When the Kingdom of England began its efforts to cross the Atlantic Ocean and settle in eastern North America in the late 16th century, it ignored the Kingdom of Spain's long-asserted claim of sovereignty over the entire continent as part of its world-wide Spanish Empire.

Spain's area of settlement was limited to only the very southern and southwestern parts and coastal edges of the continent of North America, however, and it had little ability to enforce its sovereignty.

Disregarding, as did Spain, the sovereignty of the indigenous nations, England claimed the entire North America continent at this point (though its western, northern, and southern boundaries were ill-defined, vague, and not yet clear), which it named Virginia in honour of the virgin queen, Elizabeth I (1533–1603, reigned 1558–1603).

Following the world-wide war, the Royal Navy spent a dozen years of peace-time charting the barrier reef around Bermuda to discover the channel that enabled access to the northern lagoon, the Great Sound, and Hamilton Harbour.

[8][9] Before 1784, the Bermuda Garrison had been placed under the military Commander-in-Chief America in New York during the American War of Independence.

The regular military garrison was re-established at Bermuda in 1794 by part of the British Army's 47th Regiment of Foot and the Board of Ordnance also stationed an invalid company of the Royal Artillery there soon after.

The Bermuda garrison was to be part of the Nova Scotia Command until 1869 (in 1815, Lieutenant-General Sir George Prevost was Captain-General and Governor-in-Chief in and over the Provinces of Upper-Canada, Lower-Canada, Nova-Scotia, and New-Brunswick, and their several Dependencies, Vice-Admiral of the same, Lieutenant-General and Commander of all His Majesty's Forces in the said Provinces of Lower Canada and Upper-Canada, Nova-Scotia and New-Brunswick, and their several Dependencies, and in the islands of Newfoundland, Prince Edward, Cape Breton and the Bermudas, &c. &c. &c. Beneath Prevost, the staff of the British Army in the Provinces of Nova-Scotia, New-Brunswick, and their Dependencies, including the Islands of Newfoundland, Cape Breton, Prince Edward and Bermuda were under the Command of Lieutenant-General Sir John Coape Sherbrooke.

[10]), and was expanded greatly during the 19th century, both to defend the colony as a naval base and to launch amphibious operations against the Atlantic coast of the United States in any war that should transpire.

The Royal Navy, British Army, Royal Marines, and Colonial Marines forces based in Bermuda carried out actions of this sort during the subsequent American / Canadian War of 1812 (1812–1815), the North American phase of the larger Napoleonic Wars (1803–1815), elsewhere in Europe and the world, versus Napoleon Bonaparte (1769–1821), of France.

When the Royal Navy's blockade of the Atlantic seaboard of the United States was orchestrated from Bermuda (In the New England region, where support for the United States Government's war against Britain was low and from which Britain continued to purchase and receive grain to feed its army engaged in the Peninsular War in Spain and Portugal, was at first excluded from this blockade).

In 1813, Lieutenant-Colonel, Sir Thomas Sydney Beckwith arrived in Bermuda to command an expeditionary force tasked with raiding the Atlantic Seaboard of the United States, specifically in the region of the Chesapeake Bay and surrounding coasts of Maryland and Virginia.

The force was to be composed of the infantry battalion then on garrison duty in Bermuda, the 102nd Regiment of Foot (with its Commanding Officer, Lieutenant-Colonel Charles James Napier as Second-in-Command) forming one brigade with Royal Marines and a unit recruited from French prisoners-of-war, which was under Lt. Col. Napier's command, and another brigade formed under Lieutenant-Colonel Williams of the Royal Marines.

[11] The most famous action carried out during the war by forces from Bermuda was the Chesapeake Campaign of 1813 and later 1814, including the Battle of Bladensburg northeast outside Washington, D.C. with the subsequent Burning of Washington in August 1814, retribution for the "wanton destruction of private property along the north shores of Lake Erie" by American forces under Col. John Campbell in May 1814, the most notable being the Raid on Port Dover[12] to draw United States forces away from the Canadian border.

[8][13] In 1828, His Excellency George, Earl of Dalhousie, (Baron Dalhousie, of Dalhousie Castle,) Knight Grand Cross of the Most Honourable Military Order of the Bath was Captain General and Governor in Chief in and over the Provinces of Lower-Canada, Upper-Canada, Nova-Scotia, and New-Brunswick, and their several dependencies, Vice-Admiral of the same, Lieutenant-General and Commander of all His Majesty's Forces in the said Provinces, and their several dependencies, and in the Islands of Newfoundland, Prince Edward, and Bermuda, &c. &c c. &c. Beneath Dalhousie, the Provinces of Nova-Scotia, New-Brunswick, and their Dependencies, including the Island of Newfoundland, Cape Breton, Prince Edward and Bermuda were under the Command of His Excellency Lieutenant-General Sir James Kempt GCB, GCH.

These territories would become the future provinces of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island, as well as parts of Quebec in the modern Dominion of Canada and additional territories that would eventually form part of the old Massachusetts Bay Colony, later after 1776 as the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and later separated to form the State of Maine in 1820, in the United States.

Britain acquired much of the remainder of Canada (New France) and the eastern half of Louisiana, including West Florida, from the Kingdom of France, and East Florida from the Kingdom of Spain, by the earlier 1763 Treaty of Paris (1763), which ended the Seven Years' War (in Europe) / French and Indian War (in North America).

By the terms of the later Treaty of Paris (1783), the United States acquired the southern and western portions of the former Royal French colony in the interior of the North American continent of New France / (later Quebec), south of the Great Lakes to the Ohio River and west to the Mississippi River.

Then 28 years later, in the subsequent 1846 treaty, Britain and the United States split the jointly-administered Oregon Country lands of the Pacific Northwest region between the Americans and the British, extending the 49th parallel line further west to the Puget Sound.

After threats and squabbles over rich timber lands,[21] the boundary between Maine and Nova Scotia was clarified by the Webster–Ashburton Treaty of 1842, negotiated by Daniel Webster and Lord Ashburton.

Following confederation in 1867, the British Army withdrew from Canada in 1871, handing military defence over to the Canadian Militia.

[3][23] Following the 1776 declaration of independence of the colonies that were to form the United States (which was to be recognised by the British Government in 1783), the areas that remained under British sovereignty were administered by the Home Office, which had been formed on 27 March 1782, and which also controlled the military until this was transferred to the War Office in 1794.

[3][23] The War Office, from then, until the 1867 confederation of the Dominion of Canada, split the military administration of the British colonial and foreign stations into nine districts: North America And North Atlantic; West Indies; Mediterranean; West Coast Of Africa And South Atlantic; South Africa; Egypt And The Sudan; INDIAN OCEAN; Australia; and China.

Bermuda, with a land mass totalling less than 21 square miles and a population of 17,535, could hardly constitute an Imperial administrative region on its own.