Chapter 4
The Original Thirteen Colonies.
The first Europeans went to the “New World”, the American Continent, in groups. Some of them left Europe because of bad economy. Others left to have religious freedom.
In America they settled in communities. These were called colonies at that time. They were relatively small and far away from each other.
250 000 people lived in these communities around the year 1700. They were first founded as individual settlements and had a tradition of self-government. There was no feeling of unity between them.
This was seen in the 1750s when England tried to form a union between the thirteen colonies. The goal was to unite the colonists. Both England and France wanted to have colonies in America. A war broke out between them on the American continent. England wanted to have the thirteen colonies on her side in the conflict. That is why England wanted to unite the colonies. The colonies were very much against giving up their right of self-government, so the plan failed.
The English Parliament ruled the colonies at this time. The colonies were to produce raw materials for England. Then the products would be made in England and sold back to the colonies. Only English companies had the right to trade with the colonies.
The control of the trade did not create any problems for the colonies. Smuggling and illegal production made them self-dependant around 1750. The colonists had developed their own ship industry. That made it possible for them to sell grain, lumber, meat, fish and oil from whaling where they wanted.
England won the war against France in 1763. The colonists had both the peace and the products they needed to live a good life. England had paid the cost of the war. Keeping soldiers in America was expensive for England. She had also lost a lot of money on the illegal trade. Now it was time to make the colonies pay part of the costs.
Every time people quarrel about money, the result is trouble. In this case it ended in the American Revolution. 13 years after the quarrel started, the colonies had formed a new nation, the USA.