British America

British America and the British West Indies[a]
1585–1783
Top: Flag of Great Britain Bottom: Colonial Red Ensign Royal coat of arms
Anthem: God Save the King
British colonies in continental North America (red) and the island colonies of the British West Indies of the Caribbean Sea (pink), after the French and Indian War (1754–1763) and before the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783)
Status	Colonies of England (1585–1707) Colonies of Scotland (1629–1632) Colonies of Great Britain (1707–1783)
Religion	Anglicanism Protestantism
Government	Constitutional monarchy with various colonial arrangements
Monarch
• 1607–1625 (first)	James VI and I
• 1760–1783 (last)	George III
History
• Colony of Virginia	1585
• Newfoundland Colony and Province of Avalon	1610
• Bermuda	1614
• Plymouth Council for New England (Massachusetts Bay Colony)	1620
• Province of Maryland	1632
• Colony of Jamaica	1655
• Rupert's Land	1670
• Treaty of Utrecht	1713
• Treaty of Paris (French and Indian War)	1763
• American Revolutionary War	1775–1783
• Treaty of Paris	1783
Currency	Pound sterling, Spanish dollar, bills of credit, commodity money, and many local currencies
Preceded by Succeeded by New France New Netherland New Sweden Spanish Florida British North America Confederation period Spanish Florida British West Indies

British America, originally known as English America, refers to the British people's overseas territories in the Americas from 1585 to 1783. The Kingdom of England and Kingdom of Scotland governed colonies in "English America" from 1585 until 1707, when the two merged into the Kingdom of Great Britain and the territories were renamed "British America".

Much of the territories was occupied by indigenous peoples prior to England's unsuccessful Roanoke Colony, founded in North America in 1585. In the American Revolutionary War (1775—1783), thirteen British colonies in North America rebelled against the monarchy, forming the independent United States of America. The Kingdom of Great Britain ceded the thirteen colonies in the 1783 Treaty of Paris.

The territories were formally named British America and the British West Indies briefly prior to 1783. "British North America" refers to British possessions in the Americas that remained afterwards, including Canada in North America, the British West Indies territories in the Caribbean Sea, British Honduras (now Belize) in Central America, and British Guiana (now Guyana) in South America. However, "British North America" was only used after the 1839 Durham Report was published.

Native Americans potentially have evidence of settlement in modern Illinois in as early as 5000 BCE, and in the Ohio River Valley in as early as 350 BCE. In the Hopewellian period from 200 BCE to 500 CE, numerous Native American tribes formed around what would later be New England due to ideal agricultural conditions. Major groups of this area include the Algonquian, Mohicans, Susquehannock, and Wyandot.

Around 1570 CE, in modern New York state, five native tribes—the Cayuga, Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, and Seneca peoples—formed a confederation ruled through participatory democracy, known as the Iroquois Confederacy. It was highly efficient at governing the region, and played an important part in the politics of later British and French colonies.^[1]

Around the start of the second millennium CE, two settlements on the modern Canadian island of Newfoundland were established by Norse viking explorers, which were soon abandoned and the next known European settlement in North America occurred some 500 years later.^[2]

In 1526, Spain founded the San Miguel de Gauldape colony in either modern Georgia or the Carolinas. It lasted for a few months.^[3] In 1534, France explored the Gulf of St. Lawrence, starting fur trade with the natives, and eventually what became their colony New France.^[4] In 1559, Spain founded a settlement at modern Pensacola, Florida, which was abandoned by 1561. In 1570, Spanish Jesuits founded the Ajacán Mission at Chesapeake Bay in modern Virginia, but they were killed by the local Powhatan people. In 1589 or 1599, a French colony was founded at Sable Island in Nova Scotia, but the colony had failed by 1603; another French colony at Saint Croix Island in modern Maine also existed from 1604 to 1607.^[3] In 1604, near the Gulf of St. Lawrence, France started a new colony, later named Quebec.^[4]

In 1585, the English began their first settlement in North America, the Roanoke Colony. Its initial form only lasted until 1586 due to conflict with the local Native Americans.^[5] In 1587, around 115 colonists led by Governor John White settled back at Roanoke.^[6][5] White went back on a ship to England to get supplies for the colony, but his return was delayed by English's conflict with the Spanish Armada. In August 1590, White returned back to the colony, which had been abandoned. Left behind was an inscription on a post that said "CROATOAN" and a carving into a tree that said "CRO".^[5] Where the colonists went to in those years is considered a mystery by some. However, "Croatoan" was the name of an island south of Roanoke where Native Americans lived.^[6]

A number of English colonies were established in America between 1607 and 1670 by individuals and companies whose investors expected to reap rewards from their speculation. They were granted commercial charters by Kings James I, Charles I, and Charles II, and by the British Parliament. Later, most colonies were founded, or converted to, royal colonies.

On 6 December 1606, three ships—the Discovery, Godspeed, and Susan Constant—left England to start a colony on the James River upstream from Chesapeake Bay. The settlement, known as the Jamestown Colony, was the first permanent English settlement in North America. It invested into by the Virginia Company English trading company. The site fit criteria given by the Virginia Company: it was inland and surrounded by water on three sides, which made it defensible against a potential Spanish naval attack; it was not inhabited by local Native Americans; and the water around the shore was deep enough so the English ships could be tied at the shoreline.^[7][8][9]

Jamestown was the start of the Virginia Colony, and was the colony's capital until 1699. Edward Maria Wingfield was made the colony's first president, and governed with six council members. The colonists suffered from diseases, famines, and wars with the Powhatan. Some Powhatan helped the colonists, and without them, the colony likely would have failed. In 1612, Englishman John Rolfe arrived in Jamestown, and introduced tobacco farming there. Tobacco made the colony profitable for the Virginia Company. In 1619, Virginia governor George Yeardley introduced a representative legislative assembly to the government. The town expanded in the 1620s.^[7][8][9]

Thirty Powhatan tribes were organized under the Powhatan Confederacy, led by chief Powhatan. Chief Powhatan initially thought the English could be good allies and help defend them from other native tribes and the Spanish. Relations worsened when the English demanded the Powhatan give them more land to grow tobacco. In three wars, the Powhatan lost more land: the first from 1610 to 1614, the second from 1622 to 1626, and the third from 1644 to 1646. The Powhatan were subject to more lifestyle restrictions placed upon them by the English. The third war ended when chief Powhatan's successor, Opechanacanough, was captured and killed by Necotowance—who became the new successor. However, Necotowance signed a peace treaty with the British which effectively ended the confederacy. The Powhatan lost more land to the English over the next decades.^[10][11]

In 1511, the island of "Bermudas", later named Bermuda, was present on a Spanish map, possibly having been spotted as early as 1503. In 1609, 150 English people traveling on the Sea Venture, a Virginia Company ship on course to Jamestown, were shipwrecked on Bermuda by a hurricane. At the time, the English named it the "Somers Isles" after the travelers' leader, George Somers. This started a permanent English settlement in Bermuda. Most of them continued onto Jamestown, leaving three people behind on Bermuda until a Virginia Company charter in 1612 brought 60 more people to the island. The Virginia Company governed Bermuda until 1684.^[12]

In 1620, a hundred European Pilgrims, men and women, sailed to New England, establishing the permanent Plymouth settlement in modern Massachusetts. Forty of them were a part of the English Separatist Church, a radical faction of Puritan Protestants; they had moved from England to the Dutch Republic more than a decade prior, and then went to America seeking religious freedom. The first Pilgrim ship, the Mayflower, landed at Plymouth Rock in December. More than half of the colonists died in the first winter, but ultimately made a thriving, mostly self-sufficient colony. They also made peace treaties with the local Native American tribes, and in autumn 1621, the Pilgrims and Wampanoag shared a harvest feast which was the origin of the annual American holiday, Thanksgiving. Three other European ships traveled to Plymouth soon after, the Fortune in 1621, and the Anne and the Little James in 1622. All adult males on the Mayflower signed the Mayflower Compact, which wrote the first set of laws for the colony.^[13][14]

From the 16th to 19th centuries, in the Atlantic slave trade, European powers—the Dutch Republic, England, France, Portugal, and Spain—transported 10 to 12 million Africans across the Atlantic Ocean to work as slaves in the Americas.^[15] In 1619, a group of twenty Africans were landed in Virginia, the first African-Americans. They were either slaves, those forced to work against their will and without pay; or indentured servants, those indebted to an employer for a limited time—the latter includes those who consented to the work or not. Both were true in this instance, as the group was forced to work and without pay and later freed.^[16][17] Some European Americans were also indentured servants in English America.^[16]

In 1641, Massachusetts became the first English colony in North America legalize slavery. Virginia legalized it in 1661. More restrictive slave laws in the colonies were codified, and the amount of African slaves increased, especially in the 1660s.^[16][17] Britannica writes: "the development of the belief that [Africans] were an “inferior” race with a “heathen” culture made it easier for whites to rationalize the enslavement of Black people. Enslaved Africans were put to work clearing and cultivating the farmlands of the New World." In total, 430,000 Africans were brought to the future territories of the United States.^[16]

In 1632, Englishman George Calvert, 1st Baron Baltimore was granted a charter by English king Charles I to proprietary rights to an area east of the Potomac River—to be a home for Roman Catholics facing repression in England—in exchange for a share of the income made from the land. Before George Calvert could develop the land, he died, and his son Cecilius Calvert, 2nd Baron Baltimore was given the charter. Cecilius officially established the Province of Maryland, named after Charles I's queen consort Henrietta Maria. In March 1634, Cecilius' younger brother Leonard Calvert landed the founding expedition of Maryland, a permanent settlement, at St. Clement's Island on the Potomac. This carefully chosen expedition of English Protestants and Catholics arrived at the island on the ships The Ark and the Dove. The Marylanders learned from the mistakes of the Virginians by establishing trading posts and farms and making peace with the local Native Americans. In 1639, Maryland received African slaves.^[18][19]

A state department in London known as the Southern Department governed all the colonies beginning in 1660 along with a committee of the Privy Council, called the Board of Trade and Plantations. In 1768, Parliament created a specific state department for America, but it was disbanded in 1782 when the Home Office took responsibility for the remaining possessions of British North America in Eastern Canada, the Floridas, and the West Indies.^[20]

In 1624, the Dutch West India Company, a chartered company of the Dutch Republic,^[22] founded the colony of New Netherland, which included the territory of modern New York City, as well as parts of New Jersey, Long Island, and Connecticut. The capital of New Netherland was New Amsterdam, which became New York City. In 1664, an English naval squadron under Colonel Richard Nicolls threatened the Dutch to give up New Amsterdam. The Dutch governor Peter Stuyvesant wanted to resist the English, but he was not popular enough to be supported in that. He surrendered the city on February 9, 1664, and the English renamed it "New York" soon after. The English and Dutch lived peacefully there. The city was returned to the Dutch in 1673, before going back to the English in 1674.^[23]

King Philip's War, in New England from 1675 to 1676, was between some tribes of local natives (the Narragansett, Nashaway, Nipmuc, Podunk, and Wampanoag peoples, as well as the Wabanaki Confederacy) and English colonists with their native allies (the Mohawk, Mohegan, and Pequot). Opposition to the English was led by Wampanoag chief Metacom. The war started with the murder of John Sassamon, a native who was Metacom's advisor and English language interpreter, later accused by Metacom of spying for the English. The murder escalated tensions between the natives and English over land disputes. In June 1675, the Plymouth Colony executed three Wampanoag who were found guilty of murdering Sassamon. King Philip's War took place in modern Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island. The English and their allies won, and most of their opposition was killed in the war or sold into slavery or indentured servitude.^[24][25][26]

British America gained large amounts of territory with the Treaty of Paris of 1763, which ended the French and Indian War in America and the Seven Years' War in Europe.^[27][28][29]

At the start of the American Revolutionary War in 1775, the British Empire included 23 colonies and territories on the North American continent.^[30][31]

The Treaty of Paris of 1783 ended the Revolutionary War, and Britain lost much of this territory to the newly formed United States.^[32]

Following the 1783 recognition of the independence of the colonies that would form the United States of America, Britain ceded East and West Florida to the Kingdom of Spain, which in turn ceded them to the United States in 1821. The Atlantic archipelago of the Bahamas had been administratively grouped with the North American continent, but with the loss of the Floridas was grouped with the British colonies of the Caribbean as the British West Indies.

Most of the remaining colonies to the north (including the continental colonies and the archipelago of Bermuda, the nearest landfall from which was North Carolina, but the nearest other British territory from which became Nova Scotia) formed the Dominion of Canada in 1867, with the colony of Newfoundland (which had become the Dominion of Newfoundland in 1907, leaving Bermuda as the only remaining British colony in British North America, before reverting to a colony in 1934) joining the independent Commonwealth realm of Canada in 1949, and Bermuda, elevated (by the independence of the thirteen colonies that became the United States) to the role of an Imperial fortress and the most important British naval and military base in the Western Hemisphere (due to its location, 1,236 km (768 mi) south of Nova Scotia, and 1,538 km (956 mi) north of the British Virgin Islands, and handily placed for naval and amphibious operations against its nearest neighbour, the nascent United States, during the 19th century), remains as a British Overseas Territory today.

The Thirteen Colonies that became the original states of the United States were:

New England Colonies

• Province of Massachusetts Bay
• Province of New Hampshire
• Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations^[33][34]
• Connecticut Colony

Middle Colonies

• Province of New York
• Province of New Jersey
• Province of Pennsylvania
• Delaware Colony

Southern Colonies

• Province of Maryland
• Colony of Virginia
• Province of North Carolina
• Province of South Carolina
• Province of Georgia

Colonies and territories that became part of British North America (and from 1867 the Dominion of Canada):

• Province of Quebec northeast of the Great Lakes (including Labrador until 1791)
• Nova Scotia (including New Brunswick until 1784)
• Island of St. John
• Rupert's Land
• North-Western Territory
• British Arctic Territories

Colonies that became part of British North America (but which would be left out of the 1867 Confederation of Canada):

• Bermuda
• Newfoundland Colony

Colonies and territories that were ceded to Spain or the United States in 1783:

• Province of East Florida (Spanish 1783–1823, U.S. after 1823)
• Province of West Florida (Spanish 1783–1823, U.S. after 1823)
• Indian Reserve (U.S. after 1783)
• Province of Quebec southwest of the Great Lakes (U.S. after 1783)

Divisions of the British Leeward Islands

• Saint Christopher (de facto capital)
• Antigua
• Barbuda
• British Virgin Islands
• Montserrat
• Nevis
• Anguilla

Island of Jamaica and its dependencies

• Island of Jamaica
• Settlement of Belize in British Honduras
• Mosquito Coast
• Bay Islands
• Cayman Islands
• Old Providence Island Colony

Other possessions in the British Windward Islands

• Island of Barbados
• Island of Grenada
• Island of St. Vincent
• Island of Tobago (detached from Grenada in 1768)
• Island of Dominica (detached from Grenada in 1770)

The Home Office was formed on 27 March 1782, responsible for the administration of all British territory, within and without the British Isles, taking over the administration of the British colonies, including those of British North America, from the Board of Trade. Dissatisfaction with the then Home Secretary (who oversaw the Home Office), William Cavendish-Bentinck, 3rd Duke of Portland, during two decades of war with the French Republic led to colonial business being transferred to the War Office in 1801, which became the War and Colonial Office, with the Secretary of State for War was renamed the Secretary of State for War and Colonies. From 1824, the British Empire was divided by the War and Colonial Office into four administrative departments, including NORTH AMERICA, the WEST INDIES, MEDITERRANEAN AND AFRICA, and EASTERN COLONIES, of which North America included:^[35]

North America

• Upper Canada, Lower Canada
• New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island
• Bermuda, Newfoundland

The Colonial Office and War Office, and the Secretary of State for the Colonies and the Secretary of State for War, were separated in 1854.^[36][37] The War Office, from then until the 1867 confederation of the Dominion of Canada, split the military administration of the British colonial and foreign stations into nine districts: North America And North Atlantic; West Indies; Mediterranean; West Coast Of Africa And South Atlantic; South Africa; Egypt And The Sudan; INDIAN OCEAN; Australia; and China. North America And North Atlantic included the following stations (or garrisons):^[38]

North America and North Atlantic

• New Westminster (British Columbia)
• Newfoundland
• Quebec
• Halifax
• Kingston, Canada West
• Bermuda

The Colonial Office, by 1862, oversaw eight Colonies in British North America,^[39] including:

North American Colonies, 1862

• Canada
• Nova Scotia
• New Brunswick
• Prince Edward Island
• Newfoundland
• Bermuda
• Vancouver Island
• British Colombia

By 1867, administration of the South Atlantic Ocean archipelago of the Falkland Islands, which had been colonised in 1833, had been added to the remit of the North American Department of the Colonial Office.^[40]

North American Department of the Colonial Office, 1867

• Canada
• Nova Scotia
• New Brunswick
• Prince Edward Island
• Newfoundland
• Bermuda
• Vancouver Island
• British Colombia
• Falkland Islands

Following the 1867 confederation, Bermuda and Newfoundland remained as the only British colonies in North America (although the Falkland Islands also continued to be administered by the North American Department of the Colonial Office).^[41] The reduction of the territory administered by the British Government would result in re-organisation of the Colonial Office. In 1901, the departments of the Colonial Office included: North American and Australasian; West Indian; Eastern; South African; and West African (two departments).^[42] In 1907, the Colony of Newfoundland became the Dominion of Newfoundland, leaving the Imperial fortress of Bermuda as the sole remaining British North American colony. By 1908, the Colonial Office included only two departments (one overseeing dominion and protectorate business, the other colonial): Dominions Department (Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Cape of Good Hope, Natal, Newfoundland, Transvaal, Orange River Colony, Australian States, Fiji, Western Pacific, Basutoland, Bechuanaland Protectorate, Swaziland, Rhodesia); Crown Colonies Department. The Crown Colonies Department was made up of four territorial divisions: Eastern Division; West Indian Division; East African and Mediterranean Division; and the West African Division. Of these, the West Indian Division now included all of the remaining British colonies in the Western Hemisphere, from Bermuda to the Falkland Islands.^[43]

• Evolution of the British Empire
• British colonization of the Americas
• Colonial history of the United States
• Former colonies and territories in Canada
• British colonization of Australia
• British colonization of New Zealand
• British North America Acts
• British overseas territories