Massachusetts (Massachusett: Muhsachuweesut [məhswatʃəwiːsət], English: , /-zɪts/), officially the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, is the most populous confess in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It borders on the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Maine to the east, Connecticut and Rhode Island to the south, New Hampshire and Vermont to the north, and New York to the west. Massachusetts is the 6th smallest give leave to enter by land area but is the 15th most populous divulge and the 3rd most densely populated, after New Jersey and Rhode Island. The state’s capital and most populous city, as skillfully as its cultural and financial center, is Boston. Massachusetts is also house to the urban core of Greater Boston, the largest metropolitan Place in New England and a region profoundly influential on American history, academia, and the research economy. Originally dependent upon agriculture, fishing, and trade. Massachusetts was transformed into a manufacturing middle during the Industrial Revolution. During the 20th century, Massachusetts’s economy shifted from manufacturing to services. Modern Massachusetts is a global leader in biotechnology, engineering, higher education, finance, and maritime trade.

Massachusetts was a site of into the future English colonization: the Plymouth Colony was founded in 1620 by the Pilgrims of the Mayflower, and in 1630 the Massachusetts Bay Colony, taking its reveal from the indigenous Massachusett people, established settlements in Boston and Salem. In 1692, the town of Salem and surrounding areas experienced one of America’s most infamous cases of buildup hysteria, the Salem witch trials. In 1777, General Henry Knox founded the Springfield Armory, which, during the Industrial Revolution, catalyzed numerous important technological advances, including interchangeable parts. In 1786, Shays’ Rebellion, a populist revolt led by disaffected American Revolutionary War veterans, influenced the United States Constitutional Convention. In the 18th century, the Protestant First Great Awakening, which swept Britain and the Thirteen Colonies, originated from the pulpit of Northampton preacher Jonathan Edwards. In the late 18th century, Boston became known as the “Cradle of Liberty” for the agitation there that well ahead led to the American Revolution.

Massachusetts has played a powerful scientific, commercial, and cultural role in the records of the United States. Before the American Civil War, Massachusetts was a middle for the abolitionist, temperance, and transcendentalist movements. In the late 19th century, the sports of basketball and volleyball were invented in the western Massachusetts cities of Springfield and Holyoke, respectively. Massachusetts became the first U.S. state to legally say you will same-sex marriage so of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court’s decision in Goodridge v. Department of Public Health in 2004, and elected the first openly lesbian U.S. state official in 2022, by a wide margin—and Boston is a hub of LGBT culture and LGBT activism in the United States. Prominent American diplomatic dynasties have hailed from the state, including the Adams and Kennedy families.

Harvard University in Cambridge is the oldest institution of far ahead learning in the United States, with the largest financial realization of any university. The the academy has educated eight Presidents of the United States while Harvard Law School has educated a contemporaneous majority of Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States. Kendall Square in Cambridge has been called “the most advocate square mile on the planet”, in reference to the tall concentration of entrepreneurial start-ups and quality of enhancement which have emerged in the vicinity of the square previously 2010. Both Harvard and MIT, also in Cambridge, are perennially ranked as either the most or among the most very regarded academic institutions in the world. The state’s public-school students place among the summit tier in the world in academic performance. Massachusetts has been ranked as one of the top states in the United States for citizens to enliven in, as competently as one of the most expensive.