COLONIAL PERIOD

Detail from a painting by American artist Benjamin West (1738-1820), which depicts William Penn's treaty with the Native Americans living where he founded the colony of Pennsylvania as a haven for Quakers and others seeking religious freedom. (Courtesy The Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts)

Pilgrims signing the Mayflower Compact aboard ship, 1620. (Library of Congress)

Most settlers who came to the British colonies in the 1600s were English. Others came from The Netherlands, Sweden, Germany, France, and later from Scotland and Northern Ireland. Some left their homelands to escape war, political oppression, religious persecution, or a prison sentence. Some left as servants who expected to work their way to freedom. Black Africans were sold into slavery and arrived in shackles.

By 1690, the population was 250,000. Less than 100 years later, it had climbed to 2.5 million.

The settlers had many different reasons for coming to America, and eventually 13 distinct colonies developed here. Differences among the three regional groupings of colonies were even more marked.

The first settlements were built along the Atlantic coast and on the rivers that flowed to the ocean. In the Northeast, settlers found hills covered with trees and soil filled with stones left behind when the Ice Age glaciers melted. Water power was easy to harness, so "New England" — including Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island — developed an economy based on wood products, fishing, shipbuilding, and trade. The middle colonies — including New York and Pennsylvania — had a milder climate and more varied terrain. Both industry and agriculture developed there, and society was more varied and cosmopolitan. In New York, for example, one could find Bohemians, Danes, Dutch, English, French, Germans, Irish, Italians, Norwegians, Poles, Portuguese, Scots, and Swedes. The Southern colonies — Virginia, Georgia, and the Carolinas — had a long growing season and fertile soil, and the economy was primarily agricultural. There were both small farmers and wealthy aristocratic landowners who owned large plantations worked by African slaves.

Relations between settlers and Native Americans, who were called Indians, were an uneasy mix of cooperation and conflict. Certain areas saw trade and some social interaction, but in general, as the new settlements expanded, the Indians were forced to move, often after being defeated in battle.

Settlement of the American colonies was directly sponsored not by the British government, but by private groups. All except Georgia emerged as companies of shareholders or as proprietorships chartered by the king. Some were governed rigidly by company leaders, but in time, all developed a system of participatory government based on British legal precedent and tradition.

Years of political turmoil in Britain culminated with the Glorious Revolution of 1688-89 that deposed King James II and led to limits on the monarchy and greater freedoms for the people. The American colonies benefited from these changes. Colonial assemblies claimed the right to act as local parliaments. They passed measures that limited the power of royal governors and expanded their own power.

Over the decades that followed, recurring disputes between the governors and assemblies awakened colonists to the increasing divergence between American and British interests. The principles and precedents that emerged from these disputes became the unwritten constitution of the colonies.

At first, the focus was on self-government within a British commonwealth. Only later came the call for independence.