Population and settled area.—By 1760 the population of the English continental colonies was probably 1,650,000; of these the New England colonies contained about a half-million, th...
A new attempt in the East.—At the same time that Menéndez was establishing the province of Florida, the right wing of the Indies, Legazpi was conquering the Philippines, the left w...
Population and industries.—The heroic age of Spanish colonization had now passed. The surprising results achieved in the New World during the first eighty years, not counting the w...
The colonization of North America by the English was not complete with the founding of the seaboard settlements, but continued in a series of steps westward. At each step American...
Early experiments.—During the reigns of the first two Stuarts a colonial administrative policy was developed. With James I permanent settlements began. They were regarded as depend...
Classical ideas of the world.—The discoveries of the century completely transformed the conceptions of geography. Greek and Roman scholars had agreed that there were three continen...
Cabinet development.—During the reign of Anne the cabinet system was gradually evolving. The privy council continued as the legal advisory body of the crown, but a small group of m...
First French voyages.—The first Frenchmen who visited America appear to have been Norman and Breton fishermen, who engaged in fishing off the Newfoundland coast perhaps as early as...
Population.—Economically and socially New York and East New Jersey were closely related. At the end of the Andros régime the population of New York was probably 18,000, and that of...
French expansion.—The peace of Ryswick was only a truce. France took advantage of the peace to begin to establish her power in the Mississippi Valley and to strengthen her hold upo...
The governors.—The old days of the adelantados, with unlimited powers, had passed, and the royal arm now reached the farthest outposts. The secular government of the frontier provi...
Voyages toward the South.—The discovery by Columbus (1498) of pearls on the southern mainland, combined with the Portuguese successes in India, gave new incentive to voyages, and w...
For a hundred years the Caribbean had been a Spanish sea. Hardy English mariners had frequently penetrated it, but always at their peril, and they had never seriously injured the S...
The Puritan leaders.—During the great struggle between king and parliament, several of the merchant princes were on the Puritan side. One of the most powerful of these was Robert R...
Supervision of the fur trade.—The fur trade of Quebec under the new régime was supervised according to the principles of the Proclamation of 1763. The most fundamental fact was tha...
Calvert's attempted settlement in Newfoundland.—The northern end of Chesapeake Bay was soon occupied by a rival tobacco colony, the proprietary province of Lord Baltimore. In 1609...
Colonization renewed.—The scene of the next colonization by the French was the region about the Bay of Fundy. After the religious wars, in 1598, the Marquis de la Roche landed two...
Early life of Columbus.—Meanwhile America had been discovered by Christopher Columbus, in the service of Spain. Much that was formerly believed to be true concerning the early life...
The French motives.—On February 6, 1778, France entered into an alliance with the United States. That event changed the war from a struggle between England and her former colonies...
The people not united.—Up to 1774 the majority of Americans were not united in opposition to British policy, but acts of violence and retaliation, the meeting of Congress, and the...
Effect of the trade laws.—In 1660 Sir William Berkeley began his second administration, which proved to be as unsuccessful as his first administration had been successful. Economic...
France enters the war.—The European situation had developed along lines by 1743 which brought France into an offensive alliance with Spain. In 1740 the Emperor Charles VI died and...
A centralist system established.—As complaints arose regarding the last governmental arrangements, the king changed the form of control, creating a council to consist of the govern...
Population.—Economically and socially South Carolina was associated with the West Indies rather than with the mainland colonies. At the close of the seventeenth century the white p...
Early claimants.—One of the patentees who had received lands from the Council of New England was the Earl of Warwick, whose grant covered a large part of the Connecticut Valley. In...
Opposition of the Early Stuarts to Spain.—The settled policy of Spain was to maintain a territorial and commercial monopoly in all the lands west of the line of the treaty of Torde...
Boundary treaty with New England.—On the eastern frontier Stuyvesant had another difficult problem. English settlers were crowding into the Connecticut Valley and onto Long Island....
West Indian planters.—In the British West Indies, the production of sugar profoundly influenced social and economic conditions. The West Indian planter with his vast estate worked...
Fiscal machinery.—The most difficult problem which Congress had to solve was the raising of sufficient funds to carry on the Revolution. To handle the public moneys and devise mean...
The system as William found it.—When William III ascended the throne, the later Stuart colonial system had not been perfected. It had been characterized by the principles that the...