Colonial History of the United States

Discussion & Analysis

The emancipation of the thirteen British colonies in North America, is considered the first revolution of the modern age. It was a complex process in which first manifests itself, effectively, the people's right to reject the legitimate authority, as not meeting its own goals. The economic, social and political mainstream of Europe, of which the British colonies are considered a fragment, particularly in Britain during the eighteenth century, allowed a major social and economic development and growing prosperity. The resulting maturity as a social body, the British colonists aroused the desire for emancipation. It was the last desperate act of resistance settlers exploited, but the first act of defense of the possibilities of developing a new autonomous national economy (Brinkley, pp.38).

For 1733, the British had occupied 13 colonies along the Atlantic coast, from New Hampshire in the north to Georgia in the south. The French controlled Canada and Louisiana, which included the entire watershed of the Mississippi, a vast empire with few inhabitants. Between

1689 and 1815, France and Great Britain held several wars, and North America was involved in each. In 1756 France and England were engaged in the Seven Years War, known in America as the French and Indian War (Cobbs-Hoffman, Gjerde & Blum, pp.58). The British Prime Minister William Pitt, soldiers and money invested in North America and won an empire. British forces took the Canadian strongholds of Louisbourg (1758), Quebec (1759) and Montreal (1760). The Peace of Paris, signed in 1763, Britain gave the rights to Canada and throughout North America east of the Mississippi River.

England's victory led directly to a dispute with its American colonies. To avoid that fight with the natives of the region, called Indians by the Europeans, a royal proclamation to the settlers denied the right to settle west of the Appalachian Mountains. The British government started to punish smugglers and imposed new taxes on sugar, coffee, textiles and other imported goods. The Quartering Act forced the colonies to house and feed British soldiers, and with the approval of the Stamp Act, special tax stamps must adhere to all newspapers, pamphlets, legal documents and licenses.

The independence and the birth of the United States will be the consequence of the struggle of Europeans, mostly British, Anglo-Saxon cast in the crucible, for self-determination. We are in the history of a people who created and developed entirely in the Contemporary Age (Beth Norton, pp.38). The development of colonial territories in North America respond to different approaches. However, one of the traits that define it, and simultaneously differentiate it from other colonial enterprise, the Ibero-American, is that in any case involves processes of assimilation of the indigenous population. The Anglo-Saxon colonization of North America is consistently against the Indians, making their virtual disappearance by the processes of conquest and colonizing advance.

From a legal standpoint, the British North American colonies were of three types. The owner, who relied on a British subject under the grant of a certificate of ...