The recent history of western Massachusetts was shaped by a set of processes familiar in post-Columbian North America, including colonization, revolutionary repositioning in the Atlantic and world system, industrialization and deindustrialization, struggles for racial emancipation and gender and sexual equality, and the emergence of cultural reproduction to supplement, and increasingly to replace, the loss of industrial work. The particular political, economic, social, ideological, and ecological contexts of western Massachusetts are presented to provide background for the finer-grained studies in the articles that follow.

中文翻译：

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挖掘“北方花园”：马萨诸塞州西部五个世纪的物质和社会变迁：导论

马萨诸塞州西部最近的历史是由一系列在后哥伦布时期的北美所熟悉的过程塑造的，包括殖民化、大西洋和世界体系中的革命性重新定位、工业化和去工业化、争取种族解放和性别平等的斗争，以及出现文化再生产来补充并越来越多地取代工业工作的损失。马萨诸塞州西部特定的政治、经济、社会、意识形态和生态背景被呈现出来，为后续文章中的细粒度研究提供背景。