Queen Elizabeth I is considered by many to be one of Britain’s greatest leaders. Her strength and resolve in the face of overwhelming odds, as the Spanish fleet entered waters with the threat of land invasion, remains one of the Empire’s most enduring stories. The attack of the Spanish Armada of 1588 began in mid May and was the culmination of conflicts between Britain and Spain. 
The rebellion against the Roman Catholic faith was widespread with rioting and destruction of popish artifacts taking place in Europe’s major cities. King Phillip was Dutch but leaned towards his Spanish possessions which had only increased after the abdication of Charles V and the break up of the Hapsburgs territories. It was a tumultuous time across Europe as old and new ideas clashed, often violently. When Philip sent troops to the Netherlands to quash the rebellion, he only created more resentment and confused loyalties. 
The Spanish set sail for Britain in May of 1588 accompanied by their German and French allies. The armada consisted of approximately 130 ships and they were making straight for British waters with the plan to invade the country. But the Spanish fleet was a miss match of vessels from cargo ships to small boats and many never made it to English waters. After rough weather and the loss of several ships, the Spanish went to harbor only to sail again in June. They reached Calais in July where they anchored making ready to attack England. 
England’s highest military advisors held counsel with the Queen to determine the best course of action given the circumstances. The British Navy had increased its strength in the previous months and needed now only the rallying cry of a Queen to get them motivated for the fight. It was Elizabeth’s words to her troops that helped spur the British fleet onto victory and have gone down in history as one of the world’s greatest speeches. 
Duly inspired by a determined queen, the British attacked. They began by sending eight ships covered with ignited pitch (tar and straw on fire) into the Spanish fleet causing chaos and a number of other fires. Then the guns began to boom. Both sides were heavily armored but the rumored 190 British ships carrying 17,000 men quickly claimed victory. Although Spanish vessels weren’t captured by the British navy, they were forced to flee and hopes of a respite, rendezvous and return attack quickly fell from favor. The British were determined to win and the British Isles remained free of foreign invasion then and to this day. 
As the Spanish and Portuguese empire expanded in Central and South America, The British established a tenuous presence in North America in 1607 with settlements that stretched along the east coast from Florida to Newfoundland. By 1733, the British Empire had carved out an empire as formidable as their Spanish counterparts. Originally, the entire coast was named “Virginia” after Queen Elizabeth I the “Virgin Queen”, who in the 1580s enlisted the explorer Sir Walter Raleigh to discover new lands for the British Empire. Though Raleigh’s initial attempts to establish a colony in Roanoke Island in 1584 failed, his experience would later pave the way for the successful colonies that followed. The defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588 signaled the dawn of British naval dominance and permitted Great Britain to continue its exploration of the New World virtually unchallenged.
St. John’s and Newfoundland were early colonies as was the Roanoke Colony, founded in 1585 and the Jamestown Settlement, founded in 1607. The Plymouth Colony, originally intended for Virginia, was actually established in Massachusetts in 1620. A flow of colonies followed these original ones along the northeast coast of North America, including the Massachusetts Bay Colony, founded in 1630. In the decades that followed, the British formed the original thirteen colonies that supplied the crown with spices and other commodities at great economic cost to the colonies. The British imposed heavy taxation policies that eventually led to an increasingly hostile political climate between the colonies and the Royal government. The original thirteen British colonies were Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, New York, Connecticut, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia.
The early colonies consisted of English farmers and gentlemen who lived according to the laws enforced by a system of Proprietary Governors. The way the British first introduced and funded settlements in North America was through joint stock companies that appointed leadership through mercantile charters. Other European powers, such as the Dutch, French and Spanish had tried to establish colonies in North America but did not succeed in sustaining them.
The British would eventually take control over most of the originally settled lands through either hostile campaigns or commercial ventures, as they did in 1664 when they took the Dutch colony of New Netherland including the New Amsterdam settlement. Parts of Delaware and Pennsylvania had also been colonized by the Dutch prior to British dominance. In 1713 England acquired the French colony of Acadia as well as the rest of New France and, in 1763, the Spanish colony of Florida. In 1776, the thirteen original colonies rebelled against the British crown over representation, local laws and tax issues which by that point had become intolerable to the colonial population, this rebellion or revolution eventually led to the creation of the United States of America.
| The British Empire continued to increase its territorial holdings as it colonized the western part of North America. Vancouver Island was founded in 1849 and New Caledonia was founded in 1846 to become British Columbia. In 1867 the colonies of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and the | |
| Province of Canada combined under the name Canada. Following their defeat by the British during the Seven Years’ War (1756-1763) The French relinquished Quebec and Nova Scotia to England with the Treaty of Paris in 1763. The signing of the Treaty of Paris marked the beginning of British dominance outside of Europe. In the century that followed, other North American territories such as the North-Western Territory would be ceded to British controlled Canada by 1870. The British influence on the colonies would later serve as a cornerstone for the legal and economic systems that the colonies formed in their independence from the crown. | |
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