The Stars and Stripes, Old Glory, the Red, White and Blue. A symbol of strength and courage. A mark of tolerance and diversity. The indication of democracy and freedom. However you see it and whatever you call it, the American flag is the image behind a nation. Reflecting the history of a people, the flag has a rich history of its own. 
It took, according to Ross’ own account, just a few weeks to make the flag and it was ready in time for the celebration of the first Fourth of July. America was celebrating its own birth. The early government of the country made a flag resolution among one of its earliest priorities. On June 14, 1777, 13 white stars in a circle on a blue background next to a field of 13 red and white stripes became the official composition of the United States flag. It was a “new constellation” to represent the cosmic inception of a new nation. 
Mary Pickersgill received the flag commission from Fort Henry in Maryland. She was asked two make two flags one for bad weather and one for good weather. With the help of her daughters and servant, Pickersgill completed the two flags in seven weeks. The good weather flag was 30 feet by 42 feet and hung above the garrison of the fort. The flag flew high throughout the Battle of Baltimore that took place during the War of 1812. 
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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