New Bedford, city, Bristol county, southeastern Massachusetts, U.S. It lies at the mouth of the Acushnet River on Buzzards Bay, 54 miles (87 km) south of Boston.
The site, settled by Plymouth colonists in 1652, was originally part of Dartmouth. A fishing community was established there in 1760. By 1765 it had developed into a small whaling port and shipbuilding centre. The Dartmouth, which in 1767 was the first ship launched there, was one of the “tea-ships” involved in the Boston Tea Party (1773). Because the town’s deepwater harbour was used by American privateers during the American Revolution, it was attacked (September 5, 1778) and burned by British forces. Following a rapid recovery, it was separately incorporated (1787) as the town of New Bedford.
By 1820 New Bedford was one of the world’s leading whaling ports; in the mid-19th century three-fifths of the U.S. whaling fleet, which totaled more than 700 vessels, was registered there. The site was immortalized by Herman Melville in Moby Dick.
Following the decline in whaling, New Bedford turned to the manufacture of cotton fabrics but was adversely affected by the movement of the textile industry to the American Southeast during the 1920s. A diversified economy now prevails with the manufacture of electrical equipment and machinery, rubber goods, textiles and clothing, photography supplies, golf balls, and metal goods. Services and trade are also important. The city is a sailing point for the Cape Cod area and continues to be a major fishing port.
The New Bedford Whaling Museum, the 19th-century fishing schooner Ernestina, and the Seamen’s Bethel (Whaleman’s Chapel) reflect the city’s historic and seafaring past. A 13-block section of the city was designated as New Bedford Whaling National Historical Park in 1996. (For an excerpt from Melville’s novel, which [in part] features the whaling town and its Whaleman’s Chapel in the mid-19th century, see New Bedford in Moby Dick.) Inc. city, 1847. Pop. (2000) 93,768; Providence–New Bedford–Fall River Metro Area, 1,582,997; (2010) 95,072; Providence–New Bedford–Fall River Metro Area, 1,600,852.
This article was most recently revised and updated by Kenneth Pletcher.
Portugal, country lying along the Atlantic coast of the Iberian Peninsula in southwestern Europe. Once continental Europe’s greatest power, Portugal shares commonalities—geographic and cultural—with the countries of both northern Europe and the Mediterranean. Its cold, rocky northern coast and mountainous interior are sparsely settled, scenic, and wild, while the country’s south, the Algarve, is warm and fertile. The rugged Estrela Mountains (Serra da Estrela, or “Star Mountain Range”), which lie between the Tagus and Mondego rivers, contain the highest point of mainland Portugal.
In the 1st millennium bce the Celtic Lusitani entered the Iberian Peninsula and settled the land, and many traces of their influence remain. According to national legend, though, Lisbon, the national capital, was founded not by Celts but by the ancient Greek warrior Odysseus, who was said to have arrived at a rocky headland near what is the present-day city after leaving his homeland to wander the world and who, liking what he saw, stayed there for a while; his departure was said to have broken the heart of the nymph Calypso, who, the legend goes, turned herself into a snake, her coils becoming the seven hills of Lisbon. Of course, had Odysseus actually come to Portugal, he would have found the land already well settled by the Lusitani.
Lusitani tribes battled the Romans for generations before acceding to empire, whereupon Rome established several important towns and ports; the Roman presence can be seen in the very name of the country, which derives from Portus Cale, a settlement near the mouth of the Douro River and the present-day city of Porto. Later, the descendants of Romans and the Lusitani would live under Moorish rule for several centuries until an independent kingdom was established.
In constant battle and rivalry with Spain, its eastern neighbour, Portugal then turned to the sea and, after Henry the Navigator’s establishment of a school of navigation at Sagres, in time founded a vast overseas empire that would become Europe’s largest and richest. Much of that empire was quickly lost, but even then Portugal retained sizable holdings along the African coast, in southern and eastern Asia, and in South America. Portugal remained a colonial power until the mid-1970s, when a peaceful revolution transformed the country from a dictatorship into a democratic republic. Long among the poorest countries of Europe, Portugal modernized in the last decades of the 20th century, expanding its economy from one based primarily on textile manufacture and livestock raising to include a range of manufactures and services.
Explore Lisbon: A city shaped by maritime historyOverview of Lisbon.
Lisbon is Portugal’s capital and economic and cultural centre. The city clings to low but steep hills situated on the right bank of the Tagus and is a popular tourist destination. Lisbon is rather more tranquil and reserved than Madrid in neighbouring Spain, but it shares with it a reputation for great food, melancholy and romanticmusic, dance, and sport. Portuguese traditionally have prized a simple and unostentatious life, favouring the rural over the urban and the traditional to the modern, where a fine meal might consist of carne de porco à Alentejana (lean pork stuffed with clams), thick-crusted bread, and dark wine. Portuguese delight in the countryside, where they gather to hold family picnics, tend to their gardens and orchards, and relax. It is from the countryside that the fado, a form of romantic ballad, is thought to have come (though it is now clearly associated with the cities of Lisbon and Coimbra), and it is in the countryside that the country’s traditional sport of bullfighting takes its finest form, though in Portuguese bullfighting the bull is not killed but rather is retired to the countryside for the rest of its life.
Lisbon was designated a European City of Culture in 1994, and in 1998 it hosted the World’s Fair (Expo ’98). Both events raised Portugal’s profile worldwide. The latter event sparked the city’s biggest renewal project since the rebuilding that followed the 1755 earthquake, including the construction of the six-lane Vasco da Gama Bridge over the Tagus River estuary, then the longest bridge in Europe.
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Shercliff, Jose, Livermore, Harold V., Wheeler, Douglas Lanphier, Opello, Walter C., Kaplan, Marion, Smith, Catherine Delano, Amaral, Ilídio Melo Peres do. "Portugal". Encyclopedia Britannica, 15 Mar. 2025, https://www.britannica.com/place/Portugal. Accessed 30 March 2025.
