Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
History
Native Americans populated this region long before European settlers arrived. Many of
the area's geographic landmarks are still known by their Native American names, such as
Chesapeake, Shenandoah, Appalachian and Potomac. In 1607 a group of 108 English
colonists established the first permanent European settlement in the New World:
Jamestown. During the early years, colonists battled harsh winters, starvation, disease
and occasionally hostile Native Americans.
Jamestown survived, and the Royal Colony of Virginia came into being in 1624. Ten
years later, fleeing the English Civil War, Lord Baltimore established the Catholic colony
of Maryland at St Mary's City, where a Spanish Jewish doctor treated a town council that
included a black Portuguese sailor and Margaret Brent, the first woman to vote in North
American politics. Delaware was settled as a Dutch whaling colony in 1631, was practic-
ally wiped out by Native Americans, then later resettled by the British. Celts displaced
from Britain filtered into the Appalachians, where they created a fiercely independent
culture that persists today. Border disputes between Maryland, Delaware and
Pennsylvania led to the creation of the Mason- Dixon line, which eventually separated
the industrial North from the agrarian, slave-holding South.
The fighting part of the Revolutionary War finished here with the British surrender at
Yorktown in 1781. Then, to diffuse regional tension, central, swampy Washington, Dis-
trict of Columbia (DC), was made the new nation's capital. But divisions of class, race
and economy were strong, and this area in particular split along its seams during the
Civil War (1861-65): Virginia seceded from the Union while its impoverished western
farmers, long resentful of genteel plantation owners, seceded from Virginia. Maryland
stayed in the Union but its white slave-owners rioted against Northern troops, while
thousands of black Marylanders joined the Union Army.
Local Culture
The North-South tension long defined this area, but the region has also jerked between
the aristocratic pretensions of upper-class Virginia, miners, watermen, immigrant bor-
oughs and the ever-changing rulers of Washington, DC. Since the Civil War, local eco-
nomies have made the shift from agriculture and manufacturing to high technology and
the servicing and staffing of the federal government.
Many African Americans settled this border region, either as slaves or escapees run-
ning to Northern freedom. Today African Americans still form the visible underclass of
major cities, but in the rough arena of the disadvantaged they compete with Latino im-
migrants, mainly from Central America. At the other end of the spectrum, ivory towers -
in the form of world-class universities and research centers such as the National Institute
