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The colonial history of the United States covers the period of European colonization of North America from the early 16th century until the incorporation of the Thirteen Colonies into the United States after the Revolutionary War. In the late 16th century, England, France, Spain, and the Dutch Republic launched major colonization expeditions in ...
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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
- English Colonial Expansion. Sixteenth-century England was a tumultuous place. Because they could make more money from selling wool than from selling food, many of the nation’s landowners were converting farmers’ fields into pastures for sheep.
- The Tobacco Colonies. In 1606, King James I divided the Atlantic seaboard in two, giving the southern half to the London Company (later the Virginia Company) and the northern half to the Plymouth Company.
- The New England Colonies. The first English emigrants to what would become the New England colonies were a small group of Puritan separatists, later called the Pilgrims, who arrived in Plymouth in 1620 to found Plymouth Colony.
- The Middle Colonies. In 1664, King Charles II gave the territory between New England and Virginia, much of which was already occupied by Dutch traders and landowners called patroons, to his brother James, the Duke of York.
Learn about the early English colonies in North America from primary sources and historical documents. Explore the founding of Jamestown, Virginia, the evolution of the Virginia colony, its relations with Native Americans, and the establishment of Georgia.
Learn about the history of colonial America, from the 13 colonies to the Pilgrims, Salem witch trials and the Roanoke mystery. Explore topics, stories and videos on the origins, culture and challenges of the New World settlers.
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Learn about the history of colonial America from Jamestown to the American Revolution in this online course. Test your knowledge with quizzes and mastery points.
In 1715, after the Calvert family had renounced Catholicism and embraced Anglicanism, the colony reverted back to a proprietary form of government. United States - Colonization, Revolution, Constitution: When Columbus arrived, he found the New World inhabited by peoples who in all likelihood had originally come from the continent of Asia.
