‘British North America and the Atlantic world 1660-1763.’

‘British North America and the Atlantic world 1660-1763.’

The British North American colonies diversified in this period, and they also became more uniformly and distinctively Anglo-American. Using evidence, explain the factors that promoted the development of a unified identity despite growth and diversification.

In the 1660s, the colonial enterprise patterns in the Americans became clear. The colonies of England became what is now Britain after the 1707 Act of Union with Scotland, with 1660-1763 becoming a period of growth and diversification (Armitage & Braddick, 2009). At this period, there was an explosion of slave imports to plantation colonies as a variety of the European natives from Ireland and other parts pushed together in fast-growing areas of neo- European settlement. There was also a coherent imperial vision for the American holdings, which grew slowly, and the colonies remained mostly independent of crown control.

Europe plunged into a period of warfare in 1689, which had a significant impact on America. The spilling of the war into North America, Spanish, British, and French colonies made the colonies engage deeper with neighboring Indians. The colonies further sought to employ the Indians as associates in their struggles to control North American territory (Armitage & Braddick, 2009). The Native American polities were also encountering dramatic transformations at this particular period, thus reshaping themselves to function more effectively concerning their neighboring European neighbors.

The non- English Europeans moved to the Atlantic in big numbers. There was an alteration of the ethnic landscape of Britain’s mainland by 115,000 migrants from Ireland and 100,000 Germans ( Armitage & Braddick, 2009). Each of the migrant groups struggled to sustain its identity and independence in a rapidly transforming landscape. For that reason, each group struggled to become more dominant; hence, later, they saw the need to unite. Other factors that contributed were the immigration, warfare, as well as trade, which created a way for rigorous interactions across Atlantic. The collaborations and cultural movements unified the increasingly different colonies of British North America.

References

Armitage, D., & Braddick, M. J. (Eds.). (2009). The British Atlantic World, 1500-1800. Macmillan International Higher Education.