British America

British America collectively refers to various colonies of Great Britain and its predecessors states 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.

From 1607, numerous permanent English settlements were made, ultimately reaching from Hudson Bay, to the Mississippi River and the Caribbean Sea. Much of these territories were occupied by indigenous peoples, whose populations declined due to epidemics, wars, and massacres. In the Atlantic slave trade, England and other European empires shipped Africans to the Americas for labor in their colonies. Slavery became essential to colonial production, as on Barbados, Jamaica, and other sugar islands.

Colonial projects expanded. In 1664, England took the New Netherland colony from the Dutch Republic. In the 1680s, Britain and France began frequent wars over colonies and trade, including their overlapping territorial claims in British America and New France, and relations with the Iroquois. In Queen Anne's War (1702–1713), the British took Newfoundland and the Hudson Bay area from the French.