The big picture


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We, like Taylor, have been approaching colonial American history in a regional manner – jumping from North to South to Middle colonies as they developed.  This has been largely because these regions developed separately from one another – in any given year, someone in Plymouth mightn’t know what someone in Jamestown was up to.  This week, that begins to change, as the British colonies in North America begin to cohere.  In the spirit of that cohesion, I thought it might be worthwhile to give you all a “big picture” view of what we’ve been studying – so here are two visualizations.  The first is a timeline of European colonialism in North America from 1492 to the American Revolution.  The different colors represent different imperial powers – Red is Spain, Purple is Dutch, Blue is England, Maroon is Sweden and Green is French:

Big picture colonial timeline

The second is a map of North America circa 1700, which shows all of the different areas claimed (as distinct from actually settled) by different European powers.  Hopefully, together these two documents will give you a sense of what’s been happening across colonial North America, rather than just in each separate region.