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Indiana Geography and Economy

Indiana is a state of the United States of America, the capital is Indianapolis. The postal abbreviation of the state is IN. With an area almost twice as large as the German state of Lower Saxony, it is one of the medium-sized US states. Indiana means “land of the Indians”. The residents of Indiana are called Hoosier *, hence the nickname ” The Hoosier State”.

Area 94,321 km²
Residents 6,633,053
Residents per km² 70.3
Capital Indianapolis
Postal Code IN
ISO-3166-2 code US IN
FIPS code 18th

Geography

Abbreviated as IN by AbbreviationFinder, Indiana is bounded in the north by Lake Michigan and the state of Michigan, in the east by Ohio, in the south Indiana shares the Ohio River with Kentucky as a border river, in the west is Illinois.

George Rogers Clark Memorial

History

Before the first Europeans came to Indiana, the Delaware, Miami, Potawatomi, Shawnee, and Wea Indians lived there.

French explorers from the north entered the country in 1679. From 1763 the country was occupied by the British, who initially hardly used it. In 1787 Indiana became part of the Northwest Territory. 1800 the Northwest Territory was reduced to the size of the future state of Ohio, the rest (including the future state of Indiana) became a separate territory called ” Indiana Territory “. Indiana became the 19th state to join the union in 1816. Indiana stayed in the Union during the Civil War.

Economy

The real gross domestic product per capita real GDP was USD 51,546 in 2016 (national average of the 50 US states: USD 57,118; national ranking: 28). The unemployment rate was 4.9% in November 2017 (national average: 4.1%).

Indiana’s most important economic sector is agriculture. The main agricultural products of the state are corn, soybeans, wheat, tobacco, pigs, cattle, dairy products and eggs. Indiana is part of the so-called corn belt of the USA. Its industrial products include steel, electronics, logistics equipment, chemicals, refined oil, coal products, and engineering.

The north and parts of central Indiana are now part of the US Rust Belt.

Rust Belt

The Rust Belt, formerly the Manufacturing Belt, is the oldest and formerly largest industrial region in the USA. It extends in the northeast of the USA along the Great Lakes from Chicago via Detroit, Cleveland and Pittsburgh to the east coast to the foothills of the metropolitan regions of Boston, Washington, DC and New York City. It thus includes parts of the states of Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York and New Jersey.

Historical development

Industrialization began after the declaration of independence in 1776.

The first manufacture was a cotton mill founded by a resident from England in 1790. Other textile processing plants soon followed, mostly on the rivers of New England. The port cities on the east coast were gateways for European immigrants and important trading centers at the time, but these industries were not part of the Rust Belt, which was shaped more by heavy industry, iron, coal and steel than by textiles and trade.

With the development of the hard coal and ore fields in the Appalachians from 1893 and the iron ore deposits on the Ohio River from 1765, growth shifted to western Pennsylvania. The beginning of oil production in Titusville (Pennsylvania) from 1859, which formed the basis for the later Standard Oil Company, accelerated the process additionally.

The development of the Manufacturing Belt was driven by the strong expansion of the US railroad network. A composite industry developed. At the beginning of the 20th century the Manufacturing Belt had reached its full size; the major cities of Chicago and Milwaukee at the western end were the center of the food industry at this time, while the emerging automotive industry concentrated on Detroit and the steel industry on Pittsburgh. Until the early 1970s, the region was by far the largest industrial area in the United States and one of the largest in the world.

Crisis

The transition from the Manufacturing Belt to the Rust Belt ( Rust because of the old iron industry) began in 1970, and the region’s economic importance declined. The first signs of decline, or at least a structural crisis, were already there towards the end of the 19th century, when much of the iron ore production was relocated to the Upper Lake. The real decline began in the 1960s with the migration of heavy industry to the cheaper developing countries.

The Sun Belt in the south of the country has now replaced the Manufacturing Belt as the fastest growing region.

Politics

Due to the population structure, which was shaped by industrial workers, the urban centers of the Rust Belt were considered to be the stronghold of the Democratic Party and thus part of the so-called ” blue wall”. Donald Trump’s election victory in 2016 was attributed by election researchers, among other things, to the fact that he managed to break the “blue wall” through electoral successes in the states of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin.

Also known as Hoosier State, Indiana is short for IN with a population of 6,080,485. According to Countryaah, the capital city and the biggest city of Indiana is Indianapolis.

Indiana Seal