 27 percent of the population comprised men between 16 and 60 years old.[17]

text: The almost one million inhabitants in 1770, just before the Revolution were nearly all descended from the original settlers, whose 3 percent annual natural growth rate caused a doubling of population every 25 years. Their beliefs and ancestry were nearly all shared and made them into what was probably the largest more-or-less homogeneous group of settlers in America. Their high birth rate continued for at least a century more, making the descendants of these New Englanders well represented in nearly all states today. In the 18th century and the early 19th century, New England was still considered to be a very distinct region of the country, as it is today. During the War of 1812, there was a limited amount of talk of secession from the Union, as New England merchants, just getting back on their feet, opposed the war with their greatest trading partner — Great Britain.

text: After the American Revolutionary War, Connecticut and Massachusetts ceded tracts of land to the federal government that they had claimed in the Northwest Territory and the Western Reserve exceeding their modern-day areas.

text: Economics[edit]

text: The New England colonies were settled largely by farmers, who became relatively self-sufficient. Later, aided by the Puritan work ethic and the arrival of wealthier English colonists, New England's economy began to focus on crafts and trade, in contrast to the Southern colonies, whose agrarian-based economy focused more heavily on foreign and domestic trade.[18]

text: Economically, Puritan New England fulfilled the expectations of its founders. Unlike the cash crop-oriented plantations of the Chesapeake region, the Puritan economy was based on the efforts of self-supporting farmsteads who traded only for goods they could not produce themselves.[19] There was a generally higher economic standing and standard of living in New England than in the Chesapeake. Along with agriculture, fishing, and logging, New England became an important mercantile and shipbuilding center, serving as the hub for trading between the southern colonies and Europe.[20]

text: The region's economy grew steadily over the entire colonial era, despite the lack of a staple crop that could be exported. All the provinces, and many towns as well, tried to foster economic growth by subsidizing projects that improved the infrastructure, such as roads, bridges, inns and ferries. They gave bounties and subsidies or monopolies to sawmills, grist mills, iron mills, fulling mills (which treated cloth), salt works and glassworks. Most important, colonial legislatures set up a legal system that was conducive to business enterprise by resolving disputes, enforcing contracts, and protecting property rights. Hard work and entrepreneurship characterized the region, as the Puritans and Yankees endorsed the "Protestant Ethic", which enjoined men to work hard as part of their divine calling.[21]

text: Focused on shipping as well as production, New England conducted a robust trade within the English domain in the mid-18th century. They exported to the Caribbean: pickled beef and pork, onions and potatoes from the Connecticut valley, codfish to feed their slaves, northern pine and oak staves from which the planters constructed containers to ship their sugar and molasses, Narragansett Pacers from Rhode Island, and "plugs" to run sugar mills.[22]

text: Benjamin Franklin in 1772, after examining the wretched hovels in Scotland surrounding the opulent mansions of the land owners, said that in New England every man is a property owner, "has a Vote in public Affairs, lives in a tidy, warm House, has plenty of good Food and Fuel, with whole clothes from Head to Foot, the Manufacture perhaps of his own family."[23]

text: The benefits of growth were widely distributed, with even farm laborers better off at the end of the colonial period. The growing population led to shortages of good farm land on which young families could establish themselves; one result was to delay marriage, and another was to move to new lands further west. In the towns and cities, there was strong entrepreneurship, and a steady increase in the specialization of labor. Wages for men went up steadily before 1775; new occupations were opening for women, including weaving, teaching, and tailoring. The region bordered New France, and in the numerous wars the British poured money in to purchase supplies, build roads and pay colonial soldiers. The coastal ports began to specialize in fishing, international trade and shipbuilding—and after 1780 in whaling. Combined with a growing urban markets for farm products, these factors allowed the economy to flourish despite the lack of technological innovation.[24]

text: Education[edit]

text: New England has always had a commanding position in the history of American education. The first American schools in the thirteen colonies opened in the 17th century. Boston Latin School was founded in 1635 and is both the first public school and oldest existing school in the United States.[25] Cremin (1970) stresses that colonists tried at first to educate by the traditional English methods of family, church, community, and apprenticeship, with schools later becoming the key agent in "socialization". At first, the rudiments of literacy and arithmetic were taught inside the family, assuming the parents had those skills. Literacy rates seem to have been much higher in New England, and much lower in the South. By the mid-19th century, the role of the schools had expanded to such an extent that many of the educational tasks traditionally handled by parents became the responsibility of the schools.[26][27]

text: All the New England colonies required towns to set up schools, and many did so. In 1642 the Massachusetts Bay Colony made "proper" education compulsory; other New England colonies followed. Similar statutes were adopted in other colonies in the 1640s and 1650s. The schools were all male, with few facilities for girls.[28] In the 18th century, "common schools", appeared; students of all ages were under the control of one teacher in one room. Although they were publicly supplied at the local (town) level, they were not free, and instead were supported by tuition or "rate bills".

text: The larger towns in New England opened grammar schools, the forerunner of the modern high school.[29] The most famous was the Boston Latin School, which is still in operation as a public high school. Hopkins School in New Haven, Connecticut, was another. By the 1780s, most had been replaced by private academies. By the early 19th century New England operated a network of elite private high schools, now called "prep schools", typified by Phillips Andover Academy (1778), Phillips Exeter Academy (1781), and Deerfield Academy (1797). They became coeducational in the 1970s, and remain highly prestigious in the 21st century.[30][31]

text: Colleges[edit]

text: Harvard College was founded by the colonial legislature in 1636, and named after an early benefactor, John Harvard. Most of the funding came from the colony, but the college early began to collect endowment. Harvard at first focused on training young men for the ministry, and one general support from the Puritan colonies. Yale College was founded in 1701, and in 1716 was relocated to New Haven, Connecticut. The conservative Puritan ministers of Connecticut had grown dissatisfied with the more liberal theology of Harvard, and wanted their own school to train orthodox ministers. Dartmouth College, chartered in 1769, grew out of school for Indians, and was moved to its present site in Hanover, New Hampshire, in 1770. Brown University was founded by Baptists in 1764 as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations.[32]

text: Girls[edit]

text: Tax-supported schooling for girls began as early as 1767 in New England. It was optional and some towns proved reluctant. Northampton, Massachusetts, for example, was a late adopter because it had many rich families who dominated the political and social structures and they did not want to pay taxes to aid poor families. Northampton assessed taxes on all households, rather than only on those with children, and used the funds to support a grammar school to prepare boys for college. Not until after 1800 did Northampton educate girls with public money. In contrast, the town of Sutton, Massachusetts, was diverse in terms of social leadership and religion at an early point in its history. Sutton paid for its schools by means of taxes on households with children only, thereby creating an active constituency in favor of universal education for both boys and girls.[33]

text: Historians point out that reading and writing were different skills in the colonial era. School taught both, but in places without schools reading was mainly taught to boys and also a few privileged girls. Men handled worldly affairs and needed to read and write. Girls only needed to read (especially religious materials). This educational disparity between reading and writing explains why the colonial women often could read, but could not write and could not sign their names—they used an "X".[34]

text: American Revolution[edit]

text: New England, especially Boston, was the center of revolutionary activity in the decade before 1775, with Massachusetts politicians Samuel Adams, John Adams, and John Hancock as leaders. New Englanders, like all Americans, were very proud of their political freedoms and local democracy, which they felt was increasingly threatened by the British imperial government. The main grievance was taxation, which colonists argued could only be imposed by their own legislatures, and not by the Parliament in London. Their political cry was, "No taxation without representation!" On December 16, 1773, when a ship was planning to land taxed tea in Boston, local activists calling themselves the Sons of Liberty, disguised themselves as Indians, raided the ship, and dumped all the tea into the harbor. This Boston Tea Party outraged British officials, and the King and Parliament decided to punish Massachusetts.

text: Parliament passed the Intolerable Acts in 1774 that brought stiff punishment. It closed the port of Boston, the economic lifeblood of the Commonwealth, and ended self-government, putting the people under military rule. The patriots set up a shadow government, which the British Army attacked on April 18, 1775 at Concord. On the 19th, in the Battles of Lexington and Concord, where the famous "shot heard 'round the world" was fired, British troops were forced back into the city by the local militias, under the control of the shadow government. The British army controlled only the city of Boston, and it was quickly brought under siege. The Continental Congress took control of the war, sending General George Washington to take charge. He forced the British to evacuate in March 1776. After that, the main warfare moved south, but the British made repeated raids along the coast, and seized part of Rhode Island and Maine for a while. On the whole, the patriots controlled 99 percent of the New England population.[35]

text: New England's Dark Day struck on May 19, 1780. While residents were apprehensive at the time, for lack of a clear cause for the darkness requiring candlelight in the middle of the day, it appears that forest fires, a fog, and cloud cover, all contributed.[36]

text: Early national period[edit]

text: Anti-slavery[edit]

text: After independence, New England ceased to be a meaningful political unit, but remained a defined historical and cultural region consisting of its now-sovereign constituent states. By 1784, all of the states in the region had introduced the gradual abolition of slavery, with Vermont and Massachusetts introducing total abolition in 1777 and 1783, respectively.[37] During the War of 1812, there was a limited amount of talk of secession from the Union, as New England merchants, just getting back on their feet, opposed the war with their greatest trading partner—Britain.[38] Delegates from all over New England met in Hartford in the winter of 1814-15. The gathering was called the Hartford Convention. The twenty-seven delegates met to discuss changes to the US Constitution that would protect the region from similar legislation and attempt to keep political power in the region.

text: In 1820, as part of the Missouri Compromise, the territory of Maine, formerly a part of Massachusetts, was admitted to the Union as a state. Today, New England is always defined as coextensive with the six states of Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont.[39]

text: For the remainder of the antebellum period, New England remained distinct. In terms of politics, it often went against the grain of the rest of the country. Massachusetts and Connecticut were among the last refuges of the Federalist Party, and, when the Second Party System began in the 1830s, New England became the strongest bastion of the new Whig Party. The Whigs were usually dominant throughout New England, except in the more Democratic Maine and New Hampshire. Leading statesmen — including Daniel Webster — hailed from the region.

text: New England and areas settled from New England, like Upstate New York, Ohio's Western Reserve and the upper midwestern states of Michigan and Wisconsin, proved to be the center of the strongest abolitionist sentiment in the country. Abolitionists like William Lloyd Garrison and Wendell Phillips were New Englanders, and the region was home to anti-slavery politicians like John Quincy Adams, Charles Sumner, and John P. Hale. When the anti-slavery Republican Party was formed in the 1850s, all of New England, including areas that had previously been strongholds for both the Whig and the Democratic Parties, became strongly Republican, as it would remain until the early 20th century, when immigration turned the formerly solidly Republican states of Lower New England towards the Democrats.

text: Urbanization[edit]

text: New England was distinct becoming the most urbanized part of the country (the 1860 Census showed that 32 of the 100 largest cities in the country were in New England), as well as the most educated. Notable literary and intellectual figures produced by the United States in the Antebellum period were New Englanders, including Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, John Greenleaf Whittier, George Bancroft, William H. Prescott, and others.[40]

text: Industrialization[edit]

text: New England was an early center of the industrial revolution. In Beverly, Massachusetts the first cotton mill in America was founded in 1787, the Beverly Cotton Manufactory.[41] The Manufactory was also considered the largest cotton mill of its time. Technological developments and achievements from the Manufactory led to the development of other, more advanced cotton mills later, including Slater Mill in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. Several textile mills were already underway during the time. Towns like Lawrence, Massachusetts, Lowell, Massachusetts, Woonsocket, Rhode Island, and Lewiston, Maine became famed as centers of the textile industry following models from Slater Mill and the Beverly Cotton Manufactory. The textile manufacturing in New England was growing rapidly, which caused a shortage of workers. Recruiters were hired by mill agents to bring young women and children from the countryside to work in the factories. Between 1830 and 1860, thousands of farm girls came from their rural homes in New England to work in the mills. Farmers’ daughters left their homes to aid their families financially, save for marriage, and widen their horizons. They also left their homes due to population pressures to look for opportunities in expanding New England cities. Stagecoach and railroad services made it easier for the rapid flow of workers to travel from the country to the city. The majority of female workers came from rural farming towns in northern New England. As the textile industry grew, immigration grew as well. As the number of Irish workers in the mills increased, the number of young women working in the mills decreased. At first the mills employed young Yankee farm women; they then used Irish and French immigrants.[42]

text: Agriculture[edit]

text: As New England’s urban, industrial economy transformed from the beginning of the early national period (~1790) to the middle of the nineteenth century, so too did its agricultural economy. At the beginning of this period, when the United States was just emerging from its colonial past, the agricultural landscape of New England was defined overwhelmingly by subsistence farming.[43] The primary crops produced were wheat, barley, rye, oats, turnips, parsnips, carrots, onions, cucumbers, beets, corn, beans, pumpkins, squashes, and melons.[44] Because there was not a sufficiently large New England-based home market for agricultural products due to the absence of a large nonagricultural population, New England farmers by and large had no incentive to commercialize their farms.[43] Thus, as farmers could not find very many markets nearby to sell to, they generally could not earn enough income with which to buy many new products for themselves. This not only meant that farmers would largely produce their own food, but also that they tended to produce their own furniture, clothing, and soap, among other household items.[43] Hence, according to historian Percy Bidwell, at the onset of the early national period, much of the New England agricultural economy was characterized by a “lack of exchange; lack of differentiation of employments or division of labor; the absence of progress in agricultural methods; a relatively low standard of living; emigration and social stagnation.”[43] As Bidwell writes, the farming in New England at this time was “practically uniform” with many farmers distributing their land “in about the same proportions into pasturage, woodland, and tillage, and raised about the same crops and kept about the same kind and quantity of stock” as other farmers.[45] This situation would, however, be radically different by 1850, by which time a highly specialized agricultural economy producing a host of new and differentiated products had emerged. There were two factors that were primarily responsible for the revolutionary changes in the agricultural economy of New England during the period from 1790 to 1850: (1) The rise of the manufacturing industry in New England (industrialization), and (2) agricultural competition from the western states.[46]

text: During this period, the industrial jobs created in New England’s towns and cities affected the agricultural economy profoundly by generating a rapidly growing nonagricultural, urbanizing population. The farmers finally had a nearby market to which they could sell their crops, and thus an opportunity to obtain incomes beyond what they produced for subsistence.[47] This new market enabled farmers to make their farms more productive.[47] There was a resultant move away from subsistence farming toward the production of specialized crops. The demands of the consumers of the crops, whether factories or individuals, now determined the kinds of crops that each farm cultivated. Potash, pearlash, charcoal, and fuel wood were among the agricultural products that were produced in greater quantities during this time.[48] The increasing specialization of agriculture even led to production of tobacco, a predominantly southern crop, from central Connecticut to northern Massachusetts, where natural conditions were amenable to its growth.[49] Many agricultural societies were formed to promote improved farming,[50] and they did so by dispensing information on new technological innovations such as the cast-iron plough, which rapidly replaced the wooden plough by the 1830s, as well as mowing machines and horse-rakes.[51] Another important result of the manufacturing boom in New England was the new abundance of cheap products that formerly had to be produced on the farm. For example, myriad new mills produced inexpensive textiles, and it now made more economic sense for many farm women to purchase these textiles rather than spin and weave them at home. Women consequently found new employment elsewhere, typically at the mills, many of which had a shortage of workers, and they began to earn cash incomes.[52]

text: The agricultural competition that emerged from the western states due to improvements in transportation (e.g., railroads and steamboats) also helped shape agriculture in New England. Competition from the western states was principally responsible for the decline in local pork production and cattle-fattening, as well as that in wheat production.[52] New England farmers now aimed to produce goods with which western farmers could not compete. Consequently, many New England farms came to specialize in “highly perishable and bulky produce,” according to historian Darwin Kelsey. These crops included milk, butter, potatoes, and broomcorn.[53] Thus, both the rise of manufacturing during the industrial revolution and the rise of western competition generated substantial agricultural specialization.

text: The largely differentiated agricultural landscape of the New England of 1850[54] was distinct from the subsistence-dominated landscape that existed 40–60 years prior. This period of time, therefore, was not only noteworthy in terms of New England’s industrial revolution, but also in terms of New England’s agricultural revolution. MIT economic historian Peter Temin has pointed out that the “transformation of the New England economy in the middle fifty years of the nineteenth century was comparable in scope and intensity to the Asian ‘miracles’ of Korea and Taiwan in the half-century since World War II.”[55] The extensive changes in agriculture that occurred were an important aspect of this economic process.

text: The CSS Tallahassee disrupted shipping to New England in August 1864.[56]

text: There have been waves of immigration from Ireland, Quebec, Italy, Portugal, Asia, Latin America, Africa, other parts of the United States, and elsewhere.

text: New England and political thought[edit]

text: During the colonial period and the early years of the American republic, New England leaders like James Otis, John Adams, and Samuel Adams joined Patriots in Philadelphia and Virginia to define Republicanism, and lead the colonies to a war for independence against Great Britain. New England was a Federalist stronghold, and strongly opposed the War of 1812. After 1830 it became a Whig party, stronghold as exemplified by Daniel Webster in the Second Party System. At the time of the American Civil War, New England, the mid-Atlantic, and the Midwest, which had long since abolished slavery, united against the Confederate States of America, ending the practice in the United States. Henry David Thoreau, iconic New England writer and philosopher, made the case for civil disobedience and individualism.

text: French Canadians[edit]

text: French-Canadians, living a highly traditional life in rural Canada, were attracted to New England textile mills after 1850.[57][58] Of the 1.5 million people in French-speaking Canada, about 600,000 migrated to the U.S., especially to New England.[59]

text: The first migrants went to nearby areas of northern Vermont and New Hampshire. However, as the textile factories increased their hiring, the principle destination beginning in the late 1870s until the end of the last immigration wave in the early 1900s, was southern Massachusetts.[60] Though many of these later immigrants were looking for short term employment that would allow them to make enough money to go back home and settle comfortably, approximately half of the Canadian settlers remained permanently.[61] By 1900, 573,000 French Canadians had immigrated to New England.[62] These Canadians were the second biggest wave of immigration to hit New England after the Irish.

text: With a constantly growing immigrant population, these new Franco-Americans settled together in neighborhoods colloquially called Little Canada; after 1960 these faded away.[63] There were few French language institutions other than Catholic churches. There were some French newspapers, but they had a total of only 50,000 subscribers in 1935.[64] The World War II generation avoided bilingual education for their children, and insisted they speak English.[65] By 1976, nine in ten Franco Americans usually spoke English and scholars generally agreed that "the younger generation of Franco-American youth had rejected their heritage."[66]

text: Since 1900[edit]

text: Railroads[edit]

text:
New Haven system

Track gauge
4 ft 8 1⁄2 in (1,435 mm) standard gauge

text: The New Haven railroad was the leading carrier in New England from 1872 to 1968. New York's leading banker, J. P. Morgan, had grown up in Hartford and had a strong interest in the New England economy. Starting in the 1890s Morgan began financing the major New England railroads, such as the New Haven and the Boston and Maine, dividing territory so they would not compete. In 1903 he brought in Charles Mellen as president of the New Haven (1903-1913). The goal, richly supported by Morgan's financing, was to purchase and consolidate the main railway lines of New England, merge their operations, lower their costs, electrify the heavily used routes, and modernize the system. With less competition and lower costs, there supposedly would be higher profits. The New Haven purchased 50 smaller companies, including steetcars, freight steamers, passenger steamships, and a network of light rails (electrified trolleys) that provided inter-urban transportation for all of southern New England. By 1912, the New Haven operated over 2,000 miles (3,200 km) of track, with 120,000 employees, and practically monopolized traffic in a wide swath from Boston to New York City.

text: Morgan’s quest for monopoly angered reformers during the Progressive Era, most notably Boston lawyer Louis Brandeis, who fought the New Haven for years. Mellen’s abrasive tactics alienated public opinion, led to high prices for acquisitions and to costly construction. The accident rate rose when efforts were made to save on maintenance costs. Debt soared from $14 million in 1903 to $242 million in 1913. Also in 1913 it was hit by an anti-trust lawsuit by the federal government and was forced to give up its trolley systems.[67] The advent of automobiles, trucks and buses after 1910 slashed the profits of the New Haven. The line went bankrupt in 1935, was reorganized and reduced in scope, went bankrupt again in 1961, and in 1969 was merged into the Penn Central system, which itself went bankrupt. The remnants of the system are now part of Conrail.[68]

text: The automotive revolution came much faster than anyone expected, especially the railroad executives. In 1915 Connecticut had 40,000 automobiles; five years later it had 120,000. There was even faster growth in trucks from 7,000 to 24,000.[69]

text: Weather[edit]

text: In the 1930s and 1940s there were winter "outing clubs" in a number of areas in New England which held dog sled races, ski jumping, and cross country competitions; sulky races on cleared streets, and dances.[70]

text: The 1938 New England hurricane hit the region (and Long Island) hard, killing about 700 people. The U.S. Weather Bureau was mistaken in its predicted path and there was little warning. Many thousands of houses and buildings were damaged or destroyed. Local relief efforts were feeble, so Federal agencies took charge, and in the process created the modern disaster relief system.[71] It blew down 15,000,000 acres (61,000 km2) of trees, one-third of the total forest at the time in New England. 3 billion board feet were salvaged. Many of the older trees in the region are about 75 years old, dating from after this storm.[72]

text: Economy[edit]

text: The New England economy was radically transformed after World War II. The factory economy practically disappeared. The textile mills one by one went out of business from the 1920s to the 1970s. For example, the Crompton Company, after 178 years in business, went bankrupt in 1984, costing the jobs of 2,450 workers in five states. The major reasons were cheap imports, the strong dollar, declining exports, and a failure to diversify.[73] Shoes followed. What remains is very high technology manufacturing, such as jet engines, nuclear submarines, pharmaceuticals, robotics, scientific instruments, and medical devices. MIT (the Massachusetts Institute of Technology) invented the format for university-industry relations in high tech fields, and spawned many software and hardware firms, some of which grew rapidly.[74] By the 21st century the region had become famous for its leadership roles in the fields of education, medicine and medical research, high-technology, finance, and tourism.[75]

text: Famous leaders[edit]

text: Eight presidents of the United States have been born in New England, however only five are usually affiliated with the area. They are, in chronological order: John Adams (Massachusetts), John Quincy Adams (Massachusetts), Franklin Pierce (New Hampshire), Chester A. Arthur (born in Vermont, affiliated with New York), Calvin Coolidge (born in Vermont, affiliated with Massachusetts), John F. Kennedy (Massachusetts), George H. W. Bush (born in Massachusetts, affiliated with Texas) and George W. Bush (born in Connecticut, affiliated with Texas).

text: Nine vice presidents of the United States have been born in New England, however, again only five are usually affiliated with the area. They are, in chronological order: John Adams, Elbridge Gerry (Massachusetts), Hannibal Hamlin (Maine), Henry Wilson (born in New Hampshire, affiliated with Massachusetts), Chester A. Arthur, Levi P. Morton (born in Vermont, affiliated with New York), Calvin Coolidge, Nelson Rockefeller (born in Maine, affiliated with New York), George H.W. Bush.

text: Eleven of the Speakers of the United States House of Representatives have been elected from New England. They are, in chronological order: Jonathan Trumbull, Jr. (2nd Speaker, Connecticut), Theodore Sedgwick (5th Speaker, Massachusetts), Joseph Bradley Varnum (7th Speaker, Massachusetts), Robert Charles Winthrop (22nd Speaker, Massachusetts), Nathaniel Prentice Banks (25th Speaker, Massachusetts), James G. Blaine (31st Speaker, Maine), Thomas Brackett Reed (36th and 38th, Maine), Frederick Gillett (42nd, Massachusetts), Joseph William Martin, Jr. (49th and 51st, Massachusetts), John William McCormack (53rd, Massachusetts) and Tip O'Neill (55th, Massachusetts).

text: Notes[edit]

text:
^ Jump up to: a b c d e f g h Bain, Angela Goebel; Manring, Lynne; and Mathews, Barbara. Native Peoples in New England. Retrieved July 21, 2010, from Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association.
Jump up ^ "Abenaki History". abenakination.org. Retrieved 2011-03-28.
Jump up ^ Allen, William (1849). The History of Norridgewock. Norridgewock ME: Edward J. Peet. p. 10. Retrieved 2011-03-28.
Jump up ^ Wiseman, Fred M. "The Voice of the Dawn: An Autohistory of the Abenaki Nation". p. 70. Retrieved 2011-03-28.
Jump up ^ Alfred W. Crosby, "Virgin Soil Epidemics as a Factor in the Aboriginal Depopulation in America," William and Mary Quarterly (1976), 33#2 pp. 289-299 in JSTOR
^ Jump up to: a b c Charles O. Paullin, Atlas of the Historical Geography of the United States.; Edited by John K. Wright (1932), Plate 42
^ Jump up to: a b c William F. Swindler, ed. Sources and Documents of United States Constitutions. (1979) Vol. 10; Pps. 17-23.
Jump up ^ Paullin, Charles O.; Atlas of the Historical Geography of the United States; Edited by John K. Wright; New York, New York and Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Institution of Washington and American Geographical Society of New York, 1932:Plate 42. ; Excellent section on International and interstate boundary disputes.
Jump up ^ Swindler, William F.., ed. Sources and Documents of United States Constitutions 10 Volumes; Dobbs Ferry, New York; Oceana Publications, 1973–1979; Vol. 10; pp. 17–23; The most complete and up-to-date compilation for the states.
Jump up ^ Van Zandt, Franklin K.; Boundaries of the United States and the Several States; Geological Survey Professional Paper 909. Washington, D.C.; Government Printing Office; 1976. The standard compilation for its subject.; Page 92.
Jump up ^ "Canada quake shakes Vt.". Burlington, Vermont: Burlington Free Press. 24 June 2010. pp. 1A,4A.
Jump up ^ Ernest Lee Tuveson, Redeemer nation: the idea of America's millennial role (University of Chicago Press, 1980)
Jump up ^ Morison, Samuel Eliot (1972). The Oxford History of the American People. New York City: Mentor. p. 204. ISBN 0-451-62600-1.
Jump up ^ Benjamin Woods Labaree, Colonial Massachusetts: a history (1979)
Jump up ^ Dominion of New England
Jump up ^ Daniel Scott Smith, "The Demographic History of Colonial New England," Journal of Economic History, 32 (March 1972), 165-183 in JSTOR
Jump up ^ Terry L. Anderson and Robert Paul Thomas, "White Population, Labor Force and Extensive Growth of the New England Economy in the Seventeenth Century, Journal of Economic History, Vol. 33, No. 3 (Sept 1973), pp. 634-667 at p 647, 651; they use stable population models. in JSTOR
Jump up ^ Morison, Samuel Eliot (1972). The Oxford History of the American People. New York City: Mentor. p. 112. ISBN 0-451-62600-1.
Jump up ^ Anne Mackin, Americans and their land: the house built on abundance (University of Michigan Press, 2006) p 29
Jump up ^ James Ciment, ed. Colonial America: An Encyclopedia of Social, Political, Cultural, and Economic History, 2005.
Jump up ^ Margaret Alan Newell, "The Birth of New England in the Atlantic Economy: From its Beginning to 1770, in Peter Temin, ed., Engines of Enterprise: An Economic History of New England (Harvard UP, 2000), pp. 11-68, esp. p. 41
Jump up ^ Morison, Samuel Eliot (1972). The Oxford History of the American People. New York City: Mentor. pp. 199–200. ISBN 0-451-62600-1.
Jump up ^ Quoted in Claude H. Van Tine, The Causes of the War of Independence (1922) p 318
Jump up ^ Gloria L. Main and Jackson T. Main, "The Red Queen in New England?," William and Mary Quarterly, Jan 1999, Vol. 56 Issue 1, pp 121-50 in JSTOR
Jump up ^ "History of Boston Latin School—oldest public school in America". BLS Web Site. Archived from the original on 2007-05-02. Retrieved 2007-06-01.
Jump up ^ Lawrence Creminm American Education: The Colonial Experience, 1607-1783 (Harper & Row, 1970)
Jump up ^ Maris A. Vinovskis, "Family and Schooling in Colonial and Nineteenth-Century America," Journal of Family History," Jan 1987, Vol. 12 Issue 1-3, pp 19-37
Jump up ^ "Schooling, Education, and Literacy, In Colonial America". faculty.mdc.edu. 2010-04-01. Archived from the original on 2011-01-10.
Jump up ^ Small, Walter H. “The New England Grammar School, 1635-1700.” School Review 7 (September 1902): 513-31
Jump up ^ James McLachlan, American boarding schools: A historical study (1970)
Jump up ^ Arthur Powell, Lessons from Privilege: The American Prep School Tradition (Harvard UP, 1998)
Jump up ^ John R. Thelin, A History of American Higher Education (2004) pp 1-40
Jump up ^ Kathryn Kish Sklar, "The Schooling of Girls and Changing Community Values in Massachusetts Towns, 1750-1820," History of Education Quarterly 1993 33(4): 511-542
Jump up ^ E. Jennifer Monaghan, "Literacy Instruction and Gender in Colonial New England," American Quarterly 1988 40(1): 18-41 in JSTOR
Jump up ^ David Hackett Fischer, Paul Revere's Ride (1994)
Jump up ^ John Ross[permanent dead link] "Dark Day of 1780," American Heritage, Fall 2008.
Jump up ^ [1]
Jump up ^ James Schouler, History of the United States vol 1 (1891; copyright expired).
Jump up ^ "New England". Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. Retrieved 2008-07-24.
Jump up ^ Van Wyck Brooks, The flowering of New England, 1815-1865 (1941)
Jump up ^ William R. Bagnall, The Textile Industries of the United States: Including Sketches and Notices of Cotton, Woolen, Silk, and Linen Manufacturers in the Colonial Period. (1893) Vol. I. Pg 97.
Jump up ^ Thomas Dublin, "Lowell Millhands" in Transforming Women's Work (Cornell UP) pp 77-118.
^ Jump up to: a b c d Bidwell, p. 684.
Jump up ^ Kelsey, p. 1.
Jump up ^ Bidwell, p. 688.
Jump up ^ Kelsey, p. 4.
^ Jump up to: a b Bidwell, p. 685.
Jump up ^ Gates, p. 39-40.
Jump up ^ Bidwell, p. 689.
Jump up ^ Russell, p. vi.
Jump up ^ Bidwell, p. 687.
^ Jump up to: a b Russell, p. 337.
Jump up ^ Kelsey, p. 5.
Jump up ^ Kelsey, p. 6.
Jump up ^ Temin, p. 109.
Jump up ^ [2]
Jump up ^ Gerard J. Brault, The French-Canadian Heritage in New England (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1986) pg 52-54
Jump up ^ Claire Quintal, ed., Steeples and Smokestacks. A Collection of essays on The Franco-American Experience in New England (1996)
Jump up ^ Sacha Richard, "American Perspectives on La fièvre aux États-Unis, 1860–1930: A Historiographical analysis of Recent Writings on the Franco-Americans in New England." Canadian Review of American Studies (2002) 32#1 pp: 105-132.
Jump up ^ Iris Podea Saunders, "Quebec to 'Little Canada': The Coming of the French Canadians to New England in the Nineteenth Century," New England Quarterly (1950) 23#3 pp. 365-380 in JSTOR
Jump up ^ Brault, The French-Canadian Heritage in New England pg.52
Jump up ^ Roby, Yves. The Franco-Americans of New England: Dreams and Realities. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2004 pg.42
Jump up ^ Quintal pp 618-9
Jump up ^ Quintal p 614
Jump up ^ Quintal p 618
Jump up ^ Richard, "American Perspectives on La fièvre aux États-Unis, 1860–1930," p 105, quote on p 109
Jump up ^ Vincent P. Carosso (1987). The Morgans: Private International Bankers, 1854-1913. Harvard UP. pp. 607–10.
Jump up ^ John L. Weller, The New Haven Railroad: its rise and fall (1969)
Jump up ^ Peter Temin, ed., Engines of Enterprise: An Economic History of New England (2000) p 185
Jump up ^ Barel, Gerry (April 2011). "Ski Jumping Article Brings Back Memories for a Reader". Vermont's Northland Journal. 10 (1): 31.
Jump up ^ Lourdes B. Aviles, Taken by Storm, 1938: A Social and Meteorological History of the Great New England Hurricane (2012)
Jump up ^ Long, Stephen (September 7, 2011). "Remembering the hurricane of 1938". the Chronicle. Barton, Vermont. p. 3.
Jump up ^ Timothy J. Minchin, "The Crompton Closing: Imports and the Decline of America's Oldest Textile Company, Journal of American Studies (2013) 47#1 pp 231-260 online.
Jump up ^ Henry Etzkowitz, MIT and the Rise of Entrepreneurial Science (Routledge 2007)
Jump up ^ David Koistinen, Confronting Decline: The Political Economy of Deindustrialization in Twentieth-Century New England (2013)

text: Bibliography[edit]

text:
Feintuch, Burt and David H. Watters, eds. Encyclopedia of New England (2005), comprehensive coverage by scholars; 1596pp
Adams, James Truslow. The Founding of New England (1921) online edition; Revolutionary New England, 1691–1776 (1923); New England in the Republic, 1776–1850 (1926)
Andrews, Charles M. The Fathers of New England: A Chronicle of the Puritan Commonwealths (1919), short survey. online edition
Axtell, James, ed. The American People in Colonial New England (1973), new social history
Bidwell, Percy. “The Agricultural Revolution in New England. The American Historical Review, Vol. 26, No. 4. American Historical Association, July 1921. <http://people.brandeis.edu/~dkew/David/Bidwell-agriculture-1921.pdf>
Black, John D. The rural economy of New England: a regional study (1950) online[permanent dead link]
Bremer, Francis J. The Puritan Experiment: New England Society from Bradford to Edwards (1995).
Brewer, Daniel Chauncey. Conquest of New England by the Immigrant (1926).
Buell, Lawrence. New England Literary Culture: From Revolution through Renaissance. (Cambridge University Press, 1986), a literary history of New England. ISBN 0-521-37801-X
Conforti, Joseph A. Imagining New England: Explorations of Regional Identity from the Pilgrims to the Mid-Twentieth Century (2001)
Cumbler, John T. Reasonable Use: The People, the Environment, and the State, New England, 1790–1930 (2001), environmental history
Daniels, Bruce. New England Nation (2012) 256pp; focus on Puritans
Judd, Richard W. Second Nature: An Environmental History of New England (University of Massachusetts Press, 2014) xiv, 327 pp.
Karlsen, Carol F. The Devil in the Shape of a Woman: Witchcraft in Colonial New England (1998)
Kelsey, Darwin, ed. “Agriculture in New England, 1790-1840.” Old Sturbridge Village Research Paper. Old Sturbridge, Inc., January 1973.
Koistinen, David. "Business and Regional Economic Decline: The Political Economy of Deindustrialization in Twentieth-Century New England" Business and economic history online (2014) #12
Lockridge, Kenneth A. A New England Town: The First Hundred Years: Dedham, Massachusetts, 1636–1736 (1985), new social history
McWilliams, John. New England's Crisis and Cultural Memory: Literature, Politics, History, Religion, 1620–1860. (Cambridge University Press, 2009) excerpt and text search
McPhetres, S. A. A political manual for the campaign of 1868, for use in the New England states, containing the population and latest election returns of every town (1868)
Newell; Margaret Ellen. From Dependency to Independence: Economic Revolution in Colonial New England (Cornell UP, 1998) online edition
Old Colony Trust Company, New England: Old and New, Cambridge : University Press, 1920
Palfrey, John Gorham. History of New England (5 vol 1859–90), classic narrative to 1775; online
Richard, Mark Paul. Not a Catholic Nation: The Ku Klux Klan Confronts New England in the 1920s (University of Massachusetts Press, 2015). x, 259 pp.
Russell, Howard. A Long, Deep Furrow: Three Centuries of Farming in New England (University Press of New England, 1976)
Sletcher, Michael, ed. New England: The Greenwood Encyclopedia of American Regional Cultures (2004), articles on culture and society by experts
Temin, Peter, ed. Engines of Enterprise: An Economic History of New England (Harvard UP, 2000) online edition
Tucker, Spencer, ed. American Civil War: A State-by-State Encyclopedia (2 vol 2015) 1019pp excerpt
Vaughan, Alden T. New England Frontier: Puritans and Indians 1620–1675 (1995)
Weeden, William Babcock, "Economic and Social History of New England, 1620-1789" (2 vol. 1890), old but highly detailed and reliable
Zimmerman, Joseph F. The New England Town Meeting: Democracy in Action (1999)

text: Primary sources[edit]

text:
Dwight, Timothy. Travels Through New England and New York (circa 1800) 4 vol. (1969) Online at: vol 1; vol 2[permanent dead link]; vol 3[permanent dead link]; vol 4[permanent dead link]
Who's who in New England. A.N. Marquis. 1915. p. 1.


document_title: Roman law

question_text: what was rome's first set of written laws called

question_tokens: what was rome 's first set of written laws called

root

text: Roman law

text: Development[edit]

text: Before the Twelve Tables (754–449 BC), private law comprised the Roman civil law (ius civile Quiritium) that applied only to Roman citizens, and was bonded to religion; undeveloped, with attributes of strict formalism, symbolism, and conservatism, e.g. the ritual practice of mancipatio (a form of sale). The jurist Sextus Pomponius said, "At the beginning of our city, the people began their first activities without any fixed law, and without any fixed rights: all things were ruled despotically, by kings".[2] It is believed that Roman Law is rooted in the Etruscan religion, emphasizing ritual.[3]

tag: p

text: The Twelve Tables[edit]

text: The first legal text is the Law of the Twelve Tables, dating from the mid-5th century BC. The plebeian tribune, C. Terentilius Arsa, proposed that the law should be written, in order to prevent magistrates from applying the law arbitrarily.[4] After eight years of political struggle, the plebeian social class convinced the patricians to send a delegation to Athens, to copy the Laws of Solon; they also dispatched delegations to other Greek cities for like reason.[4] In 451 BC, according to the traditional story (as Livy tells it), ten Roman citizens were chosen to record the laws (decemviri legibus scribundis). While they were performing this task, they were given supreme political power (imperium), whereas the power of the magistrates was restricted.[4] In 450 BC, the decemviri produced the laws on ten tablets (tabulae), but these laws were regarded as unsatisfactory by the plebeians. A second decemvirate is said to have added two further tablets in 449 BC. The new Law of the Twelve Tables was approved by the people's assembly.[4]

text: Modern scholars tend to challenge the accuracy of Roman historians. They generally do not believe that a second decemvirate ever took place. The decemvirate of 451 is believed to have included the most controversial points of customary law, and to have assumed the leading functions in Rome.[4] Furthermore, the question on the Greek influence found in the early Roman Law is still much discussed. Many scholars consider it unlikely that the patricians sent an official delegation to Greece, as the Roman historians believed. Instead, those scholars suggest, the Romans acquired Greek legislations from the Greek cities of Magna Graecia, the main portal between the Roman and Greek worlds.[4] The original text of the Twelve Tables has not been preserved. The tablets were probably destroyed when Rome was conquered and burned by the Gauls in 387 BC.[4]

text: The fragments which did survive show that it was not a law code in the modern sense. It did not provide a complete and coherent system of all applicable rules or give legal solutions for all possible cases. Rather, the tables contained specific provisions designed to change the then-existing customary law. Although the provisions pertain to all areas of law, the largest part is dedicated to private law and civil procedure.

text: Early law and jurisprudence[edit]

text: Many laws include Lex Canuleia (445 BC; which allowed the marriage—ius connubii—between patricians and plebeians), Leges Licinae Sextiae (367 BC; which made restrictions on possession of public lands — ager publicus — and also made sure that one of the consuls was plebeian), Lex Ogulnia (300 BC; plebeians received access to priest posts), and Lex Hortensia (287 BC; verdicts of plebeian assemblies — plebiscita — now bind all people).

text: Another important statute from the Republican era is the Lex Aquilia of 286 BC, which may be regarded as the root of modern tort law. However, Rome's most important contribution to European legal culture was not the enactment of well-drafted statutes, but the emergence of a class of professional jurists (prudentes, sing. prudens, or jurisprudentes) and of a legal science. This was achieved in a gradual process of applying the scientific methods of Greek philosophy to the subject of law, a subject which the Greeks themselves never treated as a science.

text: Traditionally, the origins of Roman legal science are connected to Gnaeus Flavius. Flavius is said to have published around the year 300 BC the formularies containing the words which had to be spoken in court to begin a legal action. Before the time of Flavius, these formularies are said to have been secret and known only to the priests. Their publication made it possible for non-priests to explore the meaning of these legal texts. Whether or not this story is credible, jurists were active and legal treatises were written in larger numbers the 2nd century BC. Among the famous jurists of the republican period are Quintus Mucius Scaevola who wrote a voluminous treatise on all aspects of the law, which was very influential in later times, and Servius Sulpicius Rufus, a friend of Marcus Tullius Cicero. Thus, Rome had developed a very sophisticated legal system and a refined legal culture when the Roman republic was replaced by the monarchical system of the principate in 27 BC .

text: Pre-classical period[edit]

text: In the period between about 201 to 27 BC, we can see the development of more flexible laws to match the needs of the time. In addition to the old and formal ius civile a new juridical class is created: the ius honorarium, which can be defined as "The law introduced by the magistrates who had the right to promulgate edicts in order to support, supplement or correct the existing law."[5] With this new law the old formalism is being abandoned and new more flexible principles of ius gentium are used.

text: The adaptation of law to new needs was given over to juridical practice, to magistrates, and especially to the praetors. A praetor was not a legislator and did not technically create new law when he issued his edicts (magistratuum edicta). In fact, the results of his rulings enjoyed legal protection (actionem dare) and were in effect often the source of new legal rules. A Praetor's successor was not bound by the edicts of his predecessor; however, he did take rules from edicts of his predecessor that had proved to be useful. In this way a constant content was created that proceeded from edict to edict (edictum traslatitium).

text: Thus, over the course of time, parallel to the civil law and supplementing and correcting it, a new body of praetoric law emerged. In fact, praetoric law was so defined by the famous Roman jurist Papinian (Amilius Papinianus—died in 212 AD): "Ius praetorium est quod praetores introduxerunt adiuvandi vel supplendi vel corrigendi iuris civilis gratia propter utilitatem publicam" ("praetoric law is that law introduced by praetors to supplement or correct civil law for public benefit"). Ultimately, civil law and praetoric law were fused in the Corpus Juris Civilis.

text: Classical Roman law[edit]

text: The first 250 years of the current era are the period during which Roman law and Roman legal science reached its greatest degree of sophistication. The law of this period is often referred to as the classical period of Roman law. The literary and practical achievements of the jurists of this period gave Roman law its unique shape.

text: The jurists worked in different functions: They gave legal opinions at the request of private parties. They advised the magistrates who were entrusted with the administration of justice, most importantly the praetors. They helped the praetors draft their edicts, in which they publicly announced at the beginning of their tenure, how they would handle their duties, and the formularies, according to which specific proceedings were conducted. Some jurists also held high judicial and administrative offices themselves.

text: The jurists also produced all kinds of legal punishments. Around AD 130 the jurist Salvius Iulianus drafted a standard form of the praetor's edict, which was used by all praetors from that time onwards. This edict contained detailed descriptions of all cases, in which the praetor would allow a legal action and in which he would grant a defense. The standard edict thus functioned like a comprehensive law code, even though it did not formally have the force of law. It indicated the requirements for a successful legal claim. The edict therefore became the basis for extensive legal commentaries by later classical jurists like Paulus and Ulpian. The new concepts and legal institutions developed by pre-classical and classical jurists are too numerous to mention here. Only a few examples are given here:

text:
Roman jurists clearly separated the legal right to use a thing (ownership) from the factual ability to use and manipulate the thing (possession). They also found the distinction between contract and tort as sources of legal obligations.
The standard types of contract (sale, contract for work, hire, contract for services) regulated in most continental codes and the characteristics of each of these contracts were developed by Roman jurisprudence.
The classical jurist Gaius (around 160) invented a system of private law based on the division of all material into personae (persons), res (things) and actiones (legal actions). This system was used for many centuries. It can be recognized in legal treatises like William Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England and enactments like the French Code civil or the German BGB.

tag: ul

text: The Roman Republic had three different branches:

text:
Assemblies
Senate
Consuls

text: The Assemblies could decide whether war or peace. The Senate had complete control over the Treasury, and the Consuls had the highest juridical power.[6]

text: Post-classical law[edit]

text: By the middle of the 3rd century, the conditions for the flourishing of a refined legal culture had become less favourable. The general political and economic situation deteriorated as the emperors assumed more direct control of all aspects of political life. The political system of the principate, which had retained some features of the republican constitution, began to transform itself into the absolute monarchy of the dominate. The existence of a legal science and of jurists who regarded law as a science, not as an instrument to achieve the political goals set by the absolute monarch, did not fit well into the new order of things. The literary production all but ended. Few jurists after the mid-3rd century are known by name. While legal science and legal education persisted to some extent in the eastern part of the Empire, most of the subtleties of classical law came to be disregarded and finally forgotten in the west. Classical law was replaced by so-called vulgar law.

text: Substance[edit]

text: Concept of laws[edit]

text:
ius civile, ius gentium, and ius naturale – the ius civile ("citizen law", originally ius civile Quiritium) was the body of common laws that applied to Roman citizens and the Praetores Urbani, the individuals who had jurisdiction over cases involving citizens. The ius gentium ("law of peoples") was the body of common laws that applied to foreigners, and their dealings with Roman citizens. The Praetores Peregrini were the individuals who had jurisdiction over cases involving citizens and foreigners. Jus naturale was a concept the jurists developed to explain why all people seemed to obey some laws. Their answer was that a "natural law" instilled in all beings a common sense.
ius scriptum and ius non scriptum – meaning written and unwritten law, respectively. In practice, the two differed by the means of their creation and not necessarily whether or not they were written down. The ius scriptum was the body of statute laws made by the legislature. The laws were known as leges (lit. "laws") and plebiscita (lit. "plebiscites," originating in the Plebeian Council). Roman lawyers would also include in the ius scriptum the edicts of magistrates (magistratuum edicta), the advice of the Senate (Senatus consulta), the responses and thoughts of jurists (responsa prudentium), and the proclamations and beliefs of the emperor (principum placita). Ius non scriptum was the body of common laws that arose from customary practice and had become binding over time.
ius commune and ius singulare – Ius singulare (singular law) is special law for certain groups of people, things, or legal relations (because of which it is an exception from the general rules of the legal system), unlike general, ordinary, law (ius commune). An example of this is the law about wills written by people in the military during a campaign, which are exempt of the solemnities generally required for citizens when writing wills in normal circumstances.
ius publicum and ius privatum – ius publicum means public law and ius privatum means private law, where public law is to protect the interests of the Roman state while private law should protect individuals. In the Roman law ius privatum included personal, property, civil and criminal law; judicial proceeding was private process (iudicium privatum); and crimes were private (except the most severe ones that were prosecuted by the state). Public law will only include some areas of private law close to the end of the Roman state. Ius publicum was also used to describe obligatory legal regulations (today called ius cogens—this term is applied in modern international law to indicate peremptory norms that cannot be derogated from). These are regulations that cannot be changed or excluded by party agreement. Those regulations that can be changed are called today ius dispositivum, and they are not used when party shares something and are in contrary.

text: Public law[edit]

text: The Roman Republic's constitution or mos maiorum ("custom of the ancestors") was an unwritten set of guidelines and principles passed down mainly through precedent. Concepts that originated in the Roman constitution live on in constitutions to this day. Examples include checks and balances, the separation of powers, vetoes, filibusters, quorum requirements, term limits, impeachments, the powers of the purse, and regularly scheduled elections. Even some lesser used modern constitutional concepts, such as the block voting found in the electoral college of the United States, originate from ideas found in the Roman constitution.

text: The constitution of the Roman Republic was not formal or even official. Its constitution was largely unwritten, and was constantly evolving throughout the life of the Republic. Throughout the 1st century BC, the power and legitimacy of the Roman constitution was progressively eroding. Even Roman constitutionalists, such as the senator Cicero, lost a willingness to remain faithful to it towards the end of the republic. When the Roman Republic ultimately fell in the years following the Battle of Actium and Mark Antony's suicide, what was left of the Roman constitution died along with the Republic. The first Roman Emperor, Augustus, attempted to manufacture the appearance of a constitution that still governed the Empire, by utilising that constitution's institutions to lend legitimacy to the Principate, e.g. reusing prior grants of greater imperium to substantiate Augustus' greater imperium over the Imperial provinces and the prorogation of different magistracies to justify Augustus' receipt of tribunician power. The belief in a surviving constitution lasted well into the life of the Roman Empire.

text: Private law[edit]

text: Stipulatio was the basic form of contract in Roman law. It was made in the format of question and answer. The precise nature of the contract was disputed, as can be seen below.

text: Rei vindicatio is a legal action by which the plaintiff demands that the defendant return a thing that belongs to the plaintiff. It may only be used when plaintiff owns the thing, and the defendant is somehow impeding the plaintiff's possession of the thing. The plaintiff could also institute an actio furti (a personal action) to punish the defendant. If the thing could not be recovered, the plaintiff could claim damages from the defendant with the aid of the condictio furtiva (a personal action). With the aid of the actio legis Aquiliae (a personal action), the plaintiff could claim damages from the defendant. Rei vindicatio was derived from the ius civile, therefore was only available to Roman citizens.

text: Status[edit]

text: To describe a person's position in the legal system, Romans mostly used the expression togeus. The individual could have been a Roman citizen (status civitatis) unlike foreigners, or he could have been free (status libertatis) unlike slaves, or he could have had a certain position in a Roman family (status familiae) either as the head of the family (pater familias), or some lower member.*alieni iuris-which lives by someone else's law. Two status types were senator and emperor.

text: Litigation[edit]

text: The history of Roman Law can be divided into three systems of procedure: that of legis actiones, the formulary system, and cognitio extra ordinem. The periods in which these systems were in use overlapped one another and did not have definitive breaks, but it can be stated that the legis actio system prevailed from the time of the XII Tables (c. 450 BC) until about the end of the 2nd century BC, that the formulary procedure was primarily used from the last century of the Republic until the end of the classical period (c. AD 200), and that of cognitio extra ordinem was in use in post-classical times. Again, these dates are meant as a tool to help understand the types of procedure in use, not as a rigid boundary where one system stopped and another began.[7]

text: During the republic and until the bureaucratization of Roman judicial procedure, the judge was usually a private person (iudex privatus). He had to be a Roman male citizen. The parties could agree on a judge, or they could appoint one from a list, called album iudicum. They went down the list until they found a judge agreeable to both parties, or if none could be found they had to take the last one on the list.

text: No one had a legal obligation to judge a case. The judge had great latitude in the way he conducted the litigation. He considered all the evidence and ruled in the way that seemed just. Because the judge was not a jurist or a legal technician, he often consulted a jurist about the technical aspects of the case, but he was not bound by the jurist's reply. At the end of the litigation, if things were not clear to him, he could refuse to give a judgment, by swearing that it wasn't clear. Also, there was a maximum time to issue a judgment, which depended on some technical issues (type of action, etc.).

text: Later on, with the bureaucratization, this procedure disappeared, and was substituted by the so-called "extra ordinem" procedure, also known as cognitory. The whole case was reviewed before a magistrate, in a single phase. The magistrate had obligation to judge and to issue a decision, and the decision could be appealed to a higher magistrate.

text: Legacy[edit]

text: In the East[edit]

text: When the centre of the Empire was moved to the Greek East in the 4th century, many legal concepts of Greek origin appeared in the official Roman legislation.[8] The influence is visible even in the law of persons or of the family, which is traditionally the part of the law that changes least. For example, Constantine started putting restrictions on the ancient Roman concept of patria potestas, the power held by the male head of a family over his descendents, by acknowledging that persons in potestate, the descendents, could have proprietary rights. He was apparently making concessions to the much stricter concept of paternal authority under Greek-Hellenistic law.[8] The Codex Theodosianus (438 AD) was a codification of Constantian laws. Later emperors went even further, until Justinian finally decreed that a child in potestate became owner of everything it acquired, except when it acquired something from its father.[8]

text: The codes of Justinian, particularly the Corpus Juris Civilis (529-534) continued to be the basis of legal practice in the Empire throughout its so-called Byzantine history. Leo III the Isaurian issued a new code, the Ecloga,[9] in the early 8th century. In the 9th century, the emperors Basil I and Leo VI the Wise commissioned a combined translation of the Code and the Digest, parts of Justinian's codes, into Greek, which became known as the Basilica. Roman law as preserved in the codes of Justinian and in the Basilica remained the basis of legal practice in Greece and in the courts of the Eastern Orthodox Church even after the fall of the Byzantine Empire and the conquest by the Turks, and also formed the basis for much of the Fetha Negest, which remained in force in Ethiopia until 1931.

text: The Roman Laws up to Justinian (first 50 years) are almost fully in US Federal Code to be found (or US regulations), though not always applying as wide as they had been originally written (statutory interpretation). (Many of Justinian's Christian laws were repealed later, though religion was still high in consideration by law.)

text: It should be remembered that the first university (not to be confused with college) was in Rome (not England) and taught these laws to spread them to all of Europe "the same" (without modification): universal law. The Roman "university" was popular in its time. University law, then medicine (also an advancement of Romans - surgical tools), were taught at universities with the concept that all of them taught exactly the same words and meanings. Many of today's universities have long lapsed into being "colleges" but incorrectly retain the title. (Two students from different schools may not be able to relate to one another as the teachings and words are different. It was the intent of the Roman University to prevent the same happening with their body of law.)[citation needed]

text: In the West[edit]

text: In the west, Justinian's political authority never went any farther than certain portions of the Italian and Hispanic peninsulas. In Law codes were issued by the Germanic kings, however, the influence of early Eastern Roman codes on some of these is quite discernible. In many early Germanic states, Roman citizens continued to be governed by Roman laws for quite some time, even while members of the various Germanic tribes were governed by their own respective codes.

text: The Codex Justinianus and the Institutes of Justinian were known in Western Europe, and along with the earlier code of Theodosius II, served as models for a few of the Germanic law codes; however, the Digest portion was largely ignored for several centuries until around 1070, when a manuscript of the Digest was rediscovered in Italy. This was done mainly through the works of glossars who wrote their comments between lines (glossa interlinearis), or in the form of marginal notes (glossa marginalis). From that time, scholars began to study the ancient Roman legal texts, and to teach others what they learned from their studies. The center of these studies was Bologna. The law school there gradually developed into Europe's first university.

text: The students who were taught Roman law in Bologna (and later in many other places) found that many rules of Roman law were better suited to regulate complex economic transactions than were the customary rules, which were applicable throughout Europe. For this reason, Roman law, or at least some provisions borrowed from it, began to be re-introduced into legal practice, centuries after the end of the Roman empire. This process was actively supported by many kings and princes who employed university-trained jurists as counselors and court officials and sought to benefit from rules like the famous Princeps legibus solutus est ("The sovereign is not bound by the laws", a phrase initially coined by Ulpian, a Roman jurist).

text: There are several reasons that Roman law was favored in the Middle Ages. Roman law regulated the legal protection of property and the equality of legal subjects and their wills, and it prescribed the possibility that the legal subjects could dispose their property through testament.

text: By the middle of the 16th century, the rediscovered Roman law dominated the legal practice of many European countries. A legal system, in which Roman law was mixed with elements of canon law and of Germanic custom, especially feudal law, had emerged. This legal system, which was common to all of continental Europe (and Scotland) was known as Ius Commune. This Ius Commune and the legal systems based on it are usually referred to as civil law in English-speaking countries.

text: Only England and the Nordic countries did not take part in the wholesale reception of Roman law. One reason for this is that the English legal system was more developed than its continental counterparts by the time Roman law was rediscovered. Therefore, the practical advantages of Roman law were less obvious to English practitioners than to continental lawyers. As a result, the English system of common law developed in parallel to Roman-based civil law, with its practitioners being trained at the Inns of Court in London rather than receiving degrees in Canon or Civil Law at the Universities of Oxford or Cambridge. Elements of Romano-canon law were present in England in the ecclesiastical courts and, less directly, through the development of the equity system. In addition, some concepts from Roman law made their way into the common law. Especially in the early 19th century, English lawyers and judges were willing to borrow rules and ideas from continental jurists and directly from Roman law.

text: The practical application of Roman law and the era of the European Ius Commune came to an end, when national codifications were made. In 1804, the French civil code came into force. In the course of the 19th century, many European states either adopted the French model or drafted their own codes. In Germany, the political situation made the creation of a national code of laws impossible. From the 17th century, Roman law in Germany had been heavily influenced by domestic (common) law, and it was called usus modernus Pandectarum. In some parts of Germany, Roman law continued to be applied until the German civil code (Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch, BGB) came into force in 1900.[citation needed]

text: Colonial expansion spread the civil law system.[10]

text: Today[edit]

text: Today, Roman law is no longer applied in legal practice, even though the legal systems of some countries like South Africa and San Marino are still based on the old jus commune. However, even where the legal practice is based on a code, many rules deriving from Roman law apply: no code completely broke with the Roman tradition. Rather, the provisions of the Roman law were fitted into a more coherent system and expressed in the national language. For this reason, knowledge of the Roman law is indispensable to understand the legal systems of today. Thus, Roman law is often still a mandatory subject for law students in civil law jurisdictions.

text: As steps towards a unification of the private law in the member states of the European Union are being taken, the old jus commune, which was the common basis of legal practice everywhere in Europe, but allowed for many local variants, is seen by many as a model.