Europeans brought Old World government and legal traditions with them when they settled in North America. There they were confronted with the challenge of transplanting European systems to a strange environment populated by native peoples who did not share European cultural experiences. In the early 1600s, France, the Netherlands (Holland), and England were all governing colonies in North America. By the turn of the eighteenth century, however, England dominated the territory that would become the United States.

French, Spanish, and Dutch Colonies

The presence of the French and the English, along with the resistance of Native Americans, had prevented the Spanish from moving beyond the "borderlands"—the Southeast (present-day Florida and Alabama) and the Southwest (present-day New Mexico, Arizona, and Texas). France was operating a thriving colony in New France (present-day Canada), and French missionaries (people who do religious work in foreign countries) had...