English colonization of North America

English colonization of North America was the establishment and expansion of English settlements and political control across the continent, beginning in the sixteenth century.

Roanoke Colony: An English settlement on Roanoke Island that disappeared between 1587 and 1590. Its disappearance exposed the risks and uncertainty of England’s earliest settlement attempts.
Virginia Company: An English joint-stock company chartered to establish colonies in North America. Its investors financed Jamestown and sought returns from colonial resources.
Age of Discovery: The period of European overseas exploration and expansion beginning in the fifteenth century. English colonization formed part of this wider contest for overseas territory and wealth.
Indigenous peoples of the Eastern Woodlands: The diverse Native nations inhabiting the forested regions of eastern North America before and during colonization. Their diplomacy, resistance, and landholding shaped colonial survival and expansion.
Jamestown: The first permanent English settlement in North America, founded in Virginia in 1607. Its survival established a durable foothold for English expansion.
Headright system: A colonial land-grant system awarding acreage to people who paid for migrants’ passage. It encouraged wealthy planters to import labor and claim more land.
Protestant Reformation: A sixteenth-century movement that divided Western Christianity and produced Protestant churches. Religious conflict and reform shaped migration motives and English imperial identity.
King Philip's War: A 1675–1676 conflict between New England colonies and Native peoples led by Metacom. It marked a devastating struggle over colonial expansion and Indigenous sovereignty.
Plymouth Colony: An English colony founded in Massachusetts by Separatists in 1620. It exemplifies settlement driven by religious aims and migration.
Atlantic slave trade: The forced transportation and sale of enslaved Africans across the Atlantic Ocean. It supplied coerced labor that became central to plantation economies.

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