British America and the British West Indies [a] | |||||||||||||||||||||
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1585–1783 | |||||||||||||||||||||
Anthem: God Save the King | |||||||||||||||||||||
Status | Colonies of England (1585–1707) Colonies of Scotland (1629–1632) Colonies of Great Britain (1707–1783) | ||||||||||||||||||||
Religion | |||||||||||||||||||||
Government | Constitutional monarchy with various colonial arrangements | ||||||||||||||||||||
Monarch | |||||||||||||||||||||
• 1607–1625 (first) | James VI and I | ||||||||||||||||||||
• 1760–1783 (last) | George III | ||||||||||||||||||||
History | |||||||||||||||||||||
1585 | |||||||||||||||||||||
1610 | |||||||||||||||||||||
• Bermuda | 1614 | ||||||||||||||||||||
1620 | |||||||||||||||||||||
1632 | |||||||||||||||||||||
1655 | |||||||||||||||||||||
1670 | |||||||||||||||||||||
1713 | |||||||||||||||||||||
1763 | |||||||||||||||||||||
1775–1783 | |||||||||||||||||||||
1783 | |||||||||||||||||||||
Currency | Pound sterling, Spanish dollar, bills of credit, commodity money, and many local currencies | ||||||||||||||||||||
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British America, known as English America before 1707, comprised the colonial territories of the Kingdom of England (and Kingdom of Scotland) of the overseas English Empire, and the successor British Empire, in the Americas from the founding of Jamestown in the new Virginia colony in 1607 to 1783. [1] These colonies were formally known as British America and the British West Indies immediately prior to thirteen of the colonies rebelling in the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783) and forming the newly-independent United States of America.
After the conclusion of the world-wide war (having grown besides the North American colonies to involve other European nations / kingdoms of France and Spain), with the signing of the Treaty of Paris of 1783, the term British North America was used to refer to the remainder of Great Britain's British Empire possessions in the Americas with what became Canada, the British West Indies in reference to its various West Indies island territories in the Caribbean Sea, also British Honduras (now Belize) in Central America, and British Guiana (now Guyana) on the northeast coast of South America.
The term British North America was used in the English language in 1783, but it was more commonly used by people and historians after the issuing of the Report on the Affairs of British North America, published in 1839 and generally known as the "Durham Report".
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 Algonquians, Hurons, Mohicans, and Susquehannocks.
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. [2]
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. [3]
In 1526, Spain founded the San Miguel de Gauldape colony in either modern Georgia or the Carolinas. It lasted for a few months. [4] In 1534, France explored the Gulf of St. Lawrence, starting fur trade with the natives, and eventually what became their colony New France. [5] 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. [4] In 1604, near the Gulf of St. Lawrence, France started a new colony later named Quebec. [5]
In 1585, the British 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. [6] In 1587, around 115 colonists led by Governor John White settled back at Roanoke. [7] [6] 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". [6] Where the colonists went to in those years is considered a mystery. However, "Croatoan" was the name of an island south of Roanoke where Native Americans lived. [7]
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. In 1607, the London Company (fully titled the Virginia Company of London, but better known as the "Virginia Company") founded the first permanent settlement on the James River at Jamestown, Virginia upstream from Chesapeake Bay. English settlement in the Somers Isles (or Islands of Bermuda), 640 miles off Cape Hatteras, began in 1609 with the wreck of the Sea Venture, leaving the Virginia Company in de facto possession of Bermuda. The company's charter was extended in 1612 to officially encompass the archipelago, and settlers were despatched to join the three men remaining there from the Sea Venture (and plans were begun for an under-company that would become the Somers Isles Company). [8]
In the Caribbean, the British West Indies and other European sugar colonies were at the center for the Atlantic slave trade. [9] [10] [11]
This was followed, in 1620, with the Pilgrims establishing the Plymouth settlement in New England. English Catholics settled the Province of Maryland in 1634, under Cecilus Calvert, second Lord Baltimore. [12] [13]
The Anglo-Powhatan Wars were fought between the British colonists at Virginia and the local Powhatan people between 1610 and 1646. [14] [15]
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. [16]
In 1664, the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam at modern New York City became under control of the British, who renamed it to New York. [17]
King Philip's War was fought from 1675 to 1676 between in New England between the local natives and English colonists with their native allies. [18] [19]
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. [20] [21] [22]
At the start of the American Revolutionary War in 1775, the British Empire included 23 colonies and territories on the North American continent. [23] [24]
The Treaty of Paris of 1783 ended the Revolutionary War, and Britain lost much of this territory to the newly formed United States. [25]
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:
Colonies and territories that became part of British North America (and from 1867 the Dominion of Canada):
Colonies that became part of British North America (but which would be left out of the 1867 Confederation of Canada):
Colonies and territories that were ceded to Spain or the United States in 1783:
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: [28]
North America
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. [29] [30] 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): [31]
North America and North Atlantic
The Colonial Office, by 1862, oversaw eight Colonies in British North America, [32] including:
North American Colonies, 1862
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. [33]
North American Department of the Colonial Office, 1867
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). [34] 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). [35] 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. [36]
Bermuda is a British Overseas Territory in the North Atlantic Ocean. The closest land outside the territory is in the American state of North Carolina, about 1,035 km (643 mi) to the west-northwest.
The Maritimes, also called the Maritime provinces, is a region of Eastern Canada consisting of three provinces: New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island. The Maritimes had a population of 1,899,324 in 2021, which makes up 5.1% of Canada's population. Together with Canada's easternmost province, Newfoundland and Labrador, the Maritime provinces make up the region of Atlantic Canada.
Responsible government is a conception of a system of government that embodies the principle of parliamentary accountability, the foundation of the Westminster system of parliamentary democracy. Governments in Westminster democracies are responsible to parliament rather than to the monarch, or, in a colonial context, to the imperial government, and in a republican context, to the president, either in full or in part. If the parliament is bicameral, then the government is usually responsible first to the parliament's lower house, which is more representative than the upper house, as it usually has more members and they are always directly elected.
The British colonization of the Americas is the history of establishment of control, settlement, and colonization of the continents of the Americas by England, Scotland, and, after 1707, Great Britain. Colonization efforts began in the late 16th century with failed attempts by England to establish permanent colonies in the North. The first of the permanent English colonies in the Americas was established in Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607. Colonies were established in North America, Central America, South America, and the Caribbean. Though most British colonies in the Americas eventually gained independence, some colonies have remained under Britain's jurisdiction as British Overseas Territories.
Canada has ten provinces and three territories that are sub-national administrative divisions under the jurisdiction of the Canadian Constitution. In the 1867 Canadian Confederation, three provinces of British North America—New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and the Province of Canada —united to form a federation, becoming a fully independent country over the next century. Over its history, Canada's international borders have changed several times as it has added territories and provinces, making it the world's second-largest country by area.
Canadian Confederation was the process by which three British North American provinces—the Province of Canada, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick—were united into one federation, called the Dominion of Canada, on July 1, 1867. This process occurred in accordance with the rising tide of Canadian nationalism that was then beginning to swell within these provinces and others. Upon Confederation, Canada consisted of four provinces: Ontario and Quebec, which had been split out from the Province of Canada, and the provinces of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. The province of Prince Edward Island, which had hosted the first meeting to consider Confederation, the Charlottetown Conference, did not join Confederation until 1873. Over the years since Confederation, Canada has seen numerous territorial changes and expansions, resulting in the current number of ten provinces and three territories.
British North America comprised the colonial territories of the British Empire in North America from 1783 onwards. English colonisation of North America began in the 16th century in Newfoundland, then further south at Roanoke and Jamestown, Virginia, and more substantially with the founding of the Thirteen Colonies along the Atlantic coast of North America.
In the British Empire, a self-governing colony was a colony with an elected government in which elected rulers were able to make most decisions without referring to the colonial power with nominal control of the colony. This was in contrast to a Crown colony, in which the British Government ruled and legislated via an appointed Governor, with or without the assistance of an appointed Council. Most self-governing colonies had responsible government.
The North America and West Indies Station was a formation or command of the United Kingdom's Royal Navy stationed in North American waters from 1745 to 1956, with main bases at the Imperial fortresses of Bermuda and Halifax, Nova Scotia. The North American Station absorbed the separate Newfoundland Station in 1825, and the Jamaica Station in 1830, to form the North America and West Indies Station. It was briefly abolished in 1907 before being restored in 1915. It was renamed the America and West Indies Station in 1926, absorbing what had been the South East Coast of America Station and the Pacific Station. It was commanded by Commanders-in-Chief whose titles changed with the changing of the formation's name, eventually by the Commander-in-Chief, America and West Indies Station.
The office of Commander-in-Chief, North America was a military position of the British Army. Established in 1755 in the early years of the Seven Years' War, holders of the post were generally responsible for land-based military personnel and activities in and around those parts of North America that Great Britain either controlled or contested. The post continued to exist until 1775, when Lieutenant-General Thomas Gage, the last holder of the post, was replaced early in the American War of Independence. The post's responsibilities were then divided: Major-General William Howe became Commander-in-Chief, America, responsible for British troops from West Florida to Newfoundland, and General Guy Carleton became Commander-in-Chief, Quebec, responsible for the defence of the Province of Quebec.
The Colony of British Columbia was a British Crown Colony that resulted from the 1866 merger of two British colonies, the Colony of Vancouver Island and the mainland Colony of British Columbia. The united colony existed until its incorporation into Canadian Confederation in 1871 as the Province of British Columbia.
Starting with the 1763 Treaty of Paris, New France, of which the colony of Canada was a part, formally became a part of the British Empire. The Royal Proclamation of 1763 enlarged the colony of Canada under the name of the Province of Quebec, which with the Constitutional Act 1791 became known as the Canadas. With the Act of Union 1840, Upper and Lower Canada were joined to become the United Province of Canada.
The Bishop of Bermuda is an episcopal title given to the ordinary of the Anglican Church of Bermuda, one of six extra-provincial Anglican churches within the Church of England overseen by the Archbishop of Canterbury. The present Bishop is Nick Dill.
A number of states and polities formerly claimed colonies and territories in Canada prior to the evolution of the current provinces and territories under the federal system. North America prior to colonization was occupied by a variety of indigenous groups consisting of band societies typical of the sparsely populated North, to loose confederacies made up of numerous hunting bands from a variety of ethnic groups, to more structured confederacies of sedentary farming villages, to stratified hereditary structures centred on a fishing economy. The colonization of Canada by Europeans began in the 10th century, when Norsemen explored and, ultimately unsuccessfully, attempted to settle areas of the northeastern fringes of North America. Early permanent European settlements in what is now Canada included the late 16th and 17th century French colonies of Acadia and Canada, the English colonies of Newfoundland (island) and Rupert's Land, the Scottish colonies of Nova Scotia and Port Royal.
Vice Admiral George Murray was a Royal Navy officer and politician. He was the third son of the Jacobite general Lord George Murray.
Newfoundland was an English and, later, British colony established in 1610 on the island of Newfoundland, now the province of Newfoundland and Labrador. That followed decades of sporadic English settlement on the island, which was at first seasonal, rather than permanent. It was made a Crown colony in 1824 and a dominion in 1907. Its economy collapsed during the Great Depression and on 16 February 1934, the Newfoundland legislature agreed to the creation of a six-member Commission of Government to govern the country. In 1949, the country voted to join Canada as the province of Newfoundland.
The English overseas possessions comprised a variety of overseas territories that were colonised, conquered, or otherwise acquired by the Kingdom of England before 1707.
Lord Salisbury described Malta, Gibraltar, Bermuda, and Halifax as Imperial fortresses at the 1887 Colonial Conference, though by that point they had been so designated for decades. Later historians have also given the title "imperial fortress" to St. Helena and Mauritius, despite their lacking naval dockyards and not serving as home bases for station naval squadrons.
The annual return has been issued by the Colonial-office, containing the list of Governors and Bishops. Our North American colonies are eight in number, - Canada, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, Newfoundland, Bermuda, Vancouver Island, and British Colombia;
CANADA: PROVINCES OF CANADA-Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Manitoba, North-west Territories, British Columbia, Prince Edward Island; NEWFOUNDLAND; BERMUDA; FALKLAND ISLANDS