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Published online: 26 April 2021. Summary. The economy of territory that became the United States evolved dramatically from ca. 1000 ce to 1776. Before Europeans arrived, the spread of maize agriculture shifted economic practices in Indigenous communities.
Feb 1, 2024 · Over the next century, the 13 American colonies developed distinct identities and economies, with tensions with Britain escalating, particularly after the French and Indian War (1754-1763).
- Graphic Designer
Explore important topics and moments in U.S. history through historical primary sources from the Library of Congress.
- Introduction
- Forming A Picture of North America
- Mapping Out Empire
- Worlds of Potential—Imaginary and Real
- Old Virginia Made New
- Defining New England
This collection offers related visual literacy exercises (grades 3-5), a unit plan (grades 6-12), Document-Based Questions, and C3 Framework activities (grades 9-12). Please refer to the Classroom Materials section linked above. Thousands of surviving maps allow scholars to trace how European and Indigenous understandings of North America developed...
Colonial North America encompassed more than British colonies on the East Coast. Mapping North America was a collaborative enterprise. To form a complete picture of the continent, European cartographers had to synthesize information from numerous sources. That task proved especially challenging because many cartographers worked in major European ci...
In contrast to our own more definite ideas about the structure and function of empires, the Europeans who colonized North America between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries had yet to agree on the form colonies should take or the relationship they would have with their founders’ home countries. The documents below provide insight into the diffe...
Colonial North America appears different depending on the scale at which one sees it. Even as colonists carved North America into empires, their most immediate concerns often revolved more around the local, day-to-day challenges of life on the ground—the places where visions and realities intersected. Instead of vast imperial domains, the documents...
Establishing viable colonies in North America required more than forts and colonists. European colonists had to take the Indigenous world they discovered and make it into their own. As the struggle to found the Virginia colony showed English colonists, that transformation occurred piecemeal. Particularly in a colony’s first years, the boundaries be...
After his time in Virginia, Captain John Smith shifted his attention to the American northeast—a region he named “New England” in 1614. Smith never identified New England’s precise limits. Instead, rival English, Dutch, French, and Indigenous claimants formed the region in a series of conflicts that lasted well into the eighteenth century. The foll...
The colonial history of the United States covers the history of European colonization of North America from the early 17th century until the incorporation of the Thirteen Colonies into the United States after the American Revolutionary War.
Jun 1, 2018 · NYPL’s pre-1900 U.S. map collection tells the story of America: From its beginnings in the 17th century along the Atlantic coastline, to the consolidation of 13 British colonies in the late 18th century, and concluding with its absorption of French, Spanish, and Mexican territories expanding westward from the Mississippi River, to the Pacific ...
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Overview. Europeans colonize North America in the early seventeenth century, motivated by religious and economic goals. Spain and France, the two Catholic powers in Europe, lead the way, establishing Santa Fe and Québec as their colonial capitals in North America, but Protestant England soon follows along with other European nations such as ...
