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- American colonies, the 13 British colonies that were established during the 17th and early 18th centuries in the area that is now a part of the eastern United States.
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The first documented settlement of Europeans in the Americas was established by Norse people around 1000 AD in what is now Newfoundland, called Vinland by the Norse. Later European exploration of North America resumed with Christopher Columbus 's 1492 expedition sponsored by Spain.
- The Exodus (1629-41) About 21,000 Puritans, migrating from East Anglia to New England. These religious fundamentalists believed in ‘ordered liberty’: everybody had the right to live by their own rules, and the duty to live according to God’s law.
- Cavaliers and their Servants (1642-75) Some 45,000 Cavaliers drawn from English nobility and their indentured servants, migrating from the South of England to Virginia and the Lowland South.
- The Friends’ Migration (1675-1725) Around 23,000 Quakers, migrating from Northern England to the Delaware Valley in Pennsylvania, and later to the Midwest.
- The Flight from Northern Britain (1717-75) Some 250,000 ‘Borderers’, migrating from the Anglo-Scottish borderlands and Ulster to the Backcountry of Appalachia.
Britain formally recognised the United States of America as an independent country in 1783. After losing the 13 colonies Britain did not want its empire to shrink again, and decided to make it...
- Overview
- Colonization and early self-government
The American colonies were the British colonies that were established during the 17th and early 18th centuries in what is now a part of the eastern United States. The colonies grew both geographically along the Atlantic coast and westward and numerically to 13 from the time of their founding to the American Revolution. Their settlements extended from what is now Maine in the north to the Altamaha River in Georgia when the Revolution began.
Who established the American colonies?
In 1606 King James I of England granted a charter to the Virginia Company of London to colonize the American coast anywhere between parallels 34° and 41° north and another charter to the Plymouth Company to settle between 38° and 45° north. In 1607 the Virginia Company crossed the ocean and established Jamestown. In 1620 the ship the Mayflower carried about 100 Pilgrim Separatists to what is now Massachusetts, where the Plymouth colony took root.
What pushed the American colonies toward independence?
After the French and Indian War the British government determined that the colonies should help pay for the cost of the war and the postwar garrisoning of troops. It also began imposing tighter control on colonial governments. Taxes, such as the Sugar Act (1764) and the Stamp Act (1765), aimed at raising revenue from the colonies outraged the colonists and catalyzed a reaction that eventually led to a revolt.
When did the American colonies declare independence?
The opening of the 17th century found three countries—France, Spain, and England—contending for dominion in North America. Of these England, the tardiest on the scene, finally took control of the beginnings of what is now the United States. The French, troubled by foreign wars and internal religious quarrels, long failed to realize the great possibilities of the new continent, and their settlements in the St. Lawrence Valley grew feebly. The Spaniards were preoccupied with South America and the lands washed by the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico. But the English, after initial failures under Sir Humphrey Gilbert and Sir Walter Raleigh, planted firm settlements all the way from Maine to Georgia, nourished them with a steady flow of people and capital, and soon absorbed the smaller colonizing venture of the Dutch in the Hudson Valley and the tiny Swedish effort on the Delaware River. Within a century and a half the British had 13 flourishing colonies on the Atlantic coast: Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania, Delaware, New Jersey, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia.
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In a short time the colonists pushed from the Tidewater strip toward the Appalachians and finally crossed the mountains by the Cumberland Gap and Ohio River. Decade by decade they became less European in habit and outlook and more American—the frontier in particular setting its stamp on them. Their freedom from most of the feudal inheritances of western Europe, and the self-reliance they necessarily acquired in subduing nature, made them highly individualistic.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
British America, known as English America before 1707, comprised the colonial territories of the English Empire, and the successor British Empire, in the Americas from 1607 to 1783. [1]
5 days ago · The first tentative steps toward the establishment of the British Empire began with overseas settlements in the 16th century. Great Britain's maritime expansion accelerated in the 17th century and resulted in the establishment of settlements in North America and the West Indies.
Jan 17, 2023 · British colonial efforts were not just relegated to what is today mainland America. In the 1570s, the Hudson's Bay Company was quick to see the potential in the lucrative fur trade and set up a series of trading posts in what is today northern Manitoba, Quebec, and Ontario.
