Colonization of america

Fortunately the old European laws lost all meaning on the new continent. Many people in bondage broke away from their masters and went into the wilderness. Those who made their way through the wilderness were called frontiersmen. A frontiersman lived by himself. He was either a hunter, or a boatman; or a wandering cowboy and mustang catcher or a squatter who felled trees, built himself a hut and cultivated land. The frontiersman obeyed no written laws. He obeyed only the discipline of frontier life, that is to say his own rules of behavior.

In the 18^th century a bitter struggle was fought between the ruling classes of England, France, Holland and Spain to determine to which country the American continent should belong. In the end England, then the richest and strongest maritime power, defeated her rivals and became supreme ruler of the North-American continent.

But the New World had already been inhabited long before the Europeans came. The Red Indians, the native population, were the real Americans. The natives met the first Europeans with hospitality. But when the Indians were cheated and plundered and driven off their hunting-grounds, naturally they answered their enemy with blood and fire. The way the Indians were annihilated by the white race constitutes one of the darkest pages in the history of the mankind. At first the colonies tried to capture and use Indians. But the American Indians never made good slaves: in captivity they died like flies. So the colonists began to use the prisons of Europe and also Negroes from Africa.

During the following decades the black population of America increased rapidly. Not only Negroes were bought and sold. The shipping companies also organized the kidnapping of white children twelve and thirteen years of age. Another type of white slaves imported to America were poor wretches from the cities and villages of Ireland, Scotland and other countries. These were poor artisans and peasants, unable to pay their passage to America, and ready to risk everything o save their families from starvation. This buying and selling of immigrants continued long after the colonies became the United States.

The american revolution or war of independence

The development of industry in such of the English colonies as New York and Pennsylvania was constantly restricted by the ruling classes of the mother country. The British bourgeoisie did not want the colonies have an economy of their own, fearing they would develop into dangerous rival. But by the middle of the 18^th century a generation of the bourgeoisie had grown up in America who had lost any feeling of blood with the British and for whom America was their Homeland. They had enormous rebellious influence in the colonies that grew from year to year. In the second half of the century the colonial bourgeoisie became powerful enough to start armed struggle against Britain. The ideological movement known as the American Enlightenment was a critical precursor to the American Revolution. Chief among the ideas of the American Enlightenment were the concepts of liberalism, democracy, republicanism, and religious tolerance. Collectively, the belief in these concepts by a growing number of American colonists began to foster an intellectual environment which would lead to a new sense of political and social identity. In 1774 a Continental Congress in Philadelphia called together representatives from all the different colonies and unity of the thirteen colonies was established.

The first armed conflict between England and America occurred on April 19, 1775. British troops attempted to capture military stores at Lexington and Concord, but the American militia defended them and won their first victory. It was George Washington’s army.

On the 4^th of July 1776 the colonies declared themselves a Democratic Republic and later adopted a Constitution.

In 1778 an Alliance arranged with France brought a French fleet to the American shores and helped defeat the English on the sea. In a treaty signed on September 3, 1783 England officially declared that the war had ended. The American colonies became the United States.