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However, the British were saddled with huge debts following the French and Indian War. As much of the British debt had been generated by the defense of the colonies, British leaders felt that the colonies should contribute more funds, and they began imposing taxes such as the Sugar Act 1764. [96]
Even when the English colonies around the world became the British Empire, and regular forces began to become available for garrison duty, militias were still a vital part of Great Britain's military power in the Americas, and British victory over Spain and France during the Seven Years' War, and its resulting hegemony in North America, could ...
List of conflicts in the British America is a timeline of events that includes Indian wars, battles, skirmishes massacres and other related items that occurred in Britain's American territory up to 1783 when British America was formally ended by the Treaty of Paris and replaced by British North America and the United States.
In 1642, after the English Civil War began, a sixth of the male colonists returned to England to fight for Parliament, and many stayed, since Oliver Cromwell was himself a Puritan. [21] In 1643, most of the colonies formed the New England Confederation, a defensive alliance.
Fresh militia poured gunfire into the British ranks from a distance, and individual homeowners began to fight from their own property. Marksmen were also concealed in some homes, forcing the British to clear their path of retreat house by house, a soldier's nightmare.
Britain began to view the American war for independence as merely one front in a wider war, [79] and the British chose to withdraw troops from America to reinforce the British colonies in the Caribbean, which were under threat of Spanish or French invasion. British commander Sir Henry Clinton evacuated Philadelphia and returned to New York City.
In the British and French colonies, most colonists arrived after 1700. They cleared land, built houses and outbuildings, and worked on the large plantations that dominated export agriculture. Many were involved in the labor-intensive cultivation of tobacco, the first cash crop of Virginia.
Now at peace with its main rival, English attention shifted from preying on other nations' colonial infrastructures to the business of establishing its own overseas colonies. [22] The British Empire began to take shape during the early 17th century, with the English settlement of North America and the smaller islands of the Caribbean, and the ...