For the first century and a half of its history, North America was a European colony, but a colony of a special kind. In fact, during those centuries, almost all known non-European territories in the world were colonies of European powers—Spain, Portugal, Britain, France, and Holland. Civilizationally, Europe was several centuries ahead of the rest of the world; capitalist relations were already emerging in Europe, while the local populations of the colonies were often at a primitive stage. Europeans fired cannons and muskets, while the locals responded with bows and spears. As a rule, an overseas colony was a backward, raw materials-producing appendage of the European metropolis. In North America, the opposite occurred almost immediately.

Columbus first reached the shores of America (or more precisely, the Caribbean islands) in 1492. Despite Spain's efforts to maintain a monopoly on geographical discoveries on the new continent, the next hundred years saw the colonization of America by various European countries. Columbus's direct followers, the Spanish and Portuguese, were attracted by the gold-rich South and Central America. Their greed, treachery, and cruelty toward the native population constituted one of the saddest chapters in human history.

North America, the territory of today's United States, was being settled by northern Europeans, and the picture there was significantly different. In the north, there were no riches to plunder and carry off, but there were fertile lands exceptionally suitable for farming, forests rich in game, seas teeming with fish, convenient bays, and navigable rivers leading from the ocean inland. Those who wanted to start life anew and who understood that they would have to work for their future flocked here.

In a sense, these were people armed with the most promising skills and experience in historical terms: a flair for commerce, an entrepreneurial spirit, a knowledge of the most modern crafts and, as we now say, technologies. These people were, on average, more courageous, decisive, and broad-minded; they set out for a new continent, leaving behind in the Old World everything that would hinder development and progress in Europe for several centuries to come: feudal landownership, hereditary aristocracy, class distinctions, autocratic rulers, church privileges, inter-confessional hostility, inter-ethnic strife, and so on and so forth.

Most early settlers failed to survive the hardships of their first winter in their new home. But gradually, one after another, stable settlements emerged and grew, developing into towns and cities. Life in the New World was international from the very beginning: colonies of British immigrants coexisted with colonies of Germans, Dutch, and other Europeans. Several years of crop failure in, say, Ireland, led to an influx of Irish settlers and the formation of new Irish settlements alongside existing German and English settlements. The metropolitan powers—Spain, England, and Holland—feuded among themselves over the right to call the North American colonies their own and to tax them, but within the colonies themselves, there was no point in creating any distinctions based on nationality.

It's worth keeping in mind that the 16th and early 17th centuries in Europe were precisely the time of the Reformation, a time of brutal and bloody religious wars between Catholics and Protestants—recall, for example, the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre or the historical plot of the novel "Till Eulenspiegel." Therefore, among the first wave of colonists, many came to America not so much for wealth as for religious freedom, for the right to live as they wished. These were, as a rule, patriarchally minded, law-abiding, very hardworking, and modest in their daily lives. They lived in communities, built fair relations with the Indians, and rejected slavery.

Many settlers lacked the money to make the crossing, so they entered into what was known as indentured servitude: a company would transport them to America, and they would essentially become its slaves for five to seven years, working for food and shelter. After completing the required period, the indentured servitor became free: as severance pay, he received 20 acres of land (the Carolina standard), an axe, two hoes, and two barrels of seed corn, and began working for himself. If he and his children were diligent, the next generation, the grandchildren, would become quite prosperous. Incidentally, some African Americans also arrived in America, in its northern territories, under similar indentured servitude, and after working the required period, they became free.

The multi-ethnic, multi-religious population of the colonies grew rapidly and rapidly grew wealthy. In the mid-1600s, the total population of the colonial settlements numbered only a few thousand. By the mid-1700s, 1,5 million Europeans were living on the Atlantic coast of North America.

It was perfectly clear that sooner or later the American colonies, rapidly outpacing the British Empire in their development, would rebel and fight for independence . This is precisely what happened in the 1770s, when the English King George III, with his shortsighted and arrogant actions, provoked discontent among the American population with the existing authorities. Thoughtful and energetic individuals—George Washington, the brothers Samuel and John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, James Madison, and others—transformed this popular sentiment into an organized movement and brought the struggle for independence to its conclusion.

Pavel Vereshchagin