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According to historian Alan Taylor, the population of the Thirteen Colonies (the British North American colonies which would eventually form the United States) stood at 1.5 million in 1750. [70] More than ninety percent of the colonists lived as farmers, though cities like Philadelphia, New York, and Boston flourished. [71]
300 B.C. – Maize first grown in Eastern North America. 100 B.C. – A.D. 400 – The Hopewell tradition flourishes. 600 – Emergence of Mississippian culture. 700 – Use of the bow and arrow becomes widespread among peoples of Eastern North America. 1000 – Leif Ericson explores the east coast of North America. [1]
The question of independence from Britain did not arise as long as the colonies needed British military support against the French and Spanish powers. Those threats were gone by 1765. However, London continued to regard the American colonies as existing for the benefit of the mother country in a policy known as mercantilism. [34]
The British economy had begun to grow rapidly at the end of the 17th century and, by the mid-18th century, small factories in Britain were producing much more than the nation could consume. Britain found a market for their goods in the British colonies of North America, increasing her exports to that region by 360% between 1740 and 1770.
British North America comprised the colonial territories of the British Empire in North America from 1783 onwards. English colonisation of North America began in the 16th century in Newfoundland, then further south at Roanoke and Jamestown, Virginia, and more substantially with the founding of the Thirteen Colonies along the Atlantic coast of North America.
The British American colonies became part of the global British trading network, as the value tripled for exports from America to Britain between 1700 and 1754. The colonists were restricted in trading with other European powers, but they found profitable trade partners in the other British colonies, particularly in the Caribbean.
The exports were small-scale until the 1860s, when bad crops in Europe, and lower costs due to cheaper railroads and ocean transport, opened the European markets to cheap American wheat. The British in particular depended on American wheat during the 1860s for a fourth of their food supply, making the government reluctant to risk a cutoff if it ...
British America collectively refers to various European colonies in the Americas prior to the conclusion of the American Revolutionary War in 1783. The British monarchy of the Kingdom of England and Kingdom of Scotland—later named the Kingdom of Great Britain, of the British Isles and Western Europe—governed many colonies in the Americas beginning in 1585.