- published: 07 Feb 2013
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British colonization of the Americas (including colonization by both the Kingdom of England and the Kingdom of Scotland before the Acts of Union which created the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707) began in 1607 in Jamestown, Virginia and reached its peak when colonies had been established throughout the Americas. The English, and later the British, were among the most important colonizers of the Americas, and their American empire came to rival the Spanish American colonies in military and economic might.
This English, Scottish, and British colonization caused dramatic upheaval among the indigenous civilizations in the Americas, both directly through the use of imported military force and indirectly through cultural disruption and introduced diseases. Relations between the colonists and natives varied from constructive trade to armed conflict. Many of the indigenous societies had developed a warrior class and had a long history of warfare. The rapidity, silence, and ferocity of their war parties proved devastating against the colonial style of waging war, but the colonials generally emerged successful in the long term. Like the French, trade with the natives was an important part of English and British colonial policy, but they also heavily promoted settlement and development.
The Americas, or America, are lands in the Western hemisphere, also known as the New World.
In the English language, the Americas refers to the landmasses of North America and South America with their associated islands and regions, whereas America, in current usage, usually refers to the United States of America.
The Americas cover 8.3% of the Earth's total surface area (28.4% of its land area) and contain about 13.5% of the human population (about 900 million people).
The specifics of Paleo-Indian migration to and throughout the Americas, including the exact dates and routes traveled, are subject to ongoing research and discussion. The traditional theory has been that these early migrants moved into the Beringia land bridge between eastern Siberia and present-day Alaska around 40,000–17,000 years ago, when sea levels were significantly lowered due to the Quaternary glaciation. These people are believed to have followed herds of now-extinct pleistocene megafauna along ice-free corridors that stretched between the Laurentide and Cordilleran ice sheets. Another route proposed is that, either on foot or using primitive boats, they migrated down the Pacific Northwest coast to South America. Evidence of the latter would since have been covered by a sea level rise of hundreds of meters following the last ice age.
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