Читать книгу American Democracy in Context - Joseph A. Pika - Страница 52

In order to understand the factors that eventually led to the American Revolution, it is first necessary to understand how the colonies came into being and why they endured for so long. Europeans “discovered” America through Christopher Columbus in 1492. By then, North America had been populated for as long as forty thousand years and was already home to as many as ten million aboriginal or native people. France, Holland, and England led some explorations of the eastern seaboard of North America in the 1500s, but the road to English settlement did not really begin until 1606, when King James I issued charters to establish American colonies.