American colonies

American colonies, the 13 British colonies that were established during the 17th and early 18th centuries in what is now a part of the eastern United States. The colonies grew both geographically along the Atlantic coast and westward and numerically to 13 from the time of their founding to the American Revolution (1775–81). Their settlements had spread far beyond the Appalachians and extended from Maine in the north to the Altamaha River in Georgia when the Revolution began, and there were at that time about 2.5 million American colonists.

The colonists were remarkably prolific. Economic opportunity, especially in the form of readily available land, encouraged early marriages and large families. Bachelors and unwed women could not live very comfortably and were relatively few. Widows and widowers needed partners to maintain homes and rear children and so remarried quickly. Accordingly, most adults were married, children were numerous, and families containing 10 or more members were common. Despite heavy losses as a result of disease and hardship, the colonists multiplied. Their numbers were also greatly increased by continuing immigration from Great Britain and from Europe west of the Elbe River. In Britain and continental Europe the colonies were looked upon as a land of promise. Moreover, both the homeland and the colonies encouraged immigration, offering inducements to those who would venture beyond the ocean. The colonies particularly welcomed foreign Protestants. In addition, many people were sent to America against their will—convicts, political prisoners, and enslaved Africans. The American population doubled every generation.

In the 17th century the principal component of the population in the colonies was of English origin, and the second largest group was of African heritage. German and Scotch-Irish immigrants arrived in large numbers during the 18th century. Other important contributions to the colonial ethnic mix were made by the Netherlands, Scotland, and France. New England was almost entirely English, in the southern colonies the English were the most numerous of the settlers of European origin, and in the middle colonies the population was much mixed, but even Pennsylvania had more English than German settlers. Except in Dutch and German enclaves, which diminished with the passage of time, the English language was used everywhere, and English culture prevailed. The “melting pot” began to boil in the colonial period, so effectively that Gov. William Livingston, three-fourths Dutch and one-fourth Scottish, described himself as an Anglo-Saxon. As the other elements mingled with the English, they became increasingly like them; however, all tended to become different from the inhabitants of “the old country.” By 1763 the word “American” was commonly used on both sides of the Atlantic to designate the people of the 13 colonies.

Colonization and early self-government

The opening of the 17th century found three countries—France, Spain, and England—contending for dominion in North America. Of these England, the tardiest on the scene, finally took control of the beginnings of what is now the United States. The French, troubled by foreign wars and internal religious quarrels, long failed to realize the great possibilities of the new continent, and their settlements in the St. Lawrence Valley grew feebly. The Spaniards were preoccupied with South America and the lands washed by the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico. But the English, after initial failures under Sir Humphrey Gilbert and Sir Walter Raleigh, planted firm settlements all the way from Maine to Georgia, nourished them with a steady flow of people and capital, and soon absorbed the smaller colonizing venture of the Dutch in the Hudson Valley and the tiny Swedish effort on the Delaware River. Within a century and a half the British had 13 flourishing colonies on the Atlantic coast: Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania, Delaware, New Jersey, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia.

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In a short time the colonists pushed from the Tidewater strip toward the Appalachians and finally crossed the mountains by the Cumberland Gap and Ohio River. Decade by decade they became less European in habit and outlook and more American—the frontier in particular setting its stamp on them. Their freedom from most of the feudal inheritances of western Europe, and the self-reliance they necessarily acquired in subduing nature, made them highly individualistic.