Colonial America: Did you mean...?

In the chaos following the American Revolutionary War, a pair of bandits known as the Harpe Brothers went on a vicious killing spree across the frontier. They are now considered the first serial killers in America. Watch this video ad-free...

Life in the British colonies revolved around three classes: the upper class landowners, lawyers, and government officials; middle class farmers and merchants; enslaved Africans and indentured servants. The triangular trade route brought slavery...

Professor Emeritus David Gitlitz is one of the world’s leading experts on Jewish-Catholic interactions in Iberia and the Americas. While initially drawn to the literature of the Spanish Golden Age as a student at Oberlin and Harvard, the...

This lecture is a brief introduction to the early history of the Pennsylvania Colony. The Pennsylvania Colony was founded in 1681 by William Penn, a Quaker convert who converted a debt owed to his family by the king into a charter for a proprietary...

The Thirteen Colonies were a cluster of British colonies located along the Atlantic seaboard of North America. Founded for a variety of reasons – economic, political, and religious – the colonies emerged with their own distinct governments...

The National Museum Zurich recently opened a comprehensive and multi perspectival exhibition on Switzerland’s colonial past: Colonial – Switzerland’s Global Entanglements. Based on the latest, original research and drawing on biographies...

King George's War (1744-1748) was the third great colonial conflict fought in North America between Great Britain and France, each side aided by their respective Native American allies. Like the previous two major colonial wars, it coincided...

Raising sugar cane could be a very profitable business, but producing refined sugar was a highly labour-intensive process. For this reason, European colonial settlers in Africa and the Americas used slaves on their plantations, almost all...

The Stamp Act of 1765 was the first direct tax imposed on the 13 American colonies by the Parliament of Great Britain. It required the colonists to pay a tax on all printed materials including newspapers, legal documents, magazines, and playing...

The French and Indian War (1754-1763) was the last great colonial conflict waged between Great Britain and France in North America. Often considered a theater of the global Seven Years' War (1756-1763), it was sparked over a territorial dispute...