In the XV century, Spain, England and France were very powerful countries in Europe. They had a lot of colonies in Asia and Africa. Colonies were very important because they were a source of money. Explorers found spices, gold, silk and silver in these faraway countries.

Because they wanted to become even richer, these European nations explored the world, looking for new territories to exploit.
 

At the end of the 15th century, Christopher Columbus left Europe on his ship. He wanted to find a new route to go to Asia, a distant but rich continent.  After a very long journey, he was happy because he saw land. It was in 1492. Christopher Columbus didn't realise that he had just discovered a new continent. He thought he was in India. This is the reason why he called "Indians" the first people he met. 

At the begining of the 16th century, Amerigo Vespucci,  an Italian explorer, identified  America as a new continent. He realised it was not part of Asia. When the first map of the area was made, the new continent was called "Americhland," after Amerigo Vespucci. (This translated to "America.").
 

(a settler is a person who comes to live in a country)

England decided to send people to live in America.

The first people arrived and settled down in Jamestown, Virginia. They arrived on May 6, 1607. The people of Jamestown came to make money. They wanted to exploit the natural resources of the new continent and sell them to Europe. This area became part of the Southern Colonies. 

In1620,the Pilgrims settled in Plymouth, Massachusetts. The Pilgrims came to start a new life that would give them freedom of religion. They wanted to escape religious persecution in Europe. These people started the New England colonies in the north.

The Middle Colonies grew between the 1600s and 1700s when thousands more people from Europe came to find a new way of life. In early times, the Middle Colonies became known as "the breadbasket of America" because there were a lot of farms.
 
 

By the early 1700s Africans made up a growing percentage of the colonial population. These people didn't come by choice. They were often captured in Africa, transported to America, and sold to work on farms and plantations. They were slaves.

By 1770, nearly three million people lived and worked in Great Britain's 13 North American colonies. 

The 13 American colonies traded with Europe, Africa and the West Indies. They traded with those places because they could get slaves and many products. The colonies traded sugar, molasses, fur, rice, rum, potatoes, timber and cocoa. In return, the colonies received manufactured goods, slaves and luxuries from England.

The slave trade existed throughout all of the British colonies. It was a big business. They would either buy or trade slaves. On the bottom of the boats that carried the slaves, they were chained together so tightly that you could barely walk around them. If one of the slaves were to die, the men on the ship would throw them into the sea as if they were waste. This is what slave trade was like.

trade = échanger / faire du troc
slave = esclave

At the beginning of the 18th century, the Indians started attacking the British people who had settled down in the 13th colony. The French helped the Indians because they wanted to get the land where the British were.

The King of England sent his army to defend the British colonies in America. It cost a lot of money to England and the King was becoming unpopular in Britain. So, he decided that the colonists had to pay the price of the French and Indian War. The British Parliament voted to impose extra taxes on the people of the American colonies. These taxes wre very unpopular, especially because the Colonists didn't vote in the British elections. They started using the slogan "No taxation without representation".
 

The Colonists couldn't express their diagreement democratically because they couldn't vote, so they started to rebel.  The Boston Tea Party in 1773 was an act of revolt against the British and their tax on tea in the Colonies. The colonists, disguised as Indians, boarded a British ship and threw all the tea and other luxury goods into the sea before they could be sold in America. The British King and government were furious and started to send soldiers to the colonies to stop the rebellion.

Finally in 1775, the War of Independance began. It opposed the Colonial Army, who wanted independence for the American Colonies,  and the British army. George Washington was the leader of the Colonial Army and his military tactics helped the colonists to win the war. This war is also called the Revolutionary War.

During the war, the colonists wrote the Declaration of Independence on the 4th July 1776 in Philadelphia. Thomas Jefferson wrote it, helped and supported by Benjamin Franklin.

The British finally capitulated on October 19, 1781. Americans were officially independent of Britain and they could establish their own government. 
 

The Boston Tea Party 1773. The colonists, disguised as Indians, boarded a British ship. The ship was importing tea and other luxuries to America. The colonists threw all the tea into the sea before it could be sold.

After the Revolutionary War, the people of the 13 colonies wanted to have one government for the 13 colonies. The "colonies" became "states" of a new country called "The United States of America"

They decided that delegates from every state should meet in Philadelphia. There, they wrote the Articles of Confederation, which formed the constitution. The constitution is a set of rules used for the whole nation. These rules established justice and ensured domestic tranquility. Soon the delegates formed the First Continental Congress. This was a step towards one government for the entire nation. 

In 1789, George Washington became the first president of the USA.

The first flag of the USA, with 13 stars representing the 13 colonies.