North America

The Four Indian Kings

To encourage Britain’s Indian allies on the frontier between New England and French Canada, writes John G. Garratt, four Indian chieftains were invited to London during the reign of Queen Anne.

Britain and France in North America

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, writes Louis C. Kleber, the British came to America largely as settlers; the French as explorers and fortune-seekers.

The Sea-Otter and History

Across the Pacific, writes C.M. Yonge, from northern Japan to the Californian coastline, the relentless hunt for the sea-otter’s precious fur had international consequences.

The Search for the Seven Cities

One of the strangest episodes in the Spanish conquest of the New World was the quest for the mythical Seven Cities, first believed to stand on a mysterious island far out in the Atlantic Ocean, afterwards magically transported to the depths of America.

The Fur Empires of the North

George Woodcock describes the industry, expeditions, and characters that opened the American North West to European development.

British Colonization in the Seventeenth Century

Motives of commerce and trade, Eric Robson suggests, carried just as much weight in the founding of the 13 American colonies as the desire of Puritan emigrants for liberty of conscience and a life of independence.