<P> The colonial history of the United States covers the history of European settlements from the start of colonization in the early 16th century until their incorporation into the United States of America . In the late 16th century, England, France, Spain, and the Netherlands launched major colonization programs in eastern North America . Small early attempts sometimes disappeared, such as the English Lost Colony of Roanoke . Everywhere, the death rate was very high among the first arrivals . Nevertheless, successful colonies were established within several decades . </P> <P> European settlers came from a variety of social and religious groups, including adventurers, soldiers, farmers, and tradesmen, and some from the aristocracy . Settlers traveling to the new continent included the Dutch of New Netherland, the Swedes and Finns of New Sweden, the English Quakers of Pennsylvania, the English Puritans of New England, the English settlers of Jamestown, the "worthy poor" of Georgia, the Germans who settled the mid-Atlantic colonies, and the Ulster Scots people of the Appalachian Mountains . These groups all became part of the United States when it gained its independence in 1776 . Russian America and parts of New France and New Spain were also incorporated into the United States at various points . The diverse groups from these various regions built colonies of distinctive social, religious, political, and economic style . </P> <P> Over time, non-British colonies East of the Mississippi River were taken over and most of the inhabitants were assimilated . In Nova Scotia, however, the British expelled French Acadian inhabitants; many relocated to Louisiana . No major civil wars occurred in the thirteen colonies . The two chief armed rebellions were short - lived failures in Virginia in 1676 and in New York in 1689--91 . Some of the colonies developed legalized systems of slavery, centered largely around the Atlantic slave trade . Wars were recurrent between the French and the British during the French and Indian Wars . By 1760, France was defeated and its colonies were seized by Britain . </P> <P> On the eastern seaboard of what became the United States, the four distinct English regions were New England, the Middle Colonies, the Chesapeake Bay Colonies (Upper South), and the Lower South . Some historians add a fifth region of the Frontier, which was never separately organized . By the time that European settlers arrived around 1600--1650, a significant percentage of the Indians living in the eastern region had been ravaged by disease, possibly introduced to them decades before by explorers and sailors (although no conclusive cause has ever been established). </P>

When was the first colony established in america