British colonization of the Americas
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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. Approximately 30,000 Algonquian peoples lived in the region at the time. 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.
The first documented settlement of Europeans in the Americas was established by
England captured the Dutch colony of New Netherland in the Anglo-Dutch Wars of the mid-17th century, leaving North America divided amongst the English, Spanish, and French empires. After decades of warring with France, Britain took control of the French colony of Canada and France's territory east of the Mississippi River, as well as several Caribbean territories, in 1763. Many of the North American colonies gained independence from Britain through victory in the American Revolutionary War, which ended in 1783. Historians refer to the British Empire after 1783 as the "Second British Empire"; this period saw Britain increasingly focus on Asia and Africa instead of the Americas, and increasingly focus on the expansion of trade rather than territorial possessions. Nonetheless, Britain continued to colonize parts of the Americas in the 19th century, taking control of British Columbia and establishing the colonies of the Falkland Islands and British Honduras. Britain also gained control of several colonies, including Trinidad and British Guiana, following the 1815 defeat of France in the Napoleonic Wars.
In the mid-19th century, Britain began the process of granting self-government to its remaining colonies in North America. Most of these colonies joined the Confederation of
Background: early exploration and colonization of the Americas
Following the first voyage of Christopher Columbus in 1492, Spain and Portugal established colonies in the New World, beginning the European colonization of the Americas.[1] France and England, the two other major powers of 15th-century Western Europe, employed explorers soon after the return of Columbus's first voyage. In 1497, King Henry VII of England dispatched an expedition led by John Cabot to explore the coast of North America, but the lack of precious metals or other riches discouraged both the Spanish and English from permanently settling in North America during the early 17th century.[2]
Later explorers such as Martin Frobisher and Henry Hudson sailed to the New World in search of a Northwest Passage between the Atlantic Ocean and Asia, but were unable to find a viable route.[3] Europeans established fisheries in the Grand Banks of Newfoundland, and traded metal, glass, and cloth for food and fur, beginning the North American fur trade.[4] During mid-1585 Bernard Drake launched an expedition to Newfoundland which crippled the Spanish and Portuguese fishing fleets there from which they never recovered. This would have consequences in terms of English colonial expansion and settlement.[citation needed]
In the Caribbean Sea, English sailors defied Spanish trade restrictions and preyed on Spanish treasure ships.[5] The English colonization of America had been based on the English colonization of Ireland, specifically the Munster Plantation, England's first colony,[6] using the same tactics as the Plantations of Ireland. Many of the early colonists of North America had their start in colonizing Ireland, including a group known as the West Country Men. When Sir Walter Raleigh landed in Virginia, he compared the Native Americans to the wild Irish.[7][8][9] Both Roanoke and Jamestown had been based on the Irish plantation model.[10]
In the late sixteenth century,
There are a variety of theories as to what happened to the colonists there. The most popular theory is that the colonists left in search of a new area to settle in the Chesapeake, leaving stragglers to integrate with local Native American tribes.
Early colonization, 1607–1630
In 1606, King
In 1609, the Sea Venture, flagship of the English London Company, a division of the Virginia Company, bearing Admiral Sir George Somers and the new Lieutenant-Governor for Jamestown, Sir Thomas Gates, was deliberately driven onto the reef off the archipelago of Bermuda to prevent its foundering during a hurricane on the 25th of July. The 150 passengers and crew built two new ships, the Deliverance and Patience and most departed Bermuda again for Jamestown on 11 May 1610. Two men remained behind, and were joined by a third after the Patience returned again, then departed for England (it had been meant to return to Jamestown after gathering more food in Bermuda), ensuring that Bermuda remained settled, and in the possession of England and the London Company from 1609 to 1612, when more settlers and the first Lieutenant-Governor arrived from England following the extension of the Royal Charter of the London Company to officially add Bermuda to the territory of Virginia.
The archipelago was officially named Virgineola, though this was soon changed to The Somers Isles, which remains an official name though the archipelago had already long been infamous as Bermuda, and the older Spanish name has resisted replacement. The Lieutenant-Governor and settlers who arrived in 1612 briefly settled on Smith's Island, where the three left behind by the Sea Venture were thriving, before moving to St. George's Island where they established the town of New London, which was soon renamed to St. George's Town (the first actual town successfully established by the English in the New World as Jamestown was really James Fort, a rudimentary defensive structure, in 1612).[19]
Bermuda was soon more populous, self-sufficient and prosperous than Jamestown and a second company, the Company of the City of London for the Plantacion of The Somers Isles (better known as The Somers Isles Company) was spun-off from the London Company in 1615, and continued to administer Bermuda after the London Company's Royal Charter was revoked in 1624 (The Somers Isles Company's Royal Charter was similarly revoked in 1684). Bermuda pioneered tobacco cultivation as the engine for its economic growth, but as Virginia's tobacco agriculture outstripped it in the 1620s, and new colonies in the West Indies also emulated its tobacco industry, the price of Bermudian tobacco fell and the colony became unprofitable for many of the company's shareholders, who mostly had remained in England while managers or tenants farmed their land in Bermuda with the labour of indentured servants. Bermuda's House of Assembly held its first session in 1620 (Virginia's House of Burgesses having held its first session in 1619), but with no landowners resident in Bermuda there was consequently no property qualification, unlike the case with the House of Commons.
As the bottom fell out of tobacco, many absentee shareholders (or Adventurers) sold their shares to the occupying managers or tenants, with the agricultural industry quickly shifting towards family farms that grew subsistence crops instead of tobacco. Bermudians soon found they could sell their excess foodstuffs in the West Indies where colonies like Barbados grew tobacco to the exclusion of subsistence crops. As the company's magazine ship would not carry their food exports to the West Indies, Bermudians began to build their own ships from
Between the late 1610s and the American Revolution, the British shipped an estimated 50,000 to 120,000 convicts to their American colonies.[20]
Meanwhile, the
The Caribbean would provide some of England's most important and lucrative colonies,[25] but not before several attempts at colonization failed. An attempt to establish a colony in Guiana in 1604 lasted only two years and failed in its main objective to find gold deposits.[26] Colonies in St Lucia (1605) and Grenada (1609) also rapidly folded.[27] Encouraged by the success of Virginia, in 1627 King Charles I granted a charter to the Barbados Company for the settlement of the uninhabited Caribbean island of Barbados. Early settlers failed in their attempts to cultivate tobacco, but found great success in growing sugar.[25]
Growth, 1630–1689
West Indies colonies
The success of colonization efforts in Barbados encouraged the establishment of more Caribbean colonies, and by 1660 England had established Caribbean sugar colonies in
During the 17th century, the sugar colonies adopted the system of sugar plantations successfully used by the Portuguese in Brazil, which depended on slave labour.[29] The English government valued the economic importance of these islands over that of New England.[30] Until the abolition of its slave trade in 1807, Britain was responsible for the transportation of 3.5 million African slaves to the Americas, a third of all slaves transported across the Atlantic.[31] Many of the slaves were captured by the Royal African Company in West Africa, though others came from Madagascar.[32] These slaves soon came to form the majority of the population in Caribbean colonies like Barbados and Jamaica, where strict slave codes were established partly to deter slave rebellions.[33]
Establishment of the Thirteen Colonies
New England Colonies
Following the success of the Jamestown and Plymouth Colonies, several more English groups established colonies in the region that became known as
Southern Colonies
In 1632, Cecil Calvert, 2nd Baron Baltimore founded the Province of Maryland to the north of Virginia.[38] Maryland and Virginia became known as the Chesapeake Colonies, and experienced similar immigration and economic activities.[39] Though Baltimore and his descendants intended for the colony to be a refuge for Catholics, it attracted mostly Protestant immigrants, many of whom scorned the Calvert family's policy of religious toleration.[40] In the mid-17th century, the Chesapeake Colonies, inspired by the success of slavery in Barbados, began the mass importation of African slaves. Though many early slaves eventually gained their freedom, after 1662 Virginia adopted policies that passed enslaved status from mother to child and granted slave owners near-total domination of their human property.[41]
640 miles (1,030 km) East-South-East of Cape Hatteras, in the Virginia Company's other former settlement, the Somers Isles, alias the Islands of Bermuda, where the spin-off Somers Isles Company still administered, the company and its shareholders in England only earned profits from the export of tobacco, placing them increasingly at odds with Bermudians for whom tobacco had become unprofitable to cultivate. As only those landowners who could attend the company's annual meetings in England were permitted to vote on company policy, the company worked to suppress the developing maritime economy of the colonists and to force the production of tobacco, which required unsustainable farming practices as more was required to be produced to make up for the diminished value.
As many of the class of moneyed businessmen who were adventurers in the company were aligned to the Parliamentary cause during the English Civil War, Bermuda was one of the colonies that sided with the Crown during the war, being the first to recognise Charles II after the execution of his father. With control of their Assembly and the militia and volunteer coastal artillery, the Royalist majority deposed the company-appointed Governor (by the 1630s, the company had ceased sending Governors to Bermuda and had instead appointed a succession of prominent Bermudians to the role, including religious Independent and Parliamentarian William Sayle) by force of arms and elected John Trimingham to replace him. Many of Bermuda's religious Independents, who had sided with Parliament, were forced into exile. Although some of the newer continental colonies settled largely by anti-episcopalian Protestants sided with Parliament during the war, Virginia and other colonies like Bermuda supported the Crown and were subjected to the measures laid out in An Act for prohibiting Trade with the Barbadoes, Virginia, Bermuda and Antego until Parliament was able to force them to acknowledge its sovereignty.
Bermudian anger at the policies of the Somers Isles Company ultimately saw them take their complaints to the Crown after
Encouraged by the apparent weakness of Spanish rule in
Middle Colonies
Beginning in 1609, Dutch traders had established fur trading posts on the Hudson River, Delaware River, and Connecticut River, ultimately creating the Dutch colony of New Netherland, with a capital at New Amsterdam.[47] In 1657, New Netherland expanded through conquest of New Sweden, a Swedish colony centered in the Delaware Valley.[48] Despite commercial success, New Netherland failed to attract the same level of settlement as the English colonies.[49] In 1664, during a series of wars between the English and Dutch, English soldier Richard Nicolls captured New Netherland.[50] The Dutch briefly regained control of parts of New Netherland in the Third Anglo-Dutch War, but surrendered its claim to the territory in the 1674 Treaty of Westminster, ending the Dutch colonial presence in North America.[51] In 1664, the Duke of York, later known as James II of England, was granted control of the English colonies north of the Delaware River. He created the Province of New York out of the former Dutch territory and renamed New Amsterdam as New York City.[52] He also created the provinces of West Jersey and East Jersey out of former Dutch land situated to the west of New York City, giving the territories to John Berkeley and George Carteret.[53] East Jersey and West Jersey would later be unified as the Province of New Jersey in 1702.[54]
Charles II rewarded
Hudson's Bay Company
In 1670, Charles II incorporated by royal charter the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC), granting it a monopoly on the fur trade in the area known as Rupert's Land. Forts and trading posts established by the HBC were frequently the subject of attacks by the French.[60]
Darien scheme
In 1695, the Parliament of Scotland granted a charter to the Company of Scotland, which established a settlement in 1698 on the Isthmus of Panama. Besieged by neighbouring Spanish colonists of New Granada, and afflicted by malaria, the colony was abandoned two years later. The Darien scheme was a financial disaster for Scotland—a quarter of Scottish capital[61] was lost in the enterprise—and ended Scottish hopes of establishing its own overseas empire. The episode also had major political consequences, persuading the governments of both England and Scotland of the merits of a union of countries, rather than just crowns.[62] This occurred in 1707 with the Treaty of Union, establishing the Kingdom of Great Britain.
Expansion and conflict, 1689–1763
Settlement and expansion in North America
After succeeding his brother in 1685, King James II and his lieutenant,
Between immigration, the importation of slaves, and natural population growth, the colonial population in British North America grew immensely in the 18th century. According to historian Alan Taylor, the population of the Thirteen Colonies (the British North American colonies which would eventually form the United States) stood at 1.5 million in 1750.[69] More than ninety percent of the colonists lived as farmers, though cities like Philadelphia, New York, and Boston flourished.[70] With the defeat of the Dutch and the imposition of the Navigation Acts, the British colonies in North America became part of the global British trading network. The colonists traded foodstuffs, wood, tobacco, and various other resources for Asian tea, West Indian coffee, and West Indian sugar, among other items.[71] Native Americans far from the Atlantic coast supplied the Atlantic market with beaver fur and deerskins, and sought to preserve their independence by maintaining a balance of power between the French and English.[72] By 1770, the economic output of the Thirteen Colonies made up forty percent of the gross domestic product of the British Empire.[73]
Prior to 1660, almost all immigrants to the English colonies of North America had migrated freely, though most paid for their passage by becoming
Following the 1684 revocation of the Somers Isles Company's Royal Charter, seafaring Bermudianses established an inter-colonial trade network, with Charleston, South Carolina (settled from Bermuda in 1670 under William Sayle, and on the same latitude as Bermuda, although Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, is the nearest landfall to Bermuda) forming a continental hub for their trade (Bermuda itself produced only ships and seamen).[82] The widespread activities and settlement of Bermudians has resulted in many localities named after Bermuda dotting the map of North America.
Conflicts with the French and Spanish
The Glorious Revolution and the succession of William III, who had long resisted French hegemony as the
In 1754, the Ohio Company started to build a fort at the confluence of the
The Americans break away, 1763–1783
The British subjects of North America believed the
At the
With their close ties of blood and trade with the continental colonies, especially Virginia and South Carolina, Bermudians leaned towards the rebels during the
Having defeated a combined Franco-Spanish naval force at the decisive 1782 Battle of the Saintes, Britain retained control of Gibraltar and all its pre-war Caribbean possessions except for Tobago.[105] Economically, the new nation became a major trading partner of Britain.
Second British Empire, 1783–1945
The loss of a large portion of British America defined the transition between the "first" and "second" empires, in which Britain shifted its attention away from the Americas to Asia, the Pacific, and later Africa.[106] Influenced by the ideas of Adam Smith, Britain also shifted away from mercantile ideals and began to prioritize the expansion of trade rather than territorial possessions.[107] During the nineteenth century, some observers described Britain as having an "unofficial" empire based on the export of goods and financial investments around the world, including the newly independent republics of Latin America. Though this unofficial empire did not require direct British political control, it often involved the use of gunboat diplomacy and military intervention to protect British investments and ensure the free flow of trade.[108]
From 1793 to 1815, Britain was almost constantly at war, first in the
Following the final defeat of French Emperor Napoleon in 1815, Britain gained ownership of Trinidad, Tobago, British Guiana, and Saint Lucia, as well as other territories outside of the Western Hemisphere.[112] The Treaty of 1818 with the United States set a large portion of the Canada–United States border at the 49th parallel and also established a joint U.S.–British occupation of Oregon Country.[113] In the 1846 Oregon Treaty, the United States and Britain agreed to split Oregon Country along the 49th parallel north with the exception of Vancouver Island, which was assigned in its entirety to Britain.[114]
After warring throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in both Europe and the Americas, the British and French reached a lasting peace after 1815. Britain would fight only one war (the
Establishing the Dominion of Canada
Despite its defeat in the American Revolutionary War and shift towards a new form of imperialism during the nineteenth century,
The British also expanded their mercantile interests in the North Pacific. Spain and Britain had become rivals in the area which came to ahead with the Nootka Crisis in 1789. Both sides mobilised for war, and Spain counted on France for support but when France refused, Spain had to back down and capitulated to British terms leading to the Nootka Convention. The outcome of the crisis was a humiliation for Spain and a triumph for Britain, for the former had practically renounced all sovereignty on the North Pacific coast.[123] This opened the way to British expansion in that area, and a number of expeditions took place; firstly a naval expedition led by George Vancouver which explored the inlets around the Pacific NorthWest, particularly around Vancouver Island.[124] On land, expeditions took place hoping for a discovery of a practicable river route to the Pacific for the extension of the North American fur trade (the North West Company). Sir Alexander Mackenzie led the first starting out in 1792, and a year a later he became the first European to reach the Pacific overland north of the Rio Grande reaching the ocean near present-day Bella Coola. This preceded the Lewis and Clark Expedition by twelve years. Shortly thereafter, Mackenzie's companion, John Finlay, founded the first permanent European settlement in British Columbia, Fort St. John. The North West Company sought further explorations firstly by David Thompson, starting in 1797, and later by Simon Fraser. More expedition took place in the early 1800s and pushed into the wilderness territories of the Rocky Mountains and Interior Plateau and all the way to the Strait of Georgia on the Pacific Coast expanding British North America Westward.[125]
In 1815, Lieutenant-General Sir
In response to the Rebellions of 1837–1838,
United States independence, and the closure of its ports to British trade, combined with growing peace in the region which reduced the risk to shipping (resulting in smaller evasive merchantmen, such as those that Bermudian shipbuilders turned out, losing favour to larger clippers), and the advent of metal hulls and steam engines, were to slowly strangle Bermuda's maritime economy, while its newfound importance as a Royal Navy and British Army base from which the North America and West Indies Station could be controlled meant increasing interest from the British Government in its governance.
Bermuda was grouped with British North America, especially Nova Scotia and Newfoundland (its closest British neighbours), following United States Independence. When war with France followed the French Revolution, a Royal Naval Dockyard was established at Bermuda in 1795, which was to alternate with Royal Naval Dockyard, Halifax (Bermuda during the summers and Halifax during the winters) as the Royal Navy headquarters and main base for the River St. Lawrence and Coast of America Station (which was to become the North America Station in 1813, the North America and Lakes of Canada Station in 1816, the North America and Newfoundland Station in 1821, the North America and West Indies Station about 1820, and finally the America and West Indies Station from 1915 to 1956) before becoming the year-round headquarters and main base from about 1818.
The regular
British Honduras and Falkland Islands
In the early 17th century, English sailors had begun cutting
The British first established a presence on the
Decolonization and overseas territories, 1945–present
Successful independence movements
With the onset of the Cold War in the late 1940s, the British government began to assemble plans for the independence of the empire's colonies in Africa, Asia, and the Americas. British authorities initially planned for a three-decades-long process in which each colony would develop a self-governing and democratic parliament, but unrest and fears of Communist infiltration in the colonies encouraged the British to speed up the move towards self-governance.[134] Compared to other European empires, which experienced wars of independence such as the Algerian War and the Portuguese Colonial War, the British post-war process of decolonization in the Caribbean was relatively peaceful.[135]
In an attempt to unite its Caribbean colonies, Britain established the
Remaining territories
Though many of the Caribbean territories of the British Empire gained independence, Anguilla and the Turks and Caicos Islands opted to revert to British rule after they had already started on the path to independence.[138] The British Virgin Islands, Bermuda, the Cayman Islands, Montserrat, and the Falkland Islands also remain under the jurisdiction of Britain.[139] In 1982, Britain defeated Argentina in the Falklands War, an undeclared war in which Argentina attempted to seize control of the Falkland Islands.[140] In 1983, the British Nationality Act 1981 renamed the existing British Colonies as "British Dependent Territories".[a]
Historically, colonials shared the same citizenship (although Magna Carta had effectively created English citizenship, citizens were still termed subjects of the King of England or English subjects. With the union of the Kingdoms of England and Scotland, this was replaced with British Subject, which encompassed citizens throughout the sovereign territory of the British Government, including the colonies) as Britons. Although historically all British Subjects had the right to vote for candidates, or to themselves stand for election, to the House of Commons (providing that they were male, prior to women's suffrage, and met the property qualification, when it applied). The British Government (as with the Government of the Kingdom of England before it) has never assigned seats in the House of Commons to any colony, effectively disenfranchising colonials at the Sovereign level of their government. There has also never been Peer in the House of Lords representing any colony. Colonials were therefore not consulted, or required to give their consent, to a series of Acts that passed by the Parliament of the United Kingdom between 1968 and 1982, which were to limit their rights and ultimately change their citizenship.
When several colonies were elevated before the
When the Dominions and an increasing number of colonies began choosing complete independence from the United Kingdom after the Second World War, the Commonwealth was transformed into a community of independent nations, each recognising the British monarch as their own head of state (creating separate monarchies with the same person occupying all of the separate Thrones; the exception being republican India). British Subject was replaced by the British Nationality Act 1948 with Citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies for the residents of the United Kingdom and its colonies, as well as the Crown Dependencies. however, as it was desired to retain free movement for all Commonwealth Citizens throughout the Commonwealth, British Subject was retained as a blanket nationality shared by Citizens of the United Kingdom and Colonies as well as the citizens of the various other Commonwealth realms.
The inflow of
Many ethnic-Indians did find themselves marginalised in newly independent nations (notably Kenya) and relocated to the United Kingdom, in response to which the Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1968 was rapidly passed, stripping all British Subjects (including Citizens of the United Kingdom and Colonies) who were not born in the United Kingdom, and who did not have a Citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies parent born in the United Kingdom or some other qualification (such as existing residence status), of the rights to freely enter, reside and work in the United Kingdom.
This was followed by the Immigration Act 1971, which effectively divided Citizens of the United Kingdom and Colonies into two types, although their citizenship remained the same: Those from the United Kingdom itself, who retained the rights of free entry, abode, and work in the United Kingdom; and those born in the colonies (or in foreign countries to British Colonial parents), from whom those rights were denied.
The
The exceptions were the
The stripping of birth rights from at least some of the colonial
Alsoe wee doe, for us, our heires and successors, declare by theise presentes that all and everie the parsons being our subjects which shall dwell and inhabit within everie or anie of the saide severall Colonies and plantacions and everie of theire children which shall happen to be borne within the limitts and precincts of the said severall Colonies and plantacions shall have and enjoy all liberties, franchises and immunites within anie of our other dominions to all intents and purposes as if they had been abiding and borne within this our realme of Englande or anie other of our saide dominions.
These rights were confirmed in the Royal Charter granted to the London Company's spin-off, the
And wee doe for vs our heires and successors declare by these Pnts, that all and euery persons being our subjects which shall goe and inhabite wthin the said Somer Ilandes and every of their children and posterity which shall happen to bee borne within the limits thereof shall haue and enjoy all libertyes franchesies and immunities of free denizens and natural subjectes within any of our dominions to all intents and purposes, as if they had beene abiding and borne wthin this our Kingdome of England or in any other of our Dominions[144]
In regards to former CUKCs of St. Helena, Lord Beaumont of Whitley in the House of Lords debate on the British Overseas Territories Bill on the 10 July 2001, stated:
Citizenship was granted irrevocably by Charles I. It was taken away, quite wrongly, by Parliament in surrender to the largely racist opposition to immigration at the time.[145]
Some
At the same time, although Labour had promised a return to a single citizenship for the United Kingdom, Crown dependencies, and all remaining territories, British Dependent Territories Citizenship, renamed British Overseas Territories Citizenship, remained the default citizenship for the territories, other than the Falkland Islands and Gibraltar (for which British Citizenship is still the default citizenship). The bars to residence and work in the United Kingdom that had been raised against holders of British Dependent Territories Citizenship by The British Nationality Act 1981 were, however, removed, and British Citizenship was made attainable by simply obtaining a second British passport with the citizenship recorded as British Citizen (requiring a change to passport legislation as prior to 2002, it had been illegal to possess two British Passports).[149]
Prior to 2002, all British Passports obtained in a British Dependent Territory were of a design modified from those issued in the United Kingdom, lacking the European Union name on the front cover, having the name of the specific territorial government noted on the front cover below "British Passport", and having the request on the inside of the front cover normally issued by the Secretary of State on behalf of The Queen instead issued by the Governor of the territory on behalf of The Queen. Although this design made it easier for United Kingdom Border Control to distinguish a colonial from a 'real' British citizen, these passports were issued within the territory to the holder of any type of British citizenship with the appropriate citizenship stamped inside. The normal British passports issued in the United Kingdom and by British consulates in Commonwealth and foreign countries were similarly issued to holders of any type of British citizenship with the appropriate citizenship, or citizenships, stamped inside. From 2002, the thenceforth local governments of the British Overseas Territories in which British Overseas Territories Citizenship was the default citizenship were no longer allowed to issue or replace any British Passport except the type for their own territory only with British Overseas Territories Citizen recorded inside (and a stamp from the local government showing the holder has legal status as a local (in Bermuda, by example, the stamp records "the holder is registered as a Bermudian"), as neither British Dependent Territories Citizenship nor British Overseas Territories Citizenship actually entitles the holder to any more rights in any territory than in the United Kingdom, simply serving to enable colonials to be distinguished from real British people for the benefit of United Kingdom Border Control.
Since 2002, only the United Kingdom Government has issued normal British Passports with the citizenship stamped as British Citizen. Since June, 2016, only the Passport Office in the United Kingdom is permitted to issue any type of British Passport. Local governments of territories can still accept passport applications, but must forward them to the Passport Office. This means that the territorial pattern of British Passport is no longer available, with all passports issued since then being of the standard type issued in the United Kingdom, with the appropriate type of British Citizenship recorded inside; a problem for Bermudians as they have always enjoyed freer entry into the United States than other British Citizens, but the United States had updated its entry requirements (prior to the 2001 terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C., Bermudians did not need a passport to enter the US, and Americans did not need a passport to enter Bermuda. Since then, anyone entering the US, including US citizens, must present a passport) to specify that, in order to be admitted as a Bermudian the passport must be of the territorial type specific to Bermuda, with the country code inside being that used for Bermuda as distinct from other parts of the British Realm, with the citizenship stamped as British Dependent Territories Citizenship or British Overseas Territories Citizenship, and the stamp from Bermuda Immigration showing the holder has Bermudian status. From the point of view of Bermuda Immigration, only the stamp showing the holder has Bermudian status indicates the holder is Bermudian, and that can be entered into any type of British Passport with any type of British citizenship recorded, so the United States requirements are more stringent than Bermuda's, and impossible to meet with any British Passport issued to a Bermudian since the end of June, 2016.[150][151][152][153]
The eleven inhabited territories are self-governing to varying degrees and are reliant on the UK for
List of colonies
Former North American colonies
Canadian territories
These colonies and territories (known, together with
- British Columbia (previously part of Oregon Country before its 1846 division between Britain and the United States)
- Province of Canada (formed from the merger of Upper Canada and Lower Canada in 1841)
- Nova Scotia
- New Brunswick
- Dominion of Newfoundland (became part of Canada in 1949)
- Prince Edward Island
- Rupert's Land (became part of Canada as Manitoba and the Northwest Territories)
Thirteen Colonies
The Thirteen Colonies, which became the original states of the United States following the 1781 ratification of the Articles of Confederation:
- Province of Massachusetts Bay
- Province of New Hampshire
- Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations
- Connecticut Colony
- Province of New York
- Province of New Jersey
- Province of Pennsylvania
- Delaware Colony
- Province of Maryland
- Colony of Virginia
- Province of North Carolina
- Province of South Carolina
- Province of Georgia
Other North American colonies
These colonies were acquired in 1763 and ceded to Spain in 1783:
- Province of East Florida (from Spain, retroceded to Spain)
- Province of West Florida (from France as part of eastern French Louisiana, ceded to Spain)
Former colonies in the Caribbean and South America
These present-day countries formed part of the British West Indies prior to gaining independence during the 20th century:
- Antigua and Barbuda (gained independence in 1981)
- The Bahamas (gained independence in 1973)
- Barbados (gained independence in 1966)
- Belize (gained independence in 1981; formerly known as British Honduras)
- Dominica (gained independence in 1978)
- Grenada (gained independence in 1974)
- Guyana (gained independence in 1966; formerly known as British Guiana)
- Jamaica (gained independence in 1962)
- Saint Kitts and Nevis (gained independence in 1983)
- Saint Lucia (gained independence in 1979)
- Saint Vincent and the Grenadines (gained independence in 1979)
- Trinidad and Tobago (gained independence in 1962)
Current territories
These British Overseas Territories in the Americas remain under the jurisdiction of the United Kingdom:
See also
- Atlantic history
- Atlantic World
- Demographics of the British Empire
- Historiography of the British Empire
- History of Belize
- History of Guyana
- History of the Falkland Islands
- History of the foreign relations of the United Kingdom
- Imperialism
- Indigenous peoples of the Americas
- Early modern Britain
- French and Indian Wars
Notes
- ^ Schedule 6 of the British Nationality Act 1981[141] reclassified the remaining self-governing colonies (those with their own elected legislatures and a degree of autonomy, such as Bermuda) and Crown colonies (those without elected legislatures, which were governed entirely by British Government-appointed Governors with advisory councils, such as Hong Kong) as "British Dependent Territories".
References
- ^ Richter (2011), pp. 69-70
- ^ Richter (2011), pp. 83-85
- ^ Richter (2011), pp. 121-123
- ^ Richter (2011), pp. 129-130
- ^ James (1997), pp. 16–17
- JSTOR 20557371.
- ^ "The Construction of America, in the Eyes of the English". 4 December 2019.
- ^ "From Carrigaline to Virginia, USA". 14 October 2020.
- ^ Taylor, pp. 119,123
- .
- ^ Richter (2011), pp. 98-100
- ^ Richter (2011), pp. 100-102
- ^ Richter (2011), pp. 103-107
- ^ James (1997), p. 5
- ^ Richter (2011), p. 112
- ^ "English Colonization Begins". Digital History. University of Houston.
- ^ Richter (2011), pp. 113-115
- ^ Richter (2011), pp. 116-117
- ^ "Bermuda - History and Heritage". Smithsonian.com. Retrieved 6 September 2019.
- ^ James Davie Butler, "British Convicts Shipped to American Colonies," American Historical Review (1896) 2#1 pp. 12–33 in JSTOR; Thomas Keneally, The Commonwealth of Thieves, Random House Publishing, Sydney, 2005.
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Works cited
- Anderson, Fred (2000). The Crucible of War. New York: Knopf. ISBN 978-0375406423.
- Anderson, Fred (2005). The War That Made America. New York: Viking. ISBN 978-0670034543.
- Bailyn, Bernard (2012). The Barbarous Years: The Peopling of British North America--The Conflict of Civilizations, 1600–1675. Knopf.
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- Buckner, Phillip (2008). Canada and the British Empire. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0199271641. Retrieved 22 July 2009.
- Canny, Nicholas (1998). The Origins of Empire: British Overseas Enterprise to the Close of the Seventeenth Century. Oxford University Press.
- Chandler, Ralph Clark (Winter 1990). "Public Administration Under the Articles of Confederation". Public Administration Quarterly. 13 (4): 433–450. JSTOR 40862257.
- Clegg, Peter (2005). "The UK Caribbean Overseas Territories". In de Jong, Lammert; Kruijt, Dirk (eds.). Extended Statehood in the Caribbean. Rozenberg Publishers. ISBN 978-9051706864.
- ISBN 978-0465023295.
- Ferling, John (2003). A Leap in the Dark: The Struggle to Create the American Republic. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0195159240.
- Horn, James (2011). A Kingdom Strange: The Brief and Tragic History of the Lost Colony of Roanoke. Philadelphia: Basic Book. ISBN 978-0465024902.
- Kelley, Ninette; Trebilcock, Michael (2010). The Making of the Mosaic (2nd ed.). University of Toronto Press. ISBN 978-0802095367.
- Knight, Franklin W.; Palmer, Colin A. (1989). The Modern Caribbean. University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 978-0807818251.
- James, Lawrence (1997). The Rise and Fall of the British Empire. St. Martin's Griffin. ISBN 978-0312169855.
- Lloyd, Trevor Owen (1996). The British Empire 1558–1995. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0198731344.
- ISBN 978-0140431339.
- ISBN 978-0802139320. Retrieved 22 July 2009.
- Middlekauff, Robert (2005). The Glorious Cause: the American Revolution, 1763–1789. Oxford University Press.
- Porter, Andrew (1998). The Nineteenth Century, The Oxford History of the British Empire Volume III. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0199246786. Retrieved 22 July 2009.
- Rhodes, R.A.W.; Wanna, John; Weller, Patrick (2009). Comparing Westminster. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0199563494.
- Richter, Daniel (2011). Before the Revolution : America's ancient pasts. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press.
- Smith, Simon (1998). British Imperialism 1750–1970. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-3125806405. Retrieved 22 July 2009.
- ISBN 978-0142002100.
- Taylor, Alan (2016). American Revolutions: A Continental History, 1750–1804. W. W. Norton & Company.
- Turpin, Colin; Tomkins, Adam (2007). British government and the constitution (6th ed.). Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0521690294.
- Zolberg, Aristide R (2006). A nation by design: immigration policy in the fashioning of America. Russell Sage. ISBN 978-0674022188.
Further reading
- Berlin, Ira (1998). Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America. Belknap Press. ISBN 978-0674810921.
- Black, Conrad. Rise to Greatness: The History of Canada From the Vikings to the Present (2014), 1120pp excerpt
- Breen, T.H.; Hall, Timothy (2016). Colonial America in an Atlantic World (2nd ed.). Pearson.
- ISBN 978-0871139719.
- Carr, J. Revell (2008). Seeds of Discontent: The Deep Roots of the American Revolution, 1650–1750. Walker Books.
- Conrad, Margaret, Alvin Finkel and Donald Fyson. Canada: A History (Toronto: Pearson, 2012)
- Cooke, Jacob Ernest et al., ed. Encyclopedia of the North American Colonies. (3 vol. 1993)
- Dalziel, Nigel (2006). The Penguin Historical Atlas of the British Empire. Penguin. ISBN 978-0141018447. Retrieved 22 July 2009.
- Elliott, John (2006). Empires of the Atlantic World: Britain and Spain in America 1492-1830. Yale University Press.
- Games, Alison (2008). The Web of Empire: English Cosmopolitans in an Age of Expansion, 1560–1660. Oxford University Press.
- Gaskill, Malcolm (2014). Between Two Worlds: How the English Became Americans. Basic Books.
- Gipson, Lawrence. The British Empire Before the American Revolution (15 volumes, 1936–1970), Pulitzer Prize; highly detailed discussion of every British colony in the New World
- Horn, James (2005). A Land As God Made It: Jamestown and the Birth of America. Basic Books. ISBN 9780465030941.
- Rose, J. Holland, A. P. Newton and E. A. Benians (gen. eds.), The Cambridge History of the British Empire, 9 vols. (1929–61); vol 1: "The Old Empire from the Beginnings to 1783" 934pp online edition Volume I Archived 27 December 2007 at the Wayback Machine
- Hyam, Ronald (2002). Britain's Imperial Century, 1815–1914: A Study of Empire and Expansion. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-0713430899.
- Lepore, Jill (1999). The Name of War: King Philip's War and the Origins of American Identity. Vintage. ISBN 978-0375702624.
- Louis, Wm. Roger (general editor), The Oxford History of the British Empire
- vol 1 The Origins of Empire ed. by Nicholas Canny
- vol 2 The Eighteenth Century ed. by P. J. Marshall excerpt and text search
- Mann, Charles C. (2011). 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created. Knopf.
- Marshall, P.J. (ed.) The Cambridge Illustrated History of the British Empire (1996). excerpt and text search
- Mawby, Spencer. Ordering Independence: The End of Empire in the Anglophone Caribbean, 1947–69 (Springer, 2012).
- McNaught, Kenneth. The Penguin History of Canada (Penguin books, 1988)
- Meinig, Donald William (1986). The Shaping of America: Atlantic America, 1492–1800. Yale University Press.
- Middleton, Richard; Lombard, Anne (2011). Colonial America: A History to 1763 (4th ed.). Wiley-Blackwell.
- ISBN 978-0224062220.
- Shorto, Russell (2004). The Island at the Center of the World: The Epic Story of Dutch Manhattan and the Forgotten Colony that Shaped America. Doubleday. ISBN 978-0385503495.
- Smith, Simon (1998). British Imperialism 1750–1970. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-3125806405.
- Sobecki, Sebastian. "New World Discovery". Oxford Handbooks Online (2015).
- Springhall, John (2001). Decolonization since 1945: the collapse of European overseas empires. Palgrave. ISBN 978-0333746004.
- Weidensaul, Scott (2012). The First Frontier: The Forgotten History of Struggle, Savagery, and Endurance in Early America. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Historiography
- Canny, Nicholas. "Writing Atlantic History; or, Reconfiguring the History of Colonial British America." Journal of American History 86.3 (1999): 1093–1114. in JSTOR
- Hinderaker, Eric; Horn, Rebecca. "Territorial Crossings: Histories and Historiographies of the Early Americas," William and Mary Quarterly, (2010) 67#3 pp 395–432 in JSTOR
External links
- Media related to British colonization of the Americas at Wikimedia Commons