Was USA a British colony?
4721#70
The spread of English from the latter half of the 20th century has been helped in part by the cultural and economic influence of the United States, itself originally formed from British colonies. Except in Africa where nearly all the former colonies have adopted the presidential system, the English parliamentary system has served as the template for the governments for many former colonies, and English common law for legal systems.
The British Judicial Committee of the Privy Council still serves as the highest court of appeal for several former colonies in the Caribbean and Pacific. British missionaries who travelled around the globe often in advance of soldiers and civil servants spread Protestantism (including Anglicanism) to all continents. The British Empire provided refuge for religiously persecuted continental Europeans for hundreds of years. British colonial architecture, such as in churches, railway stations and government buildings, can be seen in many cities that were once part of the British Empire.
British Empire
146909#2
The British used colonial North America as a penal colony through a system of indentured servitude. Merchants would transport the convicts and auction them off (for example) to plantation owners upon arrival in the colonies. It is estimated that some 50,000 British convicts were sent to colonial America and the majority landed in the Chesapeake Colonies of Maryland and Virginia. Transported convicts represented perhaps one-quarter of all British emigrants during the 18th century. The colony of Georgia, for example, was first founded by James Edward Oglethorpe who originally intended to use prisoners taken largely from debtors' prison, creating a "Debtor's Colony," where the prisoners could learn trades and work off their debts. Even though this largely failed, the idea that the state began as a penal colony has persisted, both in popular history and local lore. The British would often ship Irish, Scots, and the Welsh to the Americas whenever rebellions took place in Ireland, Scotland or Wales but these were sent mostly to Maryland and Virginia, not Georgia.
Penal colony
52507#1
Three types of colonies were established in the English overseas possessions in America of the 17th century and continued into the British Empire at the height of its power in the 17th century. These were charter colonies, proprietary colonies, and royal colonies. A group of 13 British American colonies collectively broke from the British Empire in the 1770s through a successful revolution, establishing the modern United States. After the end of the Napoleonic Wars (1803–15), the remaining British territories in North America were slowly granted more responsible government. In 1838 the Durham Report recommended full responsible government for Canada, but this was not fully implemented for another decade. Eventually, with the Confederation of Canada, the Canadian colonies were granted significant autonomy and became a self-governing Dominion in 1867. Other colonies in the Americas followed at a much slower pace. In this way, two countries in North America, ten in the Caribbean, and one in South America have received their independence from Great Britain or the later United Kingdom. All of these, except the United States, are members of the Commonwealth of Nations and nine are Commonwealth realms. The eight current British overseas territories in the Americas have varying degrees of self-government.
British colonization of the Americas
4544202#0
British America comprised the British Empire's colonial territories in North America, Bermuda, Central America, the Caribbean, and Guyana from 1607 to 1783. The American colonies were formally known as British America and the British West Indies before 1776, when the Thirteen Colonies declared their independence in the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783) and formed the United States of America. After that, the term British North America was used to describe the remainder of Britain's continental North American possessions. That term was first used informally in 1783 by the end of the American Revolution, but it was uncommon before the Report on the Affairs of British North America (1839), called the Durham Report.
British America
6331094#12
Britain approached the task of governing its New World territories in a less centralized manner, establishing about twenty distinct colonies in North America and the Caribbean from 1585 onward. Each British colony had its own governor and most would have representative assemblies. Most of the North American Thirteen Colonies that became the United States had strong self-government via popular assemblies that countered the authority of governors with their own assertions of rights via parliamentry and other English sources of authority. Only property owners could vote in British polities, but since so many free men in mainland British Colonial America owned land, a majority could vote and participate in popular politics. The British challenge to the authority of colonial assemblies, especially via taxation, was a major cause of the American Revolution in the 1770s.
Atlantic World
34681#0
The Thirteen Colonies, also known as the Thirteen British Colonies or Thirteen American Colonies, were a group of British colonies on the Atlantic coast of North America founded in the 17th and 18th centuries. They declared independence in 1776 and formed the United States of America. The Thirteen Colonies had very similar political, constitutional, and legal systems and were dominated by Protestant English-speakers. They were part of Britain's possessions in the New World, which also included colonies in Canada, the Caribbean, and the Floridas.
Thirteen Colonies
4544202#1
British America gained large amounts of new territory following the Treaty of Paris (1763) which ended the French and Indian War in America, and ended British involvement in the Seven Years' War in Europe. At the start of the Revolutionary War in 1775, the British Empire included 20 colonies north and east of New Spain, including areas of Mexico and the Western United States. East and West Florida were ceded to the Kingdom of Spain in the Treaty of Paris (1783) which ended the American Revolution, and then ceded by Spain to the United States in 1819 after treaty negotiations to settle the old southwest border with Spanish Florida (eastern Louisiana, southern Alabama, Mississippi, and western Georgia). The remaining continental colonies of British North America to the northeast formed the Dominion of Canada by uniting provinces between 1867 and 1873. The Dominion of Newfoundland to the east joined Canada in 1949.
British America
282220#79
The colonies were very different from one another but they were still a part of the British Empire in more than just name. Demographically, the majority of the colonists traced their roots to the British Isles and many of them still had family ties with Great Britain. Socially, the colonial elite of Boston, New York, Charleston, and Philadelphia saw their identity as British. Many had never lived in Britain in over a few generations, yet they imitated British styles of dress, dance, and etiquette. This social upper echelon built its mansions in the Georgian style, copied the furniture designs of Thomas Chippendale, and participated in the intellectual currents of Europe, such as the Enlightenment. The seaport cities of colonial America were truly British cities in the eyes of many inhabitants.
Colonial history of the United States
3830249#18
The remaining British colonies (as outlined in this section) in the Caribbean except for British Guiana and the Bahamas were grouped under Jamaica at various points in time out of convenience and sometimes for historical and/or geographical reasons. British Honduras was surrounded by hostile Spanish colonies and needed the protection afforded by the Army and Navy based in Jamaica. In addition, British Honduras had been founded by loggers and had expanded in population partly by the settlement of Englishmen arriving from Jamaica in the late 17th and early 18th centuries (with settlers also arriving from England directly or being born in the colony).
History of the British West Indies
207114#9
The growth of the British Empire in the 19th century, to its territorial peak in the 1920s, saw Britain acquire nearly one quarter of the world's land mass, including territories with large indigenous populations in Asia and Africa. From the mid-nineteenth century to the early twentieth century, the larger settler colonies – in Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa – first became self-governing colonies and then achieved independence in all matters except foreign policy, defence and trade. Separate self-governing colonies federated to become Canada (in 1867), Australia (in 1901), South Africa (in 1910), and Rhodesia (in 1965). These and other large self-governing colonies had become known as Dominions by the 1920s. The Dominions achieved almost full independence with the Statute of Westminster (1931).Through a process of decolonisation following the Second World War, most of the British colonies in Africa, Asia and the Caribbean gained independence. Some colonies became Commonwealth realms, retaining the British monarch as their own head of state. Most former colonies and protectorates became member states of the Commonwealth of Nations, a non-political, voluntary association of equal members, comprising a population of around 2.2 billion people.
British Overseas Territories
4267238#0
The Colony of British Columbia was a crown colony in British North America from 1858 until 1866. It was founded by Richard Clement Moody, who became the first Lieutenant-Governor of British Columbia from 1858 to 1863. At its creation, it physically constituted approximately half the present day Canadian province of British Columbia, since it did not include the Colony of Vancouver Island, the vast and still largely uninhabited regions north of the Nass and Finlay Rivers, the regions east of the Rocky Mountains, or any of the coastal islands. The Colony of the Queen Charlotte Islands and the Stikine Territory were merged with it in 1863, and it was amalgamated in 1866 with the Colony of Vancouver Island to form a new Colony of British Columbia.
Colony of British Columbia (1858–1866)