United States of America

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The New England Colonies

English colonizing activity resumed in 1620 when a party of English Separatists, a dissident sect that had previously withdrawn from the Church of England, acquired the right to settle in Virginia. Whether by accident or design, their ship, the Mayflower, entered Massachusetts Bay and dropped anchor in what is now the harbour of Provincetown, Massachusetts. Recognizing that they were outside the bounds of any organized government, 41 of the men in the group, better known as the Pilgrims, gathered aboard ship on November 21, 1620, and signed an agreement called the Mayflower Compact, the first written American constitution. Later they founded Plymouth Colony, on a site near the head of Cape Cod.

The organization of Plymouth Colony inaugurated the colonization of New England, a region peopled mainly by religious dissenters. In this phase, the most significant development was the founding in 1629 to 1630 of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, just north of Plymouth, by a joint-stock company that used its corporate charter to develop a complete system of self-government. The Massachusetts Bay colonists were followers of Puritanism. Soon after the establishment of Massachusetts, dissidents expelled from the colony formed the nucleus of a settlement from which Rhode Island grew; in 1636 settlers from the Bay Colony looking for better land on which to raise cattle migrated westward to found Connecticut. Both of these colonies created governments modelled on that of Massachusetts, with an elected legislative body, or general court, and an elected governor. Growing political turmoil in England prevented the king from reining in these nearly independent colonies; not until 1676 would the English government attempt to establish control over Massachusetts and its neighbours. Meanwhile they grew, prospered, and developed their own distinctive traditions of government.

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Proprietary Colonies

After the founding of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, the English Crown issued no more corporate charters for colonization projects in America. Beginning with Maryland, which was chartered in 1632 as a refuge for Roman Catholics and others, all the new colonies were organized according to the provisions of proprietary charters. In general the people of the proprietary provinces received qualified legislative privileges, but administrative authority was vested in the charter grantees, who received from the king virtually complete freedom to establish any form of government, as well as the right to dispose of all lands within the boundaries of their colonies.

With the exception of Georgia, which was chartered in 1732, all these English proprietary colonies in North America were organized before the end of the 17th century. In 1663 a company of eight English nobles was granted what are now the states of North Carolina and South Carolina. New Netherland, lying across the lines of communication between the northern and southern possessions of England, was forcibly annexed in 1664 and renamed New York. New Jersey, mainly comprising territory that the Dutch had previously seized from Sweden, was formed in the same year. New Hampshire, consisting of settlements formerly under the jurisdiction of Massachusetts, was organized 15 years later. In 1681 William Penn received a charter for the region that he named Pennsylvania.

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Political Developments

The first manifestation of parliamentary authority over the colonies was the Navigation Act of 1651, which required that colonial imports and exports be shipped in English-flag vessels. Further Navigation Acts prohibited commercial relations between the colonies and non-English nations. Although colonial merchants freely ignored the provisions when it suited their purposes, the laws created a trading environment that generally benefited colonies and mother country alike. Because of lax enforcement, smuggling and illicit trade were common and, over the next century, became an accepted part of American colonial mores.

King Charles II, who was restored to the English throne in 1660, took little active interest in the colonies, but his brother (and later his successor as James II) was determined to impose stricter control over England’s American possessions. The navigation laws were broadened and New Hampshire and Massachusetts were transformed into royal provinces. The revocation of the Massachusetts charter in 1684 reflected royal hostility to the trade violations, autonomous status, and generally independent attitude of the colony. In 1686 James II decreed the unification of New York, New Jersey, and the New England colonies into a single royal province, the Dominion of New England. Colonial resistance to the change assumed various forms. Connecticut and Rhode Island refused to yield their charters; in Massachusetts armed rebellion broke out in 1689; and the Boston populace seized control of the colonial government. New York also became the scene of rebellion.

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The British-French Wars

The accession of William and Mary in 1689 occasioned a complete reversal of English diplomatic policy, which under Charles II and James II had been pro-French, and the English government now challenged the military power of France, its chief rival for colonial empire. The ensuing struggle, extending in successive phases for nearly a century, was fought in many parts of the world. In North America the successive phases of the conflict were known collectively as the French and Indian wars and included King William’s War (1689-1697), Queen Anne’s War (1702-1713), King George’s War (1744-1748), and the French and Indian War (1754-1763). The French regime in North America possessed various advantages in these wars. It was highly centralized, had a well-disciplined military, and numbered most eastern Native Americans among its allies. The British colonies by contrast rarely cooperated with one another (see Albany Congress), enjoyed few reliable alliances with the Native Americans, and demonstrated little military prowess. On the other hand, the British had vast numerical superiority from the outset; by the 1750s they had a population advantage of nearly 30 to 1 over the French.

The first three of the wars were indecisive, largely because of the diplomacy of the Iroquois, a confederation of five (later six) Native American nations located in New York, which occupied the critical middle ground between New France and the northern British colonies. Only the Peace of Utrecht, which ended the War of the Spanish Succession (known as Queen Anne’s War in the colonies) in 1713, obliged the French to relinquish considerable territory, including Acadia, Newfoundland, and the region surrounding Hudson Bay.

A lapse in the Iroquois policy of neutrality brought on the last and most decisive colonial war. The Iroquois had claimed sovereignty over the Ohio river valley and had long succeeded in keeping both the French and English from establishing a permanent presence there. After 1748, however, Pennsylvania traders and Virginia land speculators gained footholds in the valley; this caused the French to build forts there to protect their access, via the river, to French settlements in the Mississippi Valley. The confrontation between England and France over control of the Ohio basin led to the final phase of the struggle, the French and Indian War.

From its modest beginnings in 1754, this war quickly escalated into a contest for domination of the continent. Although the first half of the war brought a series of disasters for the British and their colonies, after 1757 Great Britain and its allies in the European theatre of the conflict dealt stunning blows to France (see Seven Years’ War). In North America, the fighting in this second phase of the war was carried on mainly by the British army, aided by colonial auxiliaries. In 1759 British and colonial forces seized Quebec; the following year they conquered Montreal, destroying French power in America. The remainder of the war, fought in Europe, the West Indies, India, Africa, and elsewhere, brought an almost unbroken sequence of British colonial victories that led to France’s capitulation in 1763. Under the terms of the Treaty of Paris, France lost all its possessions on the North American mainland. The entire region east of the Mississippi and all the French holdings in what is now Canada were ceded to Great Britain. Spain, an ally of France during the war, surrendered Florida but was granted control of French territories west of the Mississippi.

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The Rise of Colonial Resistance

The victory over France created enormous problems for the British government. The war had virtually doubled the national public debt, and the accession of half the territory in North America had vastly compounded the problems of controlling the empire. These circumstances required new revenues. Accordingly, measures to secure enforcement of the Navigation Acts were adopted by the British parliament in 1764. In order to obtain additional revenue, Parliament also adopted, in 1765, a Stamp Act, requiring Americans to validate various documents, transactions, and purchases by buying and applying stamps issued by the royal government.

Passage of the Stamp Act aroused widespread indignation and opposition among the American colonists, especially in Virginia, New York, and Massachusetts. Nearly all officials responsible for execution of the Stamp Act were forced to resign, and many of the stamps were seized and destroyed. The intercolonial hostility towards taxation without representation culminated in October 1765 in the Stamp Act Congress, the first important demonstration of American political unity. Although Parliament refused to recognize the adoption by the congress of a petition of rights, privileges, and grievances, the Stamp Act was repealed in 1766.

After a change in leadership in the British government, the policy of imposing direct taxes on the American colonies was revived in 1767. Parliament approved a series of measures, known as the Townshend Acts, that among other things levied modest customs duties on tea, paper, lead, paint, and glass. Colonial resistance to the Townshend Acts included boycotts of British goods, intercolonial expressions of condemnation, and, in Massachusetts, open defiance of the British government by the town of Boston and the General Court. In 1768 Great Britain transferred two regiments of troops to Boston, but this action merely served to intensify anti-British feelings there. Finally, on March 5, 1770, a contingent of British soldiers fired into a hostile crowd, producing the first bloodshed of the struggle. See Boston Massacre.

In 1770 Parliament repealed all the Townshend duties except the tax on tea, which was retained to uphold Britain’s right to levy taxes on its subjects. The Americans then dropped all non-importation measures except for a tea boycott, kept up to maintain their objections to taxation without representation. Relations returned to normal until 1773, when Parliament tried to save the English East India Company from bankruptcy by granting it a monopoly on tea sold to America. Known as the Tea Act, this measure precipitated a new crisis. The colonists, regarding the Tea Act as a measure to induce them to submit to parliamentary taxation, not only intensified the boycott but, in Boston, destroyed cargoes of tea. See Boston Tea Party.