Connecticut is a New England state with capital Hartford and largest city Bridgeport. About 4 million people live in the state. It is the third smallest state and fourth most densely populated. This is, in part, because the southern part of the state is close to New York City and forms part of the New York Metropolitan (Tri-State) area..

Connecticut (whose name is derived from the American Indian Algonquian word meaning 'long tidal river') is the southernmost of the New England states in the northeastern region of the United States. The state is named after the Connecticut River that runs through the middle of the state.

Connecticut began as a Dutch colony, just like New York. The first settlement was on the site of modern Hartford where the Park and Connecticut rivers meet. It was a good, shelter area and easily defended. However, the Dutch occupation of the area was short-lived, and it was the English who built the first colonial towns, beginning in the 1630s. This was achieved by Thomas Hooker, who led a party south from the Massachusetts Bay Colony to found the Connecticut Colony. The Connecticut and nearby New Haven Colonies wrote the first constitutions in North America. In 1662, the small town-based colonies were merged under a royal charter, making Connecticut a crown colony of England.

Connecticut has a number of sheltered harbours facing Long Island, including the estuaries of the Thames River and the Connecticut River. Inland is hilly and forested with broad-leaved trees, and difficult to get through. These two factors, together with the fact that it was a colony on the western side of the Atlantic Ocean from England, combined to make early Connecticut look towards the sea, trade and fishing.

Today Connecticut has the highest income per head of any state in the Union, influenced by the extremely wealthy southern suburban (Tristate) areas.

The highest peak in Connecticut is Bear Mountain and the highest point on the slopes of Mount Frissell ( whose summit is in Massachusetts).

Connecticut is a place of great differences. In the north and west there are many historic villages that show much of what life was like in colonial times, including historic greens like that of Litchfield and Wethersfield. Here you find the white-painted wooden churches, colonial inns, meeting houses and quite often historic graveyards. By contrast, the coast, and along the Connecticut River to Hartford, it is a place of factories and businesses.

The first European colonists found Connecticut the home to the Mohegans, the Pequots, and the Paugusetts. To the early colonists, the rivers were home to beaver and other animals whose pelts could be traded.

The first English settlers settled at Windsor in 1633, and then at Wethersfield in 1634. The settlers were Puritans from Massachusetts, led by Thomas Hooker whose people could no longer agree with those running Massachusetts.

By 1636 the European colonists were battling for land with the American Indians, resulting in the Pequot War. By this time there was already an English colony in all but name because of the large number of English settlers. The English-Dutch war of 1652 settled the matter, with the Duke of York capturing New Netherland in 1664. By the 18th century, Connecticut was well known as a centre of learning (its founder had been a professor of theology at Cambridge University, England). Yale College was established in 1701.

By the 1770s there were increasing tensions between the colonial governments and Britain (England and Scotland having become united in 1707). By 1775, clashes between British regulars and Massachusetts militia at Lexington and Concord, caused Connecticut's government to set up six new regiments. These were involved in the Battle of Bunker Hill in June 1775.

Redding became the winter headquarters of the Continental Army. Conditions were so bad it has been called "Connecticut's Valley Forge."

On January 9, 1788, Connecticut ratified the U.S. Constitution, becoming the fifth state to join the Union.

In the years that followed, trade grew again across the Atlantic.

This was by coincidence, and greatly to the advantage of both Britain and the new United States, because new factories could be built and new goods produced so that Connecticut (as well as the other states and Britain) could all begin to prosper after the damaging Revolutionary War. Mills and textile factories were built and seaports grew from trade and fisheries, including that with Britain.

But a further war between Britain and the U.S. caused a blockade on imports. This forced the United States to become more self-reliant and build mills and factories of its own. It was one of the reasons that the United States began to grow into a major industrial power in the 19th century.

Connecticut's industry, population, wealth, and connection to trading ports all naturally led to railroads being built at an early stage. The first line was built in 1839.

But not all manufacturing was to go to trade and growth. By 1862 there was a Civil War and the factories of Connecticut were important in providing supplies as well as troops.

Once the war was over, manufacturing got underway again, and Connecticut was at the forefront of new ideas. In 1875, the first telephone exchange in the world was built in New Haven.

Toward the end of the 19th century, Connecticut saw very large waves of immigration, especially from Italy and Ireland, both to work in factories and on the railroad. Today there are more people of Italian descent than any other group, followed by Irish, with English third.

The First World War saw factories in Connecticut working flat out to make armaments (Remington Arms in Bridgeport, Winchester in New Haven and Colt in Hartford.)

Connecticut also made submarines and freighters. In 1925, Pratt & Whitney began to make aircraft engines in Hartford. Nevertheless Connecticut was caught up in the Great Depression of the 1930s, and it was only in World war II that things picked up as arms were needed again.

In 1940, Igor Sikorsky made the first helicopter. Sikorsky Aircraft's Stratford plant is now Connecticut's largest single manufacturing site.

But although Connecticut had been at the forefront of manufacturing for many decades, in the post-war years competition from other parts of the U.S. and in particular from cheaper overseas countries meant that many traditional manufacturing companies began to fail. Jobs were held up by defined contracts, but these fell away at the end of the Cold War.

Finance and insurance are now Connecticut's largest industries, while manufacturing has dropped to third.