British North America comprised the colonial territories of Great Britain and later the United Kingdom in North America from 1783 onwards. English colonisation of North America began in the 16th century in Newfoundland, then further south at Roanoke and Jamestown, Virginia, and more substantially with the founding of the Thirteen Colonies along the Atlantic coast of North America.
Britain's colonial territories in North America were greatly expanded by the Treaty of Paris (1763), which formally concluded the Seven Years' War, referred to by the English colonies in North America as the French and Indian War, and by the French colonies as . With the ultimate acquisition of most of New France (), British territory in North America was more than doubled in size, and the exclusion of France also dramatically altered the political landscape of the continent.
The term British America was used to refer to the British Empire's colonial territories in North America prior to the United States Declaration of Independence, most famously in the 1774 address of Thomas Jefferson to the First Continental Congress entitled: A Summary View of the Rights of British America.
The term British North America was initially used following the subsequent 1783 Treaty of Paris, which concluded the American Revolutionary War and confirmed the independence of Great Britain's Thirteen Colonies that formed the United States of America. The terms British America and British North America continued to be used for Britain's remaining territories in North America, but the term British North America came to be used more consistently in connection with the provinces that would eventually form Canada, following the Report on the Affairs of British North America (1839), called the Durham Report.Lord Durham, 1839. "Report on the Affairs of British North America from the Earl of Durham, Her Majesty's High Commissioner"
The Dominion of Canada was formed under the British North America Act, 1867 ("BNA Act", "Constitution Act, 1867"). Following royal assent of the BNA Act, three of the provinces of British North America (New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and the Province of Canada (which would become the Canadian provinces of Ontario and Quebec)) joined to form "One Dominion under the Crown of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, with a Constitution similar in Principle to that of the United Kingdom," on July 1, 1867, the date of Canadian Confederation.
The Atlantic archipelago of Bermuda (originally administered by the Virginia Company and, with the Bahamas, considered with North America prior to 1783), was grouped with the Maritime provinces from 1783, but after the formation of the Dominion of Canada in 1867 and the achievement of dominion status by the colony of Newfoundland in 1907, Bermuda was thereafter administered generally with the colonies in the British West Indies (although the Church of England continued to place Bermuda under the Bishop of Newfoundland until 1919).
Over its duration, British North America comprised the British Empire's colonial territories in North America from 1783 to 1907, not including the Caribbean. These territories include those forming modern-day Canada and Bermuda, having also ceded what became all or large parts of six Midwestern U.S. states (Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and the northeastern part of Minnesota), which were formed out of the Northwest Territory, large parts of Maine, which had originally been within the French territory of Acadia, and very briefly, East Florida, West Florida, and the Bahamas.
Political divisions
When the Kingdom of England began its efforts to cross the Atlantic Ocean and settle in eastern North America in the late 16th century, it ignored the Kingdom of Spain's long-asserted claim of sovereignty over the entire continent as part of its world-wide Spanish Empire. Spain's similar claim to all of South America had been refuted when the Pope Alexander VI had divided the twin continents of the Americas between Spain and the Kingdom of Portugal in the 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas. Spain's area of settlement was limited to only the very southern and southwestern parts and coastal edges of the continent of North America, however, and it had little ability to enforce its sovereignty. Disregarding, as did Spain, the sovereignty of the indigenous nations, England claimed the entire North America continent at this point (though its western, northern, and southern boundaries were ill-defined, vague, and not yet clear), which it named Virginia in honour of the virgin queen, Elizabeth I.
England's first successful settlement in North America was Jamestown, established by the Virginia Company of London in 1607, with the second being the Atlantic Ocean archipelago of Bermuda (or the Somers Isles), added to the territory of the same company in 1612 (the company having been in occupation of the archipelago since the 1609 wreck there of its flagship, the Sea Venture). Two areas of settlement in North America had been laid out in 1606, with the name Virginia coming to connote the southern area, between Latitude 34° and Latitude 41° North, administered by the Virginia Company of London. The short form of that company's name was the London Company, but it came to be known popularly as the Virginia Company. The northern area of settlement, which extended to 45° North (an area that would come to be known as New England), was to be administered and settled by the Virginia Company of Plymouth (or Plymouth Company), which established the Popham Colony in what is now Maine in 1606, but this was quickly abandoned and Plymouth Company's territory was absorbed into the London Company's.
Over the course of the 17th century, Virginia would come to refer only to the polity that is today the Commonwealth of Virginia on the East Coast of the United States of America, with later areas of settlement on the continent considered separate colonies under their own local administrations and all collectively designated as America (less often as North America). The Kingdom of England (including the adjacent Principality of Wales) and the Kingdom of Scotland remained separate nations until their 1707 unification to form the Kingdom of Great Britain (1707–1801). Scotland's attempts to establish its own colonies in North America and Central America before 1707 had been short-lived, but England brought substantial trans-Atlantic possessions into the new union when English America became British America. In 1775, on the eve of the American Revolution and parallel. American Revolutionary War (1775–1783). British America included territories in the Western Hemisphere northeast of New Spain, apart from the islands and claims of the British West Indies in the larger West Indies islands chain in the Caribbean Sea, near the Gulf of Mexico. These were:
Bermuda British Arctic Territories The Floridas (East and West Florida, administered separately) Indian Reserve Newfoundland North-Western Territory Nova Scotia Quebec Rupert's Land (the territory of the Hudson's Bay Company) St. John's Island (later Prince Edward Island) Thirteen Colonies (each one administered separately, soon to become the United States): Connecticut Colony Delaware Colony Province of Georgia Province of Maryland Province of Massachusetts Bay Province of New Hampshire Province of New Jersey Province of New York Province of North Carolina Province of Pennsylvania Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations Province of South Carolina Colony of Virginia
Bermuda The Somers Isles, or Bermuda, had been occupied by the Virginia Company since its flagship, the Sea Venture, was wrecked there in 1609, and the archipelago was officially added to the company's territory in 1612, then managed by a spin-off, the Somers Isles Company, until 1684, but maintained close links with Virginia and Carolina Colony (which had subsequently been settled from Bermuda under William Sayle in 1670). The British Government originally grouped Bermuda with North America (the archipelago is approximately east-southeast of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina (with Cape Point on Hatteras Island being the nearest landfall); south of Cape Sable Island, Nova Scotia; northeast of Cuba, and due north of the British Virgin Islands.
Although Bermudians, with close ties of blood and trade to the southern continental American colonies (especially Virginia and South Carolina), tended towards the rebels early in the American Revolutionary War / American War of Independence (1775–1783), the control of the adjacent and surrounding Atlantic Ocean by the Royal Navy meant there was no likelihood of the colony joining the rebellion. Although the rebels were supplied with ships and gunpowder by the Bermudians, Bermudian privateers soon turned aggressively on rebel shipping. After the acknowledgement by the British Government of the independence of the former thirteen rebellious continental colonies in the negotiated Treaty of Paris of 1783, finally recognising the independence of the new United States of America which it originally declared on July 4, 1776. Bermuda was grouped regionally by the British Government with The Maritimes and Newfoundland and Labrador provinces of modern eastern Canada, and, more widely, with British North America.
Following the world-wide war, the Royal Navy spent a dozen years of peace-time charting the barrier reef around Bermuda to discover the channel that enabled access to the northern lagoon, the Great Sound, and Hamilton Harbour. Once this had been located, a base was established (initially at St. George's before the construction of the Royal Naval Dockyard, Bermuda) in 1794, when Vice-Admiral Sir George Murray, Commander-in-Chief of the new River St. Lawrence and Coast of America and North America and West Indies Station, set up the first Admiralty House, Bermuda, at Rose Hill, St. George's. In 1813, the area of command became the North America Station again, with the West Indies falling under the Jamaica Station, and in 1816 it was renamed the North America and Lakes of Canada Station. The headquarters was initially in Bermuda during the winter and Halifax during the summer (both of which were designated as Imperial fortresses, along with Gibraltar and Malta), but Bermuda, became the year-round headquarters of the Station in 1821, when the area of command became the North America and West Indies Station.Marilyn Gurney, The Kings Yard, Maritime Command Museum, Halifax. The Royal Naval Dockyard, Halifax, was finally transferred to the Government of the Dominion of Canada in 1907.The Andrew and The Onions: The Story of The Royal Navy in Bermuda, 1795–1975, by Lieutenant-Commander B. Ian D. Stranack. Bermuda Maritime Museum Press