This book represents an attempt to bring into one account the story of European expansion in North America down to 1783. The authors wrote this book in response to a clear demand for a text written from the standpoint of North America as a whole, and giving a more adequate treatment of the colonies of nations other than England and of the English colonies other than the thirteen which revolted. The book is divided into three main parts: I. The founding of the colonies; II. Expansion and international conflict; and III. The revolt of the English colonies. Table of Contents: The Founding of the Colonies The Background and the Discovery The Founding of New Spain (1492-1543) The Expansion of New Spain (1543-1609) The Establishment of the French Colonies (1500-1700) The Beginnings of English Expansion (1485-1603) The Chesapeake Bay and Insular Colonies (1603-1640) The Beginnings of New England (1606-1640) The English Colonies During the Revolutionary Period (1640-1660) The Dutch and Swedish Colonies (1609-1664) The Old English Colonies Under the Later Stuarts (1660-1689) Expansion Under the Later Stuarts (1660-1689) The English Mainland Colonies at the Close of the Seventeenth Century Expansion and International Conflict The Spanish Advance in the Seventeenth Century The Wars of the English and Spanish Successions (1684-1713) The French in Louisiana and the Far Northwest (1699-1762) Texas, Pimería Alta, and the Franco-spanish Border Conflict (1687-1763) The English Advance Into the Piedmont (1715-1750) English Colonial Society in the Middle Eighteenth Century a Quarter-century of Conflict: the Expulsion of the French (1715-1763) The Russian Advance: the Occupation of Alta California and Louisiana by Spain (1763-1783) The Revolt of the English Colonies The Controversy of the English Colonies With the Home Government (1763-1775) From Lexington to Independence (1775-1776) The War as an International Contest (1778-1781) Governmental Development During the Revolution
Author
an American historian who pioneered the study of the Spanish-American borderlands and was a prominent authority on Spanish American history. He originated what became known as the Bolton Theory of the history of the Americas which holds that it is impossible to study the history of the United States in isolation from the histories of other American nations, and wrote or co-authored 94 works. Bolton was born on a farm between Wilton and Tomah, Wisconsin in 1870 to Edwin Latham and Rosaline (Cady) Bolton. He attended the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where he was a brother of Theta Delta Chi, and graduated with a bachelor's degree in 1895. That same year he married Gertrude Janes, with whom he eventually had seven children. Bolton studied under Frederick Jackson Turner from 1896 to 1897. Starting in 1897, Bolton was a Harrison Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania and studied American history under John Bach McMaster. In 1899, he received his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania and then taught at Milwaukee State Normal School until 1900.
