The Thirteen Colonies

5 Key excerpts on "The Thirteen Colonies"

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  The Long Process of Development

  Building Markets and States in Pre-industrial England, Spain and their Colonies

  • Jerry F. Hough, Robin Grier(Authors)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  243 7 The English Colonies It is difficult for modern Americans to develop a complex understanding of the English colonies. The first problem is generic to the history of all former colonies: historians naturally want to study the colonial antecedents of the independent country as it emerged from the empire. Yet the British did not even speak of the American colonies collectively until the 1730s, and then they had in mind all of their American colonies, not just those that became the United States. Indeed, in the 1600s the Caribbean colonies were economically and strategically far more valuable to England than the mainland colonies. Moreover, the Caribbean colonies were actually more integrated with the mainland colonies than the mainland colonies (or at least regions) were with each other. A free-market trade economy was created in New England and then in New York and Pennsylvania in order to supply food and materi- als to the slaves of Barbados and Jamaica. A second problem in understanding the colonies is that the elite of a post-independence country is naturally more interested in legitimating the new country than in exploring embarrassing aspects of the colonial past. Jamestown was the first permanent English settlement in the New World, 13 years before Plymouth, and it was vastly more important to London than Plymouth. Yet the Thanksgiving holiday focused on Plymouth because acknowledging, let alone celebrating, the real reason for colonization – the introduction of slave-produced tobacco –would have been awkward. Other distortions in colonial history were introduced for more specific political reasons. During the first half of the 20th century, the European Americans called themselves “races,” and they could feel as strongly about American policy toward their homelands as modern Cuban Americans feel about policy toward Cuba. This had a disastrous impact on American foreign policy and domestic politics in World War I, the interwar period,

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  United Kingdom-United States Relations

  • (Author)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Orange Apple

    (Publisher)

  ________________________ WORLD TECHNOLOGIES ________________________ Chapter- 3 Colonial History of the United States The colonial history of the United States covers the history from the start of European settlement and especially the history of the 13 colonies of Britain until they declared independence in 1776. In the late 16th century, England, Scotland, France, Sweden, Spain and the Netherlands began to colonize eastern North America. Many early attempts—notably the English Lost Colony of Roanoke—ended in failure, but several successful colonies were established. European settlers came from a variety of social and religious groups. No aristocrats settled permanently, but a number of adventurers, soldiers, farmers, and tradesmen arrived. The Dutch of New Netherland, the Swedes and Finns of New Sweden, the English, Irish and German Quakers of Pennsylvania, the English Puritans of New England, the English settlers of Jamestown, and the worthy poor of Georgia, among others—each group came to the new continent and built colonies with distinctive social, religious, political and economic styles. Historians typically recognize four distinct regions in the lands that later became the Eastern United States. From north to south, they are: New England, the Middle Colonies, the Chesapeake Bay Colonies (Upper South) and the Lower South. Some historians add a fifth region, the frontier, which was never separately organized. By the time European settlers arrived around 1600-1650, the majority of the Native Americans living in the eastern United States had been decimated by new diseases, introduced to them decades before by explorers and sailors. Goals of colonization Colonizers came from European kingdoms with highly developed military, naval, governmental and entrepreneurial capabilities.

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  Barack Obama

  American Historian

  • Steven Sarson(Author)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Bloomsbury Academic

    (Publisher)

  That is, that the newly self-created citizens of the United States were abandoning their long-held status as colonial subjects of Great Britain. On the eve of independence, the American colonies that would form the United States comprised thirteen among twenty-five diverse British colonies scattered from the farms and fisheries of icy Canada to the sugar plantations of the broiling Caribbean. These colonies and their peoples were connected politically to each other and to the “mother country” by common allegiance to the British crown. They were also connected together through trade networks governed by Navigation laws that confined colonial commerce within a British mercantilist trade system. British trade networks tied Britain and its American colonies closely to Africa too. Victims of the slave trade and their descendants, along with people from all over the British Isles, parts of continental Europe, and some Barack Obama 30 30 other parts of the world were all thus members of a rich if often deeply riven “British- Atlantic World.” 3 The more fortunate among the people of British America were united by a sense of inheritance of “the rights of freeborn Englishmen,” by a broadly common culture, and by ties of family and friendship. Historians of this British Atlantic World have shown how deep and extensive these common connections, inheritances, and allegiances were, despite the many differences between the colonies and despite the many divergences of religion, race, gender, class, and status within them. Even the most unfortunate people of British America, early members of the African diaspora, established new roots in this New World. They did so initially involuntarily and merely as a matter of survival, but in so surviving they founded African Caribbean and African American cultures that enrich our world immeasurably today.

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  The Handy History Answer Book

  From the Stone Age to the Digital Age

  • Stephen A. Werner(Author)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Visible Ink Press

    (Publisher)

  The British would establish colonies along the Eastern Seaboard from Georgia in the South to Massachusetts in the North, which included the land that would eventually become Maine. Since most of the immigrants from Britain were Protestants, most of the colonies were Protestant. For example, the Anglican Church was the official religion in Virginia. Maryland, an exception, was established as a Catholic colony. However, Protestants eventually took control and took away the religious freedom of Catholics. The colony of Pennsylvania was set up by a Quaker, William Penn.

  What were the original thirteen British colonies? Here are The Thirteen Colonies listed chronologically from when they were established:

  Original Thirteen Colonies
  Colony	Year Established
  Virginia	1607
  New York	1626
  Massachusetts Bay (included Maine)	1630
  Maryland	1633
  Rhode Island	1636
  Connecticut	1636
  New Hampshire	1638
  Delaware	1638
  North Carolina	1653
  South Carolina	1663
  New Jersey	1664
  Pennsylvania	1682
  Georgia	1732

  What was the French and Indian War?

  The French and Indian War (1754–1763) was the last major conflict in North America before the Revolutionary War. For decades, Britain and France had steadily expanded their territories into the Ohio River valley. Since the fur trade prospered in this region, both countries wished to control it. As the French encroached on their territory, the British governor sent an ultimatum to them, delivered by none other than George Washington (1732–1799). But the French did not intend to back down. In 1754, Washington (now a lieutenant colonel) and 150 troops established a British outpost at present-day Pittsburgh, not far from the French Fort Duquesne. That spring and summer, fighting broke out.

  Washington met the French, and though he and his troops mustered a strong resistance, there were early losses for the British. But a reinvigorated British force, under the leadership of Britain’s secretary of state, William Pitt (1759–1806), took French forts along the Allegheny River in western Pennsylvania and met French troops in battle at Quebec. In 1755, Washington was made colonel and led the Virginia troops in defending the frontier from French and Indian attacks. Though the British finally succeeded in occupying Fort Duquesne in 1758, fighting continued until 1763, when the Treaty of Paris ended the war.

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  History of American Economy

  • Gary Walton, Hugh Rockoff(Authors)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Cengage Learning EMEA

    (Publisher)

  Walton, Gary M. “Sources of Productivity Change in American Colonial Shipping.” Economic History Review 20 (April 1967): 67–78. Williamson, Jeffrey G., and Peter H. Lindert. American Inequality: A Macroeconomic History . New York, N.Y.: Academic Press, 1980. Copyright 2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. WCN 02-300 90 CHAPTER THEME At the close of the French and Indian War (also called the Seven Years’ War), when the French were eliminated as a rival power in North America, Britain’s mainland colonies were on the brink of another wave of economic growth and rising prosperity. In accordance with British practices of colonization, the colonists remained as English citizens with all rights due to the king’s subjects under the laws of England. For financial, administrative, and political reasons, the Crown and Parliament in 1763 launched a “new order.” Misguided policies, mismanagement, and ill timing from England added political will to the economic circumstances of the colonies to steer an independent course. The American Revolution was the outcome. THE OLD COLONIAL POLICY Being part of the British Empire, and in accord with English laws and institutions, colo-nial governments were patterned after England’s governmental organization. Although originally there were corporate colonies (Connecticut and Rhode Island) and proprietary colonies (Pennsylvania and Maryland), most eventually became Crown colonies, and all had similar governing organizations. For example, after 1625, Virginia was a characteristic Crown colony, and both its governor and council (the upper house) were appointed by the Crown. But only the lower house could initiate fiscal legislation, and this body was elected by the propertied adult males within the colony.

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