1.
Thirteen Colonies
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The Thirteen Colonies were a group of British colonies on the east coast of North America founded in the 17th and 18th centuries that declared independence in 1776 and formed the United States. The Thirteen Colonies had very similar political, constitutional, and legal systems and they were part of Britains possessions in the New World, which also included colonies in present-day Canada and the Caribbean, as well as East and West Florida. However, the Thirteen Colonies had a degree of self-government and active local elections. In the 1750s, the colonies began collaborating with each other instead of dealing directly with Britain, Colonial decisions were subject to approval by the governor and the home government. There were also substantial populations of African slaves in some of the colonies, especially Virginia, the Carolinas, the names of the colonies were chosen by the founders and proprietors, subject to royal approval, and given in the founding charters. Nine of the thirteen chose to include in their names the term Province of, later residents tended to drop the ambiguous terminology, as in the map shown in the article Province of New Jersey, which is labeled simply East Jersey and West Jersey. In July 1776, they formed a new nation called the United States of America, the new nation achieved that goal by winning the American Revolutionary War with the aid of France, the Netherlands, and Spain. The American flag features thirteen horizontal stripes which represent these original thirteen colonies, besides these thirteen colonies, Britain had another dozen in the New World. Those in the British West Indies, Newfoundland, the Province of Quebec, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, Bermuda, and East and West Florida remained loyal to the crown throughout the war. The British crown had recently acquired those lands, and many of the issues facing the Thirteen Colonies did not apply to them, especially in the case of Quebec. Contemporary documents usually list the thirteen colonies of British North America in geographical order, the consolidation collapsed after the Glorious Revolution of 1688–89, and the nine former colonies re-established their separate identities in 1689. Massachusetts Bay Colony Settled in 1630 by Puritans from England, the colonial charter was revoked in 1684, and a new charter was issued in 1691 establishing an enlarged Province of Massachusetts Bay. Province of Maine Settled in 1622, the Massachusetts Bay Colony claimed the Maine territory in the 1650s, then limited to present-day southernmost Maine. Parts of Maine east of the Kennebec River were also part of New York in the half of the 17th century. These areas were made part of the Province of Massachusetts Bay in the charter of 1691. Plymouth Colony Settled in 1620 by the Pilgrims, plymouth was merged into the Province of Massachusetts Bay in the charter of 1691. Saybrook Colony Founded in 1635 and merged with Connecticut Colony in 1644, New Haven Colony Settled in late 1637. New Netherland Extensive region centered about New Amsterdam at the tip of Manhattan Island
2.
United States
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Forty-eight of the fifty states and the federal district are contiguous and located in North America between Canada and Mexico. The state of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east, the state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean, the geography, climate and wildlife of the country are extremely diverse. At 3.8 million square miles and with over 324 million people, the United States is the worlds third- or fourth-largest country by area, third-largest by land area. It is one of the worlds most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, paleo-Indians migrated from Asia to the North American mainland at least 15,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century, the United States emerged from 13 British colonies along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the following the Seven Years War led to the American Revolution. On July 4,1776, during the course of the American Revolutionary War, the war ended in 1783 with recognition of the independence of the United States by Great Britain, representing the first successful war of independence against a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, after the Articles of Confederation, the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, were ratified in 1791 and designed to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties. During the second half of the 19th century, the American Civil War led to the end of slavery in the country. By the end of century, the United States extended into the Pacific Ocean. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the status as a global military power. The end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the sole superpower. The U. S. is a member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States. The United States is a developed country, with the worlds largest economy by nominal GDP. It ranks highly in several measures of performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP. While the U. S. economy is considered post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge economy, the United States is a prominent political and cultural force internationally, and a leader in scientific research and technological innovations. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America after the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci
3.
Common law
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Common law is the body of law developed from the thirteenth century to the present day, as case law or precedent, by judges, courts, and tribunals. In cases where the parties disagree on what the law is, if a similar dispute has been resolved in the past, the court is usually bound to follow the reasoning used in the prior decision. Resolution of the issue in one case becomes precedent that binds future courts, stare decisis, the principle that cases should be decided according to consistent principled rules so that similar facts will yield similar results, lies at the heart of all common law systems. A common law system is a system that gives great precedential weight to common law. Common law systems originated during the Middle Ages in England, today, one third of the worlds population live in common law jurisdictions or in systems mixed with civil law. The term common law has many connotations, the first three set out here are the most-common usages within the legal community. Other connotations from past centuries are seen, and are sometimes heard in everyday speech. Blacks Law Dictionary, 10th Ed. gives as definition 1,1, the body of law derived from judicial decisions, rather than from statutes or constitutions, CASELAW, STATUTORY LAW. In this connotation, common law distinguishes the authority that promulgated a law. e, examples include most criminal law and procedural law before the 20th century, and even today, most contract law and the law of torts. Interstitial common law decisions that analyze, interpret and determine the fine boundaries. Publication of decisions, and indexing, is essential to the development of common law, while all decisions in common law jurisdictions are precedent, some become leading cases or landmark decisions that are cited especially often. Blacks 10th Ed. definition 2, differentiates common law jurisdictions, by contrast, in civil law jurisdictions, courts lack authority to act if there is no statute. Judicial precedent is given less weight, which means that a judge deciding a given case has more freedom to interpret the text of a statute independently. For example, the Napoleonic code expressly forbade French judges to pronounce general principles of law. As a rule of thumb, common law systems trace their history to England, blacks 10th Ed. definition 4, differentiates common law from equity. This split propagated to many of the colonies, including the United States, for most purposes, most jurisdictions, including the U. S. federal system and most states, have merged the two courts. Additionally, even before the courts were merged, most courts were permitted to apply both law and equity, though under potentially different procedural law. In the United States, determining whether the Seventh Amendments right to a jury trial applies or whether the issue will be decided by a judge, the standard of review and degree of deference given by an appellate tribunal to the decision of the lower tribunal under review
4.
White people
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White people is a racial classification specifier, used for people of Europid ancestry, with the exact implications dependent on context. The contemporary usage of people or a white race as a large group of populations contrasting with black, American Indian. It is today used as a racial classifier in multiracial societies, such as North Africa, United States. The term white race or white people entered the major European languages in the later 17th century, in the context of racialized slavery, description of populations as white in reference to their skin color predates this notion and is found in Greco-Roman ethnography and other ancient sources. Scholarship on race generally distinguishes the concept from pre-modern descriptions of collective difference. In the literature of the Ancient Near East and Classical Antiquity and we know that Egyptians were not oblivious to skin color, however, because artists paid attention to it in works of art, to the extent the pigments at the time permitted. Classicist James Dee states the Greeks do not describe themselves as white people—or as anything else because they had no word in their color vocabulary for themselves. Peoples skin color did not carry meaning, what mattered is where they lived. Religious conversion was sometimes described figuratively as a change in skin color, similarly, the Rigveda uses krsna tvac black skin as a metaphor for irreligiosity. The Ancient Egyptian funerary text known as the Book of Gates distinguishes four groups in a procession and these are the Egyptians, the Levantine/Canaanite peoples or Asiatics, the Nubians and the fair-skinned Libyans. The Egyptians are depicted as a reddish brown, the Nubians as black skinned, the Semites from the Levant and Canaan as light skinned. Herodotus described the Scythian Budini as having blue eyes and bright red hair. And the Egyptians – quite like the Colchians – as melánchroes and he also gives the possibly first reference to the common Greek name of the tribes living south of Egypt, otherwise known as Nubians, which was Aithíopes. Later Xenophon described the Aethiopians as black and the Persian troops as white compared to the skin of Greek troops. These color adjectives are found in contrast to the standard set by the own group. According to historian Irene Silverblatt, Race thinking … made social categories into racial truths, Alastair Bonnett argues that white identity, as it is presently conceived, is an American project, reflecting American interpretations of race and history. According to Gregory Jay, a professor of English at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, Before the age of exploration, group differences were based on language, religion. … the European had always reacted a bit hysterically to the differences of skin color, in the 16th and 17th centuries, East Asian peoples were almost uniformly described as white, never as yellow
5.
New England
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New England is a geographical region comprising six states of the northeast United States, Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. It is bordered by the state of New York to the west and south, the Atlantic Ocean is to the east and southeast, and Long Island Sound is to the south. Its largest metropolitan area is Greater Boston, which also includes Worcester, Manchester, ten years later, more Puritans settled north of Plymouth Colony in Boston, thus forming Massachusetts Bay Colony. Over the next 126 years, people in the region fought in four French and Indian Wars, until the British and their Iroquois allies defeated the French and their Algonquin allies in North America. In 1692, the town of Salem, Massachusetts and surrounding areas experienced one of the most infamous cases of hysteria in the history of the Western Hemisphere. The Boston Tea Party was a protest to which Britain responded with a series of punitive laws stripping Massachusetts of self-government, the confrontation led to the first battles of the American Revolutionary War in 1775, and the expulsion of the British authorities from the region in spring 1776. Each state is subdivided into small incorporated municipalities known as towns. The only unincorporated areas in the region exist in the populated northern regions of Vermont, New Hampshire. The region is one of the U. S. Census Bureaus nine regional divisions, the earliest known inhabitants of New England were American Indians who spoke a variety of the Eastern Algonquian languages. Prominent tribes included the Abenaki, Mikmaq, Penobscot, Pequot, Mohegans, Narragansett Indians, Pocumtuck, prior to the arrival of Europeans, the Western Abenakis inhabited New Hampshire, New York, and Vermont, as well as parts of Quebec and western Maine. Their principal town was Norridgewock in present-day Maine, the Penobscot lived along the Penobscot River in Maine. The Narragansett and smaller tribes under Narragansett sovereignty lived in most of modern-day Rhode Island, west of Narragansett Bay, the Wampanoag occupied southeastern Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and the islands of Marthas Vineyard and Nantucket. The Pocumtucks lived in Western Massachusetts, and the Mohegan and Pequot tribes in the Connecticut region, the Connecticut River Valley includes parts of Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and Connecticut, and linked different indigenous communities culturally, linguistically, and politically. As early as 1600, French, Dutch, and English traders began exploring the New World, trading metal, glass, on April 10,1606, King James I of England issued a charter for each of the Virginia Companies, London and Plymouth. These were privately funded ventures, intended to land for England, conduct trade. In 1620, Plymouth in present-day Massachusetts was settled by Pilgrims from the Mayflower, in 1616, English explorer John Smith named the region New England. As the first colonists arrived in Plymouth, they wrote and signed the Mayflower Compact, the Massachusetts Bay Colony came to dominate the area and was established by royal charter in 1629 with its major town and port of Boston established in 1630. Massachusetts Puritans began to settle in Connecticut as early as 1633, roger Williams was banished from Massachusetts for heresy, led a group south, and founded Providence Plantation in the area that became the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations in 1636
6.
Town meeting
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Town meeting is a form of local government practiced in the U. S. region of New England since colonial times, and in some western states since at least the late 19th century. Typically conducted by New England towns, town meeting can refer to meetings of other governmental bodies. The painting Freedom of Speech depicts a scene from a town meeting, the Puritans, who believed in Congregationalist church governance, established town meetings when they established the various New England colonies. In recent years, town meeting has also used by political groups. To avoid confusion, this sort of event is called a town hall meeting. Connecticut town meetings are bound to a published agenda, for example, in Connecticut, a Town Meeting may discuss, but not alter, an article placed before them, nor may they place new items on the agenda. If a Town Meeting rejects a budget, a new Town Meeting must be called to consider the proposed budget. State Law allows the Board of Selectmen to adopt a tax rate. A moderator is chosen at each meeting, Meetings are typically held in school auditoriums, however they may be moved to larger venues as needed. Town meetings can physically meet in town if necessary to find a proper space to host the attendance. Votes are taken by voice, and if close by show of hands, Meetings on controversial topics are often adjourned to a referendum conducted by machine vote on a date in the future. Such adjournment may come from the floor of the meeting, or by a petition for a paper or machine ballot filed before the meeting, Representative Town Meetings used by some larger towns consist solely of a large number of members elected to office. In Maine, the town meeting system originated during the period when Maine was a district of Massachusetts, most cities and towns operate under the town meeting form of government or a modified version of it. Maine annual town meetings traditionally are held in March, Special town meetings also may be called from time to time. The executive agency of government is an elected, part-time board, known as the Board of Selectmen or Select Board. Often the part-time selectmen also serve as town assessors, overseers of the poor as well as road commissioners, generally, there are other elected town officers whose duties are specified in law. These may include clerks, assessors, tax collector, treasurer, school committee, constables, in 1927 the town of Camden adopted a special charter and became the first Maine town to apply the manager concept to the town meeting-selectmen framework. Under this system, the manager is administrative head of town government, the managers duties include acting as purchasing agent, seeing that laws and ordinances are enforced, making appointments and removals, and fixing the compensation of appointees
7.
Kingdom of England
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In the early 11th century the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, united by Æthelstan, became part of the North Sea Empire of Cnut the Great, a personal union between England, Denmark and Norway. The completion of the conquest of Wales by Edward I in 1284 put Wales under the control of the English crown, from the accession of James I in 1603, the Stuart dynasty ruled England in personal union with Scotland and Ireland. Under the Stuarts, the kingdom plunged into war, which culminated in the execution of Charles I in 1649. The monarchy returned in 1660, but the Civil War had established the precedent that an English monarch cannot govern without the consent of Parliament and this concept became legally established as part of the Glorious Revolution of 1688. From this time the kingdom of England, as well as its state the United Kingdom. On 1 May 1707, under the terms of the Acts of Union 1707, the Anglo-Saxons referred to themselves as the Engle or the Angelcynn, originally names of the Angles. They called their land Engla land, meaning land of the English, by Æthelweard Latinized Anglia, from an original Anglia vetus, the name Engla land became England by haplology during the Middle English period. The Latin name was Anglia or Anglorum terra, the Old French, by the 14th century, England was also used in reference to the entire island of Great Britain. The standard title for all monarchs from Æthelstan until the time of King John was Rex Anglorum, Canute the Great, a Dane, was the first king to call himself King of England. In the Norman period Rex Anglorum remained standard, with use of Rex Anglie. The Empress Matilda styled herself Domina Anglorum, from the time of King John onwards all other titles were eschewed in favour of Rex or Regina Anglie. In 1604 James VI and I, who had inherited the English throne the previous year, the English and Scottish parliaments, however, did not recognise this title until the Acts of Union of 1707. The kingdom of England emerged from the unification of the early medieval Anglo-Saxon kingdoms known as the Heptarchy, East Anglia, Mercia, Northumbria, Kent, Essex, Sussex. The Viking invasions of the 9th century upset the balance of power between the English kingdoms, and native Anglo-Saxon life in general, the English lands were unified in the 10th century in a reconquest completed by King Æthelstan in 927 CE. During the Heptarchy, the most powerful king among the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms might become acknowledged as Bretwalda, the decline of Mercia allowed Wessex to become more powerful. It absorbed the kingdoms of Kent and Sussex in 825, the kings of Wessex became increasingly dominant over the other kingdoms of England during the 9th century. In 827, Northumbria submitted to Egbert of Wessex at Dore, in 886, Alfred the Great retook London, which he apparently regarded as a turning point in his reign. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle says that all of the English people not subject to the Danes submitted themselves to King Alfred, asser added that Alfred, king of the Anglo-Saxons, restored the city of London splendidly
8.
Kingdom of Great Britain
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The Kingdom of Great Britain, officially Great Britain, was a sovereign state in western Europe from 1 May 1707 to 31 December 1800. It did not include Ireland, which remained a separate realm, the unitary state was governed by a single parliament and government that was based in Westminster. Also after the accession of George I to the throne of Great Britain in 1714, the early years of the unified kingdom were marked by Jacobite risings which ended in defeat for the Stuart cause at Culloden in 1746. On 1 January 1801, the kingdoms of Great Britain and Ireland were merged to form the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. In 1922, five-sixths of Ireland seceded from the United Kingdom, the name Britain descends from the Latin name for the island of Great Britain, Britannia or Brittānia, the land of the Britons via the Old French Bretaigne and Middle English Bretayne, Breteyne. The term Great Britain was first used officially in 1474, in the instrument drawing up the proposal for a marriage between Edward IV of Englands daughter Cecily and James III of Scotlands son James. The Treaty of Union and the subsequent Acts of Union state that England and Scotland were to be United into one Kingdom by the Name of Great Britain. However, both the Acts and the Treaty also refer numerous times to the United Kingdom and the longer form, other publications refer to the country as the United Kingdom after 1707 as well. The websites of the UK parliament, the Scottish Parliament, the BBC, additionally, the term United Kingdom was found in informal use during the 18th century to describe the state. The new state created in 1707 included the island of Great Britain, the kingdoms of England and Scotland, both in existence from the 9th century, were separate states until 1707. However, they had come into a union in 1603. Each of the three kingdoms maintained its own parliament and laws and this disposition changed dramatically when the Acts of Union 1707 came into force, with a single unified Crown of Great Britain and a single unified parliament. Ireland remained formally separate, with its own parliament, until the Acts of Union 1800, legislative power was vested in the Parliament of Great Britain, which replaced both the Parliament of England and the Parliament of Scotland. In practice it was a continuation of the English parliament, sitting at the location in Westminster. Newly created peers in the Peerage of Great Britain were given the right to sit in the Lords. Despite the end of a parliament for Scotland, it retained its own laws. As a result of Poynings Law of 1495, the Parliament of Ireland was subordinate to the Parliament of England, the Act was repealed by the Repeal of Act for Securing Dependence of Ireland Act 1782. The same year, the Irish constitution of 1782 produced a period of legislative freedom, the 18th century saw England, and after 1707 Great Britain, rise to become the worlds dominant colonial power, with France its main rival on the imperial stage
9.
Monarchy
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The actual power of the monarch may vary from purely symbolic, to partial and restricted, to completely autocratic. Traditionally and in most cases, the monarchs post is inherited and lasts until death or abdication, occasionally this might create a situation of rival claimants whose legitimacy is subject to effective election. Finally, there have been cases where the term of a reign is either fixed in years or continues until certain goals are achieved. Thus there are widely divergent structures and traditions defining monarchy, Monarchy was the most common form of government until the 19th century, but it is no longer prevalent. Currently,47 sovereign nations in the world have monarchs acting as heads of state,19 of which are Commonwealth realms that recognise Queen Elizabeth II as their head of state. The monarchs of Cambodia, Japan, and Malaysia reign, the word monarch comes from the Greek language word μονάρχης, monárkhēs which referred to a single, at least nominally absolute ruler. In current usage the word usually refers to a traditional system of hereditary rule. Depending on the held by the monarch, a monarchy may be known as a kingdom, principality, duchy, grand duchy, empire, tsardom, emirate, sultanate, khaganate. The form of societal hierarchy known as chiefdom or tribal kingship is prehistoric, the Greek term monarchia is classical, used by Herodotus. The monarch in classical antiquity is often identified as king, the Chinese, Japanese and Nepalese monarchs continued to be considered living Gods into the modern period. Since antiquity, monarchy has contrasted with forms of democracy, where power is wielded by assemblies of free citizens. In antiquity, monarchies were abolished in favour of such assemblies in Rome, much of 19th century politics was characterised by the division between anti-monarchist Radicalism and monarchist Conservativism. Many countries abolished the monarchy in the 20th century and became republics, advocacy of republics is called republicanism, while advocacy of monarchies is called monarchism. In the modern era, monarchies are more prevalent in small states than in large ones, most monarchs, both historically and in the modern day, have been born and brought up within a royal family, the centre of the royal household and court. Growing up in a family, future monarchs are often trained for the responsibilities of expected future rule. Different systems of succession have been used, such as proximity of blood, primogeniture, and agnatic seniority. While most monarchs have been male, many female monarchs also have reigned in history, rule may be hereditary in practice without being considered a monarchy, such as that of family dictatorships or political families in many democracies. The principal advantage of hereditary monarchy is the continuity of leadership
