British colonization of the Americas

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.

Canada gained full autonomy following the passage of the Statute of Westminster 1931, though it retained various ties to Britain and still recognizes the British monarch as head of state.

[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.

Seeking to weaken Spain's economic and military power, English privateers such as Francis Drake and Humphrey Gilbert harassed Spanish shipping.

[11] Gilbert proposed the colonization of North America on the Spanish model, with the goal of creating a profitable English empire that could also serve as a base for the privateers.

The London Company was bankrupted in part due to frequent warring with nearby American Indians, leading the English crown to take direct control of the Colony of Virginia, as Jamestown and its surrounding environs became known.

[40] 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.

From that date, Bermudians abandoned agriculture, diversifying their maritime industry to occupy many niches of inter-colonial trade between North America and the West Indies.

Encouraged by the apparent weakness of Spanish rule in Florida, Barbadian planter John Colleton and seven other supporters of Charles II of England established the Province of Carolina in 1663.

[60] 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.

[78] Though a smaller proportion of the English population migrated to British North America after 1700, the colonies attracted new immigrants from other European countries,[79] including Catholic settlers from Ireland[80] and Protestant Germans.

In the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht, which ended the War of Spanish Succession, the British won possession of the French territories of Newfoundland and Acadia, the latter of which was renamed Nova Scotia.

[38] In the 1730s, James Oglethorpe proposed that the area south of the Carolinas be colonized to provide a buffer against Spanish Florida, and he was part of a group of trustees that were granted temporary proprietorship over the Province of Georgia.

[93] In the Caribbean, Britain retained Grenada, St. Vincent, Dominica, and Tobago, but returned control of Martinique, Havana, and other colonial possessions to France or Spain.

[97] Meanwhile, seeking to avoid another expensive war with Native Americans, Britain issued the Royal Proclamation of 1763, which restricted settlement west of the Appalachian Mountains.

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.

[107] 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.

[108] 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.

Taking advantage of Britain's absorption in its war with France, the United States began the American War of 1812 with the invasion of the Canadas, but the British Army mounted a successful defence with minimal regular forces, supported by militia and native allies, while the Royal Navy blockaded the United States of America's Atlantic coastline from Bermuda, strangling its merchant trade, and carried out amphibious raids including the Chesapeake Campaign with its Burning of Washington.

[112] 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.

[120] Despite its defeat in the American Revolutionary War and shift towards a new form of imperialism during the nineteenth century,[107][108] the British Empire retained numerous colonies in the Americas after 1783.

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.

[126] 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.

Preparations for similar operations were carried out in Bermuda when the Trent Affair nearly brought Britain to war with the United States during the American Civil War (Bermuda had already been serving as the primary tran-shipment point for British and European manufactured arms which were smuggled into Confederate ports, especially Charleston, South Carolina, by blockade runners; cotton was brought out from the same ports by the blockade runners to be traded at Bermuda for the war materiel), and Bermuda played important roles (as a naval base, trans-Atlantic convoy forming-up point, as a connecting point in the Cable and Wireless Nova Scotia-to-British West Indies submarine telegraph cable, as a wireless station, and from the 1930s as a site for airbases used as a staging point for trans-Atlantic flights and for operating anti-submarine air patrols over the North Atlantic) in the Atlantic theatre of the First World War and in the Battle of the Atlantic during the Second World War, when the already existing Royal Navy, British Army, and Royal Air Force bases were joined by a Royal Canadian Navy base and naval and air bases of the allied United States.

Following the 1850 Clayton–Bulwer Treaty with the United States, Britain agreed to evacuate its settlers from the Bay Islands and the Mosquito Coast, but it retained control of the settlement on the Belize River.

[134] 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.

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 citizenship rights guaranteed to settlers by King James I in the original royal charter of the 10 April 1606, thereby applied to Bermudians: 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.

[144] These rights were confirmed in the royal charter granted to the London Company's spin-off, the Company of the City of London for the Plantacion of The Somers Isles, in 1615 on Bermuda being separated from Virginia: 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[145]In regards to former CUKCs of Saint 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.

[156] Fifteen Commonwealth realms, including Canada and several countries in the Caribbean, voluntarily continue to share the British monarch, King Charles III, as their head of state.