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New York is the home of a number of important sports events, notably the annual U.S. Open tennis tournament, held at Flushing Meadows. The Belmont Stakes, part of American horse racing’s Triple Crown, takes place at Belmont Park, near New York City, each June, and the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame is located in Saratoga Springs, where some of the country’s most famous annual horse races are held. The Olympic Winter Games have been held twice at Lake Placid (1932 and 1980). The state also has many professional sports teams, including, in football, the Buffalo Bills and the New York Giants and Jets, which, like the New York Red Bulls (major league football [soccer]), play in northern New Jersey. In men’s basketball, the Knicks frequently have been one of the standout teams, and baseball’s Mets and Yankees (both in New York City) have had storied histories. The New York Liberty was one of the charter teams of women’s professional basketball. Professional ice hockey teams are the New York Islanders (Long Island) and Rangers and the Buffalo Sabres.
The variety of New York’s geography provides not only great beauty but also opportunities for recreation, relaxation, and a study of the past. In 1885 New York established the country’s first state park (Niagara Falls State Park), and it has developed an extensive system of state parks and recreation areas. With the cool summers of the Adirondacks, the snowy slopes of the Catskills, the ocean beaches and lakes, and a variety of aquatic sports, New York state has a broad recreational base.
Press and broadcasting
Several major publishing houses have their headquarters in New York City, as do a large number of national magazines. The central offices of many of the country’s largest corporations are located there, supporting a great many banks, public-relations firms, advertising agencies, management consultants, and law firms. Because of this concentration of business and culture, New York City maintains a leading national position in American life.
Newspaper publishing in New York dates to colonial times, and by the early 19th century more than 100 papers were being published in the state. Two of New York City’s major papers, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, are now also published in national editions. In addition, dozens of cities upstate support daily and weekly newspapers; some also have local business journals. Book publishers of all descriptions, including university presses and other scholarly and trade publishers, are scattered throughout the state.
History
First peoples
Two major groups of Native American peoples were living in the New York region when Europeans first arrived: the Algonquian-speaking Mohican (Mahican) and Munsee tribes near the Atlantic coast and, farther inland, the five tribes of the Iroquois—Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca—that formed the Iroquois Confederacy between 1570 and 1600. (The Tuscarora joined the confederacy in 1722.) This association of Native American tribes, with its advanced social and governmental institutions, reached the height of its power about 1700. The alignment of these tribes with the British against the French, with whom the confederacy’s traditional enemies were allied, probably enabled the British to emerge as victors in the nearly 150 years of struggle between the two European powers in northern North America.
Colonial period
New York was originally settled as a colony of the Netherlands following Henry Hudson’s exploration in 1609 of the river later named for him. In 1624 at what is today Albany, the Dutch established Fort Orange as the first permanent European settlement in New York. One year later New Amsterdam was established at the southern end of Manhattan Island. To legalize that settlement, Peter Minuit, the Dutch governor, paid the Indians merchandise worth about 60 Dutch guilders at the time—converted to the legendary $24. Although the Dutch established several settlements along the Hudson, their interest was more in trade than in permanent agricultural development. Thus, while its trading posts prospered and aided the general expansion of its empire, the Netherlands planted no deep roots of permanent colonization in New York. The most likely explanation for this lies in the economic prosperity and social stability of the homeland. The Dutch citizens had no strong economic motivations to move overseas, nor were there sufficient religious or political quarrels to promote any such movement. An English fleet sailed into New York harbour in 1664; Gov. Peter Stuyvesant was obliged to surrender, the citizens and the Dutch government having no will to fight. Although controversy ensued for several years, the colony was firmly in English hands by 1669. Under the English it was renamed New York, for James, duke of York (later James II).
Despite this change in ownership and sovereignty, however, the colony developed slowly. Like the Dutch, the English crown granted large tracts of land to private individuals. This system of landownership was not attractive to settlers such as the farmer-colonists who had settled the New England area, and agricultural development, particularly in the areas along the Hudson valley, remained slight.
The European war between France and England in the mid-18th century had its counterpart in North America (the French and Indian War). The French, established along the St. Lawrence River and in Quebec, made a number of forays into northern and central New York. The strong Iroquois Confederacy aligned itself with the English in New York and New England because of aid given earlier by the French to rival tribes. This warfare discouraged settlement beyond Albany. The military situation was brought to a conclusion in 1763 by the Treaty of Paris, which confirmed English dominance of the New York region. A gradual but steady movement of settlers from New England was the beginning of New York’s population explosion. The New Englanders moved across the borders of Connecticut and Massachusetts, some remaining on the east bank of the Hudson and others passing through Albany to the interior.
In 1698 the colony’s population was about 18,000, two-thirds of it concentrated in and around New York City. By the eve of the American Revolution, it had grown to 163,000, with the concentration nearly exactly reversed, but New York still ranked only seventh among the American colonies. Dutch culture remained strong in New York City and in Albany, while most of the settlements in the interior had a flavour and dialect of the New England Yankee; there were also several German communities. This emerging pattern of cultural heterogeneity was reported in 1782 by the French writer Michel-Guillaume-Saint-Jean de Crèvecoeur (known in America as J. Hector St. John). He described the practices of the farmers along the lower Hudson valley and analyzed the forces creating the “American character.” He asked,
What then is the American, this new man?…He is an American, who, leaving behind him all his ancient prejudices and manners, receives new ones from the new mode of life he has embraced.…Here individuals of all nations are melted into a new race of men.… Americans are the western pilgrims.
This cultural diversity would continue to have a considerable influence on the politics of the state, as would the waves of immigration from Europe that followed the war and continued well into the 20th century.