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The English overseas possessions comprised a variety of overseas territories that were colonized, conquered, or otherwise acquired by the former Kingdom of England during the centuries before the Acts of Union between England and the Kingdom of Scotland. In 1707 these created the Kingdom of Great Britain, when the many English possessions became the foundation of the British Empire. The first English overseas settlements were established in Ireland, quickly followed by North America, Bermuda, and the West Indies, and by trading posts called "factories" in the East Indies, such as Bantam, and in the Indian subcontinent, beginning with Surat. In 1639, a series of English fortresses on the Indian coast was initiated with Fort St George. In 1661, the marriage of King Charles II to Catherine of Braganza brought him as part of her dowry new possessions which had been Portuguese, including Tangier in North Africa and Bombay in India. In North America, Newfoundland and Virginia were the first centres of English colonization. As the 17th century wore on, Maine, Plymouth, New Hampshire, Salem, Massachusetts Bay, New Scotland, Connecticut, New Haven, Maryland, and Rhode Island and Providence were settled. In 1664, New Netherland and New Sweden were taken from the Dutch, becoming New York, New Jersey, and parts of Delaware and Pennsylvania. ==Origins== The Kingdom of England is generally dated to the rule of Æthelstan from 927.〔Simon Keynes, "Edward, King of the Anglo-Saxons" in N. J. Higham & D. H. Hill, ''Edward the Elder 899-924'' (London: Routledge, 2001), p. 61〕 During the rule of the House of Knýtlinga, from 1013 to 1014 and 1016 to 1042, England was part of a personal union that included domains in Scandinavia. In 1066, William the Conqueror, Duke of Normandy, conquered England, making the Duchy a Crown land of the English throne. Through the remainder of the Middle Ages the kings of England held extensive territories in France, based on their history in this Duchy. Under the Angevin Empire, England formed part of a collection of lands in the British Isles and France held by the Plantagenet dynasty. The collapse of this dynasty led to the Hundred Years' War between England and France. At the outset of the war the Kings of England ruled almost all of France, but by the end of it in 1453 only the Pale of Calais remained to them.〔Ralph A. Griffiths, ''King and Country: England and Wales in the Fifteenth Century'' (2003, ISBN 1852850183), p. 53〕 Calais was eventually lost to the French in 1558. The Channel Islands, as the remnants of the Duchy of Normandy, retain their link to the Crown to the present day, Other early English expansion occurred within the British Isles. As early as 1169, the Norman invasion of Ireland began to establish English possessions in the island of Ireland, with thousands of English and Welsh settlers arriving in Ireland.〔Thomas Bartlett, ''Ireland: A History'' (2010, ISBN 0521197201) p. 40〕 As a result of this the Lordship of Ireland was held for centuries by the English monarch, although it was not until the early 17th century that the Plantation of Ulster was begun.〔George Hill, ''The Fall of Irish Chiefs and Clans and the Plantation of Ulster'' (2004, ISBN 094013442X)〕 English control of Ireland fluctuated for centuries until Ireland was incorporated into the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in 1801. The Voyages of Christopher Columbus began in 1492, and he sighted land in the West Indies on 12 October that year. In 1496, excited by the successes in overseas exploration of the Portuguese and the Spanish, King Henry VII of England commissioned John Cabot to lead a voyage to find a route from the Atlantic to the Spice Islands of Asia, subsequently known as the search for the North West Passage. Cabot sailed in 1497, successfully making landfall on the coast of Newfoundland. There, he believed he had reached Asia and made no attempt to found a permanent colony.〔Kenneth Andrews, ''Trade, Plunder and Settlement: Maritime Enterprise and the Genesis of the British Empire, 1480–1630'' (Cambridge University Press, 1984, ISBN 0-521-27698-5) p. 45〕 He led another voyage to the Americas the following year, but nothing was heard of him or his ships again.〔Niall Ferguson, ''Colossus: The Price of America's Empire (Penguin, 2004, p. 4〕 The Reformation had made enemies of England and Spain, and in 1562 Elizabeth sanctioned the privateers Hawkins and Drake to attack Spanish ships off the coast of West Africa.〔Hugh Thomas, ''The Slave Trade: the History of the Atlantic Slave Trade'' (Picador, 1997), pp. 155–158〕 Later, as the Anglo-Spanish Wars intensified, Elizabeth approved further raids against Spanish ports in the Americas and against shipping returning to Europe with treasure from the New World.〔Ferguson (2004), p. 7〕 Meanwhile, the influential writers Richard Hakluyt and John Dee were beginning to press for the establishment of England's own overseas empire. Spain was well established in the Americas, while Portugal had built up a network of trading posts and fortresses on the coasts of Africa, Brazil, and China, and the French had already begun to settle the Saint Lawrence River, which later became New France.〔Trevor Owen Lloyd, ''The British Empire 1558–1995'' (Oxford University Press, 1996, ISBN 0-19-873134-5), pp. 4–8.〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「English overseas possessions」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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