ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an introduction to the revolutionary and constitution-making eras in American politics and the evolution of new institutions that have become the hallmark of an ever-evolving democracy. British-American colonial societies took root in an environment of complex interchange between and among European and Native American peoples in which war, conquest, technology, trade, and disease played decisive roles. England was a latecomer to the colonial scene in the seventeenth century and struggled to compete with Portugal, Spain, and the Netherlands. Colonial society became more heterogeneous as it incorporated new groups of migrants and immigrants, not always peacefully, and these adjustments gave it the feeling of a society that was constantly being remade, not one that was already fully defined. The Articles of Confederation, which governed the nation from 1781 to 1789, served as a bridge between the Declaration of Independence of 1776 and the United States (US) Constitution of 1787.
