History of the United States of America
World History

History of the United States of America


History of the United States of America. Another seemingly impossible task for a short essay. Yet, it reads well and sums up American history in a reasonable fashion.

From the site:

When the London Company sent out its first expedition to begin colonizing Virginia on December 20, 1606, it was by no means the first European attempt to exploit North America. In 1564, for example, French Protestants (Huguenots) built a colony near what is now Jacksonville, Florida. This intrusion did not go unnoticed by the Spanish, who had previously claimed the region. The next year, the Spanish established a military post at St. Augustine; Spanish troops soon wiped out the French interlopers residing but 40 miles away.

Meanwhile, Basque, English, and French fishing fleets became regular visitors to the coasts from Newfoundland to Cape Cod. Some of these fishing fleets even set up semi-permanent camps on the coasts to dry their catches and to trade with local Indians, exchanging furs for manufactured goods. For the next two decades, Europeans' presence in North America was limited to these semi-permanent incursions. Then in the 1580s, the English tried to plant a permanent colony on Roanoke Island (on the outer banks of present-day North Carolina), but their effort was short-lived.

In the early 1600s, in rapid succession, the English began a colony (Jamestown) in Chesapeake Bay in 1607, the French built Quebec in 1608, and the Dutch began their interest in the region that became present-day New York. Within another generation, the Plymouth Company (1620), the Massachusetts Bay Company (1629), the Company of New France (1627), and the Dutch West India Company (1621) began to send thousands of colonists, including families, to North America. Successful colonization was not inevitable. Rather, interest in North America was a halting, yet global, contest among European powers to exploit these lands.




- Jamestown
Jamestown Jamestown was the first permanent English colony in the New World, founded in 1607 under the direction of the Virginia Company. Although the settlement struggled to survive at first, the discovery of tobacco made Jamestown a success and it remained...

- New Netherland
New Netherland This Dutch colonial outpost existed along the Hudson River from 1609 to 1664. A relatively small and ineffectual colony, it was known for its trade and diversity. It was eventually captured by the English and became the colony of New York....

- Sir Walter Raleigh
Sir Walter Raleigh was an English adventurer and early promoter of colonization. He organized the Roanoke colony in 1585, England’s first settlement in America. Raleigh was born in Devon in the west of England, a younger son of a poor but distinguished...

- Meeting Of Frontiers: Alaska
Meeting of Frontiers: Alaska - Offers timelines, pictures, and articles relating to Alaska as being a frontier where Russia and America met in the 18th and 19th centuries. The site is available in both English and Russian. Article topics include the Russian...

- History Of Canada
History of Canada. This is a good overview to the history of the North American nation of Canada. From the site: Canada, which has been inhabited by aboriginal peoples, known in Canada as the First Nations, for about 10,000 years, was first visited...



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