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"Upstate" is a common term for New York State north of the New York City metropolitan area; but many of those outside of the NYC metropolitan area find the term demeaning because it is emblematic of the cultural and demographic divide which separates the two areas, one rural and conservative, the other urban and liberal.

Approximately 15,000 years ago, when the ice sheet began retreating, the glacier left behind a terminal moraine that now forms the hills of Long Island and Staten Island. The two islands were not yet separated by the Narrows, which were formed approximately 6,000 years ago when the waters of the Upper Bay broke through in the Lower Bay.

The French consul's "fictitious capital" betokens the world of credit, on which New Yorkers' confidence has been based. The Commissioners' Plan of 1811 imposed a surveyed grid upon all of Manhattan's varied terrain, in a far-reaching though perhaps topographically insensitive vision. The Erie Canal, opened in 1825, helped the city grow further by increasing river traffic upstate and to the west, making it the Atlantic gateway to the heart of the continent.

New York County and the Borough of Manhattan are coextensive. As a part of New York City, New York County contains no other political subdivisions. It occupies the whole of Manhattan Island, surrounded by the East River, the Harlem River, and the Hudson River. It also includes some smaller islands, including Roosevelt Island (formerly Welfare Island, and even earlier Blackwell's Island), U Thant Island (officially known as Belmont Island), and a small portion of the North American mainland (Marble Hill) contiguous with The Bronx.

The Hudson is crossed at numerous points by bridges and tunnels. The width of the river in its southern half required major feats of engineering to bridge, the results today visible in the Verrazano-Narrows and George Washington Bridges, as well as the Lincoln and Holland Tunnels.

The Iroquois were thus a serious problem to the Americans fighting for independence. In July of 1778 a force of perhaps one thousand Iroquois and Tories led by the Tory Colonel John Butler and the Seneca war chief Cornplanter overwhelmed a few hundred Americans in the Wyoming Valley (along the Susquehanna River near present Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania), which came to be known as the Wyoming Valley Massacre.

The period played host to much racial tension in the city, including the highly-publicized murders of three African-Americans in "white" neighborhoods in separate incidents (Willie Turks in the Gravesend section of Brooklyn in 1982; Michael Griffith in Howard Beach, Queens in 1986; and Yusef Hawkins in Brooklyn's Bensonhurst neighborhood in 1989.

Manhattan is an island bordering the lower Hudson River. It is one of the five boroughs that comprise the City of New York. The borough is coterminous with New York County and includes the Island of Manhattan, as well as several other smaller islands and a small portion of the mainland.

Upstate New York (as well as parts of present Ontario, Quebec, Pennsylvania, and Ohio) was occupied by the Five Nations (after 1720 becoming Six Nations, when joined by Tuscarora) of the Iroquois Confederacy for at least a half millenium before the Europeans came.

Sullivan's men returned from the campaign to Pennsylvania and New England to tell of the enormous wealth of this new territory. Some carried huge ears of corn in their knapsacks as proof of the fertility of the land. Many of them returned to land grants later in western New York, given by the government in gratitude for their service in the Revolution.

Even though there are far more registered Democrats than Republicans, the island has only voted for the Democratic presidential nominee three times since 1952 — in 1964, 1996 and 2000. In 2004 George W. Bush received 57% of the island's votes to 42% for John Kerry; by contrast, Kerry outpolled Bush in the city's other four boroughs cumulatively by a margin of 77% to 22%. The congressional district which includes Staten Island has been in Republican hands since 1981 and is currently represented by Vito Fossella, elected in a 1997 special election to replace Susan Molinari.

The New York State Board of Regents, the University of the State of New York and the State Education Department control all public primary and secondary education in the state.

The Dutch origins can still be seen in many names in New York City, such as Coney Island (from "Konijnen Eiland"), Brooklyn (from Breukelen), Harlem from Haarlem (formalized in 1658 as Nieuw Haarlem), the Bronx (from Pieter Bronck), Flushing (from Vlissingen) and Staten Island (from "Staaten Eylandt").