America was colonised by Europeans in stages, starting in the late 1400s and becoming more intensive in the 1500s and 1600s.

Quick Scoop

  • The first documented European settlement in the Americas was a Norse (Viking) site in Newfoundland around the year 1000, but it was short‑lived.
  • Continuous European colonisation began after Christopher Columbus’s voyage in 1492, which opened the way for Spanish, then other European empires, to claim and settle lands.
  • In what is now the mainland United States, Spain founded St. Augustine in Florida in 1565, the first permanent European settlement there.
  • The first permanent English colony that grew into the “American colonies” was Jamestown, Virginia, founded in 1607.
  • The period usually called “colonial America” (for the 13 British colonies that became the USA) runs roughly from 1607 to the late 1700s, ending with independence in 1776 and the final break in 1783.

Simple way to remember it

  • Vikings: around 1000 (brief, in Newfoundland).
  • “Age of Columbus” and Spanish beginnings: from 1492.
  • First permanent English colony (Jamestown): 1607.
  • Colonial period ending: American Revolution, 1776–1783.

So if you’re asking “when was America colonised” in the sense of the British colonies that became the United States, most historians point to 1607 as the key starting date, with colonisation continuing through the 17th and early 18th centuries until the American Revolution.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.