The Historical Geography of Europe, Vol. I, Text

by Edward A. Freeman

By the Peace of Paris the Thirteen Colonies were acknowledged as independent States. The great work of English settlement on foreign soil was brought to perfection. The new and free English land beyond the Ocean took in the whole temperate region of the North American coast, all between the peninsula of Acadia to the north and the other peninsula of Florida to the south. Both of these last lands were English possessions at the time of the War of Independence, but neither of them had any share in the work. ♦Nova Scotia, 1713.♦ Acadia, under the name of Nova Scotia, had been ceded by France in the interval between the settlement of Pennsylvania and the settlement of Georgia. ♦Conquest of Canada, 1759-1763.♦ Next came the conquest of Canada, in which the men of the colonies played their part. ♦The French barrier at Alleghany.♦ Hitherto the English colonies had been shut in to the West by the French claim to the line of the Alleghany mountains. The Treaty of Paris took away this bugbear, and left the whole land as far as the Mississippi open to the enterprise of the English colonists. Thus, when the Thirteen States started on their independent career, the whole land between the great lakes, the Ocean, and the Mississippi, was open to them. ♦Florida again Spanish, 1781-1821.♦ Florida indeed, first as an English, then again as a Spanish possession, cut them off from the Gulf of Mexico. The city of New Orleans remained, first a Spanish, then a French, outpost east of the Mississippi, and the possessions still held by England kept them from the mouth of the Saint Lawrence. ♦Extension to the West.♦ But within these limits, such of the old States as were allowed by their geographical position might extend themselves to the west, and new States might be formed. Both processes went on, and two of the barriers formed by European powers were removed. ♦Louisiana, 1803.
Florida, 1821.♦ The purchase of Louisiana from France, the acquisition of Florida from Spain, gave the States the sea-board of the Gulf of Mexico, and allowed their extension to the Pacific. The details of that extension, partly by natural growth, partly at the expense of the Spanish element in North America, it is hardly needful to go through here. ♦A new English nation.♦ But, out of the English settlements on the North-American coast, a new English nation has arisen, none the less English, in a true view of history, because it no longer owes allegiance to the crown of Great Britain. But the power thus formed, exactly like earlier confederations in Europe, lacks a name. ♦Lack of a name.♦ The United States of America is hardly a geographical or a national name, any more than the names of the Confederates and the United Provinces. In the two European cases common usage gave the name of a single member of the Union to the whole, and in the case of Switzerland the popular name at last became the formal name. In the American case, on the other hand, popular usage speaks of the Confederation by the name of the whole continent of which its territory forms part. ♦Use of the word America.♦ For several purposes, the words America and American are always understood as shutting out Canada and Mexico, to say nothing of the southern American continent. For some other purposes, those names still take in the whole American continent, north and south. But it is easier to see the awkwardness of the usual nomenclature than to suggest any improvement on it.

♦Second English nation in North America.♦

While one set of events in the eighteenth century created an independent English nation on North American soil, another set of events in the same century, earlier in date but later in their results, has led to the formation in its immediate neighbourhood of another English nation which still keeps its allegiance to the English crown. ♦Dependent confederacy.♦ A confederation of states, practically independent in their internal affairs, but remaining subjects of a distant sovereign, is a novelty in political science. ♦British North America.♦ Such is the Confederation of British North America. But this dependent Confederation did not arise out of colonization in the same sense as the independent Confederation to the south of it. The central land which gives it its character is the conquered land of Canada. ♦New Brunswick, &c.♦ Along with Canada came the possession of the smaller districts which received the names of New Brunswick and Prince Edward’s Island, districts which were at first joined to Nova Scotia, but which afterwards became distinct colonies. ♦The Dominion, 1867.♦ Now they are joined with the Dominion of Canada, which, like the United States, grows by the incorporation of new states and territories. ♦British Columbia, 1871.
Rupertsland.♦ The addition of British Columbia has carried the Confederation to the Pacific; that of Rupertsland carries it indefinitely northward towards the pole. This second English-speaking power in North America, stretches, like the elder one, from Ocean to Ocean. ♦Newfoundland, 1713.♦ Newfoundland alone, a possession secured to England after many debates at the same time as Nova Scotia, remains distinct.

♦The West Indies. Barbadoes, 1605.♦

Of the British possessions in the West Indies a few only, among them Barbadoes, the earliest of all, were colonies in the same sense as Virginia and Massachusetts. ♦Jamaica, 1655.♦ The greater number, Jamaica at their head, were won by conquest from other European powers. No new English nation, like the American and the Canadian, has grown up in them. ♦Smaller settlements.♦ Still less is there any need to dwell on the Bahamas, the Falkland Islands, or the South-American possession of British Guiana.

§ 6. Other Colonies and Possessions of England.

♦Colonies in the southern hemisphere.♦

The story of the North-American colonies may be both compared and contrasted with the story of two great groups of colonies in the southern hemisphere. ♦Australia.♦ In Australia and the other great southern islands, a body of English colonies have arisen, the germs at least of yet another English nation, but which have not as yet reached either independence or confederation. ♦South Africa.♦ In South Africa, another group of possessions and colonies, beginning, like Canada, in conquest from another European power, seems to be feeling its way towards confederation, while one part has in a manner stumbled into independence.

The beginning of English settlement in the greatest of islands began in the years which immediately followed the establishment of American independence. ♦New South Wales, 1787.♦ First came New South Wales, on the eastern coast, designed originally as a penal settlement. ♦Western Australia, 1829.♦ It outgrew this stage, and another penal settlement was founded in Western Australia. ♦South Australia, 1836.
Victoria, 1837.
Queensland, 1859.♦ Then colonization spread into the intermediate region of Southern Australia (which however stretches right through the island to its northern coast) into the district called Victoria, south-west of the original settlement, and lastly, into Queensland to the north-east. ♦Colonies Act, 1850.♦ Since the middle of the present century all these colonies have gradually established constitutions which give them full internal independence. ♦Tasmania, 1804.
1839.♦ South of the great island lies one smaller, but still vast, that of Van Diemen’s Land, now Tasmania, which was settled earlier than any Australian settlement except New South Wales. ♦Six colonies, 1852.
United, 1875.♦ And to the east lie the two great islands of New Zealand, where six English colonies founded at different times have been united into one.

♦South Africa.♦