-
Jamestown was the first permanent English settlement in America and was established by the London Company in southeast Virginia. -
The Virginia Company established the House of Burgesses, a limited representative body composed of white landowners that first met in Jamestown. That same year, a Dutch slave ship sold twenty Africans to the Virginia colonists. Southern slavery was born. -
The King of England grants a charter to a group of Puritans to allow them to form a colony along the Massachusetts Bay. The Puritans form the colony of Massachusetts as a place to spread their religion and extend the empire of Great Britain.
-
The first colonists from England to arrive on the western shore of Maryland call it St. Mary's. George Calvert, the first Lord of Baltimore, is acting under a royal charter to create a colony to serve as a refuge for Catholics.
-
After his exile from Massachusetts, Roger Williams created a settlement called Providence, which will be the capital of Rhode Island.
-
With the Duke of York in control of the former Dutch trading post, he renames it New York. The city the Dutch called New Amsterdam becomes New York City.
-
This war brings a decisive end to Native American power in New England.
-
Bacon's Rebellion grew out of tensions between Native Americans and English settlers as well as tensions between wealthy English landowners and the poor settlers who continually pushed west into territory controlled by Native Americans. Bacon writes the "Declaration of the People of Virginia". -
Glorious Revolution ultimately changed how England was governed, giving Parliament more power over the monarchy and planting seeds for the beginnings of a political democracy.