Backgrounders Connecting Headlines with History


Featured Topic

Pacific World (Connections and Impact)
Historians have often situated Philadelphia in three geographic contexts: on the western edge of the “Atlantic World” during the colonial era, as an eastern metropole for hinterlands and the receding frontier to the west, and in the mid-Atlantic region between the North and South of the United States. These geographic frames all make sense, given Philadelphia’s location and history. But they do not tell the story of the more distant, but no less significant, connections between Philadelphia and the Pacific World.
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The Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia is a civic project to increase understanding of one of America’s greatest cities.
Produced by the Mid-Atlantic Regional Center for the Humanities (MARCH) at Rutgers-Camden, the Encyclopedia as a digital resource and in print volumes will offer the most comprehensive, authoritative reference source ever created for the Philadelphia region.
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The Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia is produced by the Mid-Atlantic Regional Center for the Humanities (MARCH) at Rutgers-Camden. Gifts to this project are made through the Rutgers University Foundation.
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