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The decolonization of the Americas occurred over several centuries as most of the countries in the Americas gained their independence from European rule. The American Revolution was the first in the Americas, and the British defeat in the American Revolutionary War (1775–83) was a victory against a great power, aided by France and Spain, Britain's enemies.
The French and Indian War took on a new significance for the British North American colonists when William Pitt the Elder decided that major military resources needed to be devoted to North America to win the war against France. For the first time, the continent became one of the main theaters of what could be termed a "world war".
Major waves of decolonization occurred in the aftermath of the First World War and most prominently after the Second World War. Critical scholars extend the meaning beyond independence or equal rights for colonized peoples to include broader economic, cultural and psychological aspects of the colonial experience.
The Roanoke Colony (/ ˈ r oʊ ə n oʊ k / ROH-ə-nohk) was an attempt by Sir Walter Raleigh to found the first permanent English settlement in North America. The colony was founded in 1585, but when it was visited by a ship in 1590, the colonists had inexplicably disappeared.
World map of colonization at the end of the Second World War in 1945. Although the U.S. had first opposed itself to colonial empires, the Cold War concerns about Soviet influence in the Third World caused it to downplay its advocacy of popular sovereignty and decolonization.
Plymouth Colony (sometimes Plimouth) was the first permanent English colony in New England from 1620 and the third permanent English colony in America, after Newfoundland and the Jamestown Colony. It was settled by the passengers on the Mayflower at a location that had previously been surveyed and named by Captain John Smith .
In 1584, the colonists established the first permanent English colony in North America, [12] but the colonists were poorly prepared for life in the New World, and by 1590, the colonists had disappeared. There are a variety of theories as to what happened to the colonists there.
American Samoa was acquired by the United States in 1900 after the end of the Second Samoan Civil War. [5] The United States purchased the U.S. Virgin Islands from Denmark in 1917. [6] Puerto Rico and Guam remain territories, and the Philippines became independent in 1946, after being a major theater of World War II.