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:For colonies not part of the 13 colonies see European colonization of the Americas or British colonization of the Americas.Starting in the late 16th century, the British began to colonize North America. The first attempts, notably the Colony of Roanoke, resulted in failure, but successful colonies were soon established. The colonists who came to the New World were by no means a homogeneous mix, but a variety of different social and religious groups which settled in different locations on the seaboard. The Quakers of Pennsylvania, the Puritans of New England, the gold-hungry settlers of Jamestown, and the convicts of Georgia each came to the new continent for vastly different reasons, and they created colonies with very different socialThe adjective social implies that the verb or noun to which it is applied is somehow more communicative, cooperative, and moderated by contact with human beings, than if it were omitted. That is, it implies that larger society has played some role in defi, religious, political, and economic structures.
In generalizing the regions of development in colonial America, historians typically recognize four regions in the lands that later became the eastern United States: from north to south, New England, the Middle ColoniesThe Middle Colonies were a part of the former Thirteen Colonies of the 18th century. They consisted of the future states of New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware and sometimes Maryland. The middle colonies were the most ethinically and religously d, the Chesapeake BayThe Chesapeake Bay is the largest estuary in the United States. It lies off the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by Virginia and Maryland. The Chesapeake Bay's watershed covers 64,000 milesē (165,760 kmē) in the District of Columbia and parts of six states: New and Southern ColoniesThe Southern Colonies were four (sometimes five) of the Thirteen Colonies which eventually founded the United States of America. The Southern Colonies are generally considered to be Georgia Colony, North Carolina Colony, South Carolina Colony (originally. Some historians add a fifth region: the frontierThe Frontier in the United States and Canada was the term applied until the end of the 19th century to the zone of unsettled land outside the region of existing settlements of European immigrants and their descendants. In a broad sense, the notion of the, which had certain common features no matter what sort of colony it sprang from. By the late 18th century, these different colonies found themselves more closely united than ever before, at odds with the British government on issues of taxation and representation.
1 Motives for Exploration and Colonization
1.1 Europe
During the 15th and 16th centuries, Europe emerged from the Middle Ages and entered the Renaissance, a development that encouraged exploration and colonization in many ways. A revival in classical learning sparked an interest in geography and an intellectual curiosity about the world that had subsided during the Middle Ages. At the same time, the intellectual growth of the Renaissance led to the development of seafaring technologies needed to make long voyages across open water.
As the " New Monarchs" began to forge nations, they acquired the degree of centralized wealth and power necessary to begin systematic attempts at exploration. Also, as the economy of Europe began to revive, it became clear that the first nation to find a direct trade route to the "Indies" would benefit immensely. It was in this atmosphere that Christopher Columbus left Spain on his famous westward voyage. He sought for Asia, but the lands he came upon were found to belong to an entirely different landmass. Spain and Portugal quickly mounted an effort of colonization and conquest. Within a few years, they had divided up lucrative South and Central America.
In the 16th and 17th centuries, a new generation of colonial powers arose: Britain, France, and the Netherlands. The lands that now make up the United States presented themselves as an attractive place for these new powers to establish colonies. Though these northerly lands were relatively close to Europe, Spain and Portugal had taken little interest in them, so as far as the Europeans were concerned, they were still free for the taking.
