The US state of Connecticut is situated within the northeastern part of the United States in the New England region. Connecticut is shares its border together with Rhode Island towards the east, Massachusetts to the north, and the state of New York towards the west and the south. The state of Connecticut also shares a water boundary along with New York within the Long Island Sound.
The first settlers from Europe in Connecticut were Dutch, when they established a small, settlement which is now where the city of Hartford is situated. This settlement was situated at the confluence of the Connecticut rivers and the Park and was known as Huys de Goede Hoop. Originally, half of the state of Connecticut was a part of the Dutch colony, New Netherland, that comprised a lot of the land between the Delaware and Connecticut rivers.
The English founded the areas very first major settlement in the 1630's. Leading a band of followers, Thomas Hooker arrived from the Massachusetts Bay Colony to found what would later become the Connecticut Colony. Other groups of settlers from Massachusetts founded the New Haven Colony and the Saybrook Colony. Both the Connecticut and New Haven Colonies established documents of Fundamental Orders, considered the first constitutions in North America. In the year 1662, the three colonies were merged under a royal charter, making the state of Connecticut a crown colony. This colony was among the Thirteen Colonies which revolted against British rule in the American Revolution.
Continuing still to this day is the states strong maritime tradition, with the Thames River, Connecticut River and the many ports along the Long Island Sound. Financial services is one of Connecticut's other main business. There are lots of insurance firms within Hartford for instance and numerous hedge funds within Fairfield County. As of the 2010 Census, the state of Connecticut features the highest per capita income, Human Development Index (0.962), and median household income within the United States. Though the state of Connecticut is a wealthy state by most measures, the gap in income between its suburban and urban regions is striking, with several of Connecticut's cities ranking among the country's poorest and most dangerous.
The total gross state product for the year 2010 was $237 billion. The per capita income for the year 2007 was $54,117, ranking first among the states. There is, nevertheless, a great disparity in incomes all around the state of Connecticut; though New Canaan has one of the highest per capita incomes in the United States, Hartford is amongst the ten cities with the lowest per capita incomes in the United States. As with New Haven Bridgeport and various cities in the state of Connecticut, Hartford City is surrounded by richer suburbs. The unemployment rate of Connecticut in August the year 2011 was 9.0%.
With a per capita income of $85,459, the town of New Canaan is the wealthiest town in Connecticut. The towns and cities of Darien, Greenwich, Wilton, Weston and Westport all have per capita incomes more than $65,000. Hartford is the poorest municipality in the state of Connecticut, with a per capita income of $13,428 in 2000. There are several lower-income and blue-collar towns, mainly parts of towns, within Connecticut's eastern regions.