Its official name according to the Royal Charter of 1663 is the Governor and Company of the English Colony of Rhode-Island and Providence Plantations, in the Narragansett Bay, New England, in America.

Roger Williams was a Puritan theologian and linguist who founded Providence Plantations in 1636 on land given to him by Narragansett sachem Canonicus.

)[2] Williams had been exiled from the Massachusetts Bay Colony under religious persecution; he and his fellow settlers agreed on an egalitarian constitution providing for majority rule "in civil things" with liberty of conscience on spiritual matters.

After considerable difficulties with the Massachusetts Bay General Court, Gorton traveled to London to enlist the help of Robert Rich, 2nd Earl of Warwick, head of the Commission for Foreign Plantations.

[7][8] The Rhode Island colony was very progressive for the time, passing laws abolishing witchcraft trials, imprisonment for debt, and most capital punishment.

[9][10] The colony also passed the first anti-slavery law in America on May 18, 1652, though the practice remained widespread in Rhode Island and there exists no evidence that the legislation was ever enforced.

[11] Rhode Island remained at peace with the Narragansett Indians, but the relationship was more strained between other New England colonies and certain tribes.

[7][8] During King Philip's War (1675–1676), Colonist and Indian fighting regularly violated Rhode Island's neutrality.

The war's largest battle occurred in Rhode Island on December 19, 1675 when a force of Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Plymouth militia under General Josiah Winslow invaded and destroyed the fortified Narragansett village in the Great Swamp.

In one of the final actions of the war, troops from Connecticut killed Philip in Mount Hope, Rhode Island.

The Rhode Island General Assembly legalized African and Native American slavery throughout the colony in 1703, and the slave trade fueled the growth of Providence and Newport into major ports.

[15]: 24–25  The Rhode Island merchants also profited by distilling rum as part of the triangular trade in slaves and sugar between Africa, America, and the Caribbean.

On May 4, 1776, Rhode Island became the first of the 13 colonies to renounce its allegiance to the British Crown,[17] and it was the fourth to ratify the Articles of Confederation among the newly sovereign states on February 9, 1778.

[20] It relented after Congress sent a series of constitutional amendments to the states for ratification, the Bill of Rights guaranteeing specific personal freedoms and rights, clear limitations on the government's power in judicial and other proceedings, and explicit declarations that all powers not specifically delegated to Congress by the Constitution are reserved for the states or the people.

Rhode Island's early compacts did not stipulate the boundary on the eastern shore of Narrangansett Bay, and did not include any of Washington County, land that belonged to the Narragansett people.

The original settlements were at Providence, Warwick, Newport, and Portsmouth, and the territory was expanded by purchasing land from the Narragansetts westward toward Connecticut and the smaller islands in Narrangasett Bay.

The final establishment of the boundaries north of Barrington and east of the Blackstone River occurred almost a century after American independence,[22] requiring protracted litigation and multiple U.S. Supreme Court decisions.