Population composition

Native Americans lived in the Narragansett Bay area for thousands of years before English settlers began arriving in the 1620s and ’30s. It has been estimated that prior to 1610 as many as 144,000 Indians lived in southern New England. The native people generally welcomed the newcomers, but the diseases carried by the English would eventually kill much of the indigenous population. In the first 50 years of English settlement, relations between the two groups were generally peaceful, but by the 1670s the native peoples had been seriously weakened by recurrent epidemics. As a result, the Native American population shrank dramatically, and settlers took their place. Continued loss of land and population during the following first two centuries was such that the 1832 Rhode Island census counted only 80 Indians.

During the colonial era most settlers were English Protestants, although some Irish Protestants, French Huguenots, and Jews also arrived then. Added to this mix were enslaved Africans, who began arriving in the 17th century. Irish Roman Catholics began to come in large numbers in the 1820s, and their numbers swelled even more after the Irish Potato Famine of the 1840s. By the time of the state census in 1865, the foreign-born Irish constituted approximately one-tenth of the state’s population. French Canadian immigrants, after trickling in before the American Civil War, began coming in larger numbers in the 1870s. Immigration also brought other western Europeans as well as Armenians, Russians, eastern European Jews, Syrians, and Cape Verdeans. In the 1890s Italian immigrants began arriving in great numbers. In 1911 Providence was recognized as an official port of entry for immigrants, and by 1920 some three-tenths of Rhode Island residents were foreign-born—the highest proportion of any state. By then the state had a Roman Catholic majority.

In the decades after World War II, newcomers from East and Southeast Asia, Africa, and Latin America were the most numerous immigrant groups. Hispanics came to outnumber African Americans. Still, the vast majority of Rhode Islanders today trace their ancestry to Europe. Some two-thirds of the population is Roman Catholic; there are smaller numbers of Protestants (especially Episcopalians and Baptists) as well as Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, and Hindus.

Settlement patterns

Rhode Island’s major population centre is Providence and the nearby communities of Pawtucket, North Providence, Johnston, Cranston, Warwick, and East Providence. The other major population clusters are in Woonsocket in the north and Newport in the south. Providence in particular underwent a renaissance beginning in the 1980s and experienced steady population growth after a continual decline that had lasted from 1930 to 1980. The building of the highway system in the mid-20th century brought hitherto scattered villages throughout the state within commuting distance of the city; rural areas and villages experienced considerable pressure from encroaching development, and the size of the state’s forested areas shrank. Such pressures sparked efforts to contain urban sprawl and to promote planned growth.

Demographic trends

The population of Rhode Island grew slowly in the 20th century. In addition, the overwhelming presence of people of European origin declined somewhat with the continuing immigration of Hispanics and people from Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and India. In the early 21st century Hispanics were the largest minority, more than double the size of the African American component. Native Americans constituted only a tiny fraction of the population.

Agriculture and fishing

Agriculture and related services, forestry, and fisheries account for just a tiny fraction of Rhode Island’s annual income. Agriculture has been in a steady decline since the end of the 18th century, and the amount of the state’s land area under cultivation is now negligible. The Rhode Island Red chicken, bred for its egg laying, is the official state bird and a symbol of the state, but egg production is not a notable factor in the state’s economy. Nursery products and turf farming accounted for most of the state’s agricultural output.

Efforts to clean up Narragansett Bay, begun in the 1970s, improved the health of the water, and shellfish landings of lobsters, oysters, and quahogs (the local variety of hardshell clams) had increased by the end of the 1990s. Fishing in the ocean had declined, however. Many of the preferred commercial species—flounder, striped bass, cod, and mackerel—were severely overfished in the 1970s and ’80s, which led to the imposition of legal limitations on commercial catches. Rhode Island’s commercial fishing industry declined, as did those of other New England states.

Resources

Except for sand and gravel, the state has no exploitable mineral resources, and the thin, rocky, acidic soil is barely fit for agriculture. The one great natural resource is Narragansett Bay, which has provided a living for fishermen since first settlement and has been a playground for visitors and vacationers since the 1730s. In the 19th century the shores of Rhode Island had so many resorts, beaches, and amusement parks that it was called the “Playground of New England.” Industrial and human waste and pollution ended much of this—until the rise of a vigorous environmental movement beginning in the 1960s.

Narragansett Bay also attracted the U.S. Navy, and Rhode Islanders have been prominent in the navy throughout its history. The first ship in the Continental Navy, in 1775, was the Providence, formerly known as the Katy, a Rhode Island Navy vessel. Rhode Islander Esek Hopkins was the first commander in chief of the Continental Navy. During the Civil War the U.S. Naval Academy was moved to Newport from Annapolis, Md., and the Naval War College was established there in 1884. The naval presence expanded even more during World War II; Narragansett Bay was one of two main bases on the Atlantic coast. In 1974 most naval facilities in the state were closed, and some four-fifths of all naval personnel were transferred to other bases. Today only a small number of active-duty personnel remain, although the navy maintains several significant research and educational facilities, including the Naval War College and the Naval Undersea Warfare Center.