Ireland, the sister island of Britain, has thus been united with Britain into a single kingdom. Man, lying between the two, remains a distinct dependency. ♦The Norman Islands. 1205.♦ This last is also still the position of that part of the Norman duchy which clave to its own dukes, which never became French, but always remained Norman. It might be a question what was the exact position of Guernsey, Jersey, Alderney, Sark, and their smaller neighbours, when the English kings took the titles of the French kingdom and actually held the Norman duchy. Practically the islands have, during all changes, remained attached to the English crown; but they have never been incorporated with the kingdom. ♦Other European dependencies, Aquitaine, &c.♦ Other more distant European lands have been, some still are, in the same position. Such were Aquitaine, Ponthieu, and Calais, as fixed by the Peace of Bretigny. Since the loss of Aquitaine, England has had no considerable continental dominion in Europe, but she has from time to time held several islands and detached points. ♦Outposts and islands.♦ Such are Calais, Boulogne, Dunkirk, Gibraltar, Minorca, Malta, Heligoland, all of which have been spoken of in their natural geographical places. To these we may add Tangier, which has more in common with the possession of Gibraltar and Minorca than with the English settlements in the further parts of Africa. Of these points, Gibraltar, Heligoland, and Malta, are still held by England. ♦Greek possessions, Ionian Islands, 1814-1864.♦ The virtual English possession of the Ionian Islands made England for a while a sharer in the fragments of the Eastern Roman Empire. ♦Cyprus, 1878.♦ And later still she has again put on the same character by the occupation, on whatever terms, of another Greek and Imperial land, the island of Cyprus.
§ 5. The American Colonies of England.
♦Colonies of England.♦
England, like France and Holland, became a colonizing power by choice. Extension over barbarian lands was not a necessity, as in the case of Russia, nor did it spring naturally out of earlier circumstances, as in the case of Portugal. But the colonizing enterprise of England has done a greater work than the colonizing enterprise of any other European power. The greatest colony of England—for in a worthier use of language the word colony would imply independence rather than dependence[93]—is that great Confederation which is to us what Syracuse was to Corinth, what Milêtos was to Athens, what Gades and Carthage were to the cities of the older Canaan. ♦The United States.♦ The United States of America, a vaster England beyond the Ocean, an European power, on a level with the greatest European powers, planted beyond the bounds of Europe, form the great work of English and European enterprise in non-European lands.
♦First English settlements in North America, 1497.♦
The settlements which grew into the United States were not the first English possessions in North America, but they were the first which really deserved to be called colonies. The first discoveries of all led only to the establishment of the Newfoundland fisheries. ♦Attempts of Raleigh, 1585-1587.♦ Raleigh’s attempts at real colonization ninety years later only pointed the way to something more lasting. ♦The Thirteen Colonies.♦ In the seventeenth century began the planting of the thirteen settlements which won their independence. Of these the earliest and the latest, the most southern and the most northern, began through English colonization in the strictest sense. ♦Virginia, 1607.♦ First came Virginia. ♦The New England States, 1620-1638.♦ Then followed the Puritan colonization much further to the north which founded the New England states. The shiftings among these settlements, from Plymouth to Maine, the unions, the divisions, the colonies of colonies—the Epidamnos and the Sinôpê of the New World—the various and varying relations between the different settlements, read like a piece of old Greek or of Swiss history.[94] ♦1629-1692.♦ By the end of the seventeenth century they had arranged themselves into four separate colonies. ♦1820.♦ These were Massachusetts, formed by the union of Massachusetts and Plymouth, with its northern dependency of Maine, which became a separate State long after the Revolution; New Hampshire, annexed by Massachusetts and after a while separated from it; Connecticut, formed by the union of Connecticut and Newhaven; Rhode Island, formed by the union of Rhode Island and Providence. These New England States form a distinct geographical group, with a marked political and religious character of their own. ♦The Southern Colonies.♦ Meanwhile, at some distance to the south, around Virginia as their centre, grew up another group of colonies, with a history and character in many ways unlike those of New England. ♦Maryland. 1646.
Carolina. 1650-1663.
Divided, 1720.♦ To the north of Virginia arose the proprietary colony of Maryland; to the south arose Carolina, afterwards divided into North and South. South Carolina for a long while marked the end of English settlement to the south, as Maine did to the north.
♦Intermediate space occupied by the United Provinces and Sweden.
English Conquest of New Netherlands, 1664.♦
But between these two groups of English colonies in the strictest sense lay a region in which English settlement had to take the form of conquest from another European power. Earlier than any English settlement except Virginia, the great colony of the United Provinces had arisen on Long Island and the neighbouring mainland. ♦New Netherlands, 1614.♦ It bore the name of New Netherlands, with its capital of New Amsterdam. ♦New Sweden, 1658.♦ To the south, on the shores of Delaware Bay, the other great power of the seventeenth century founded the colony of New Sweden. Three European nations, closely allied in race, speech, and creed, were thus for a while established side by side on the eastern coasts of America. ♦Union of New Sweden with New Netherlands, 1655.♦ But the three settlements were fated to merge together, and that by force of arms. A local war added New Sweden to New Netherlands; a war between England and the United Provinces gave New Netherlands to England. ♦New York.♦ New Amsterdam became New York, and gave its name to the colony which was to become the greatest State of the Union. ♦1674.♦ Ten years later, in the next war between the two colonizing powers, the new English possession was lost and won again.
Meanwhile the gap which was still left began to be filled up by other English settlements. ♦The Jerseys. 1665.
1702.♦ East and West Jersey began as two distinct colonies, which were afterwards united into one. ♦Pennsylvania, 1682.
Delaware, 1703.♦ The great colony of Pennsylvania next arose, from which the small one of Delaware was parted off twenty years later. Pennsylvania was thus the last of the original settlements of the seventeenth century, which in the space of nearly eighty years had been formed fast after one another. ♦Georgia, 1733.♦ Fifty years after the work of the benevolent Penn came the work of the no less benevolent Oglethorpe; Georgia, to the south of all, now filled up the tale of the famous Thirteen, the fitting number, it would seem, for a Federal power, whether in the Old World or in the New.
♦Independence of the United States, 1783.♦