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Colonial America refers to the colonial history of the United States and parts of Canada from the time of European settlement to the time of the American Revolution. Starting in the late 16th century, the British, the French, the Spanish, and the Dutch began to colonize eastern North America. The first English attempts—notably the Lost Colony of Roanoke—ended in failure, but successful colonies were soon established. The colonists who came to the New World were not alike, they came from a variety of different social and religious groups who settled in different locations on the seaboard. The Dutch of New Netherland, the Swedes and Finns of New Sweden, the Quakers of Pennsylvania, the Puritans of New England, the English settlers of Jamestown, and the "worthy poor" of Georgia, and others—each group came to the new continent for different reasons and created colonies with distinct social, religious, political and economic structures.

Historians typically recognize four distinct regions in the lands that later became the Eastern United States. Listed from north to south, they are: New England, the Middle Colonies, the Chesapeake Bay Colonies (Upper South) and the Lower South. Some historians add a fifth region, the frontier, as frontier regions from New England to Georgia resembled each other in certain respects. Other colonial regions of today's United States include New France (Louisiana), New Spain (including California, Florida and New Mexico) and Russian Alaska. (more...)