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This category was nominated for deletion, renaming, or merging with another category on 20 November 2012. The result of the discussion was no consensus.
Prior to 1707 the Colonies were all subject to the Parliament of England. Under the Navigation Acts this meant that Scotland and Ireland, although subject to the same crown, were, for the purposes of trade, treated as foreign powers, and thus exluded from direct commercial contact with England's overseas possessions, a practice that was only ended in the case of Scotland with the 1707 Act of Union. However, after the Union of the Crowns in 1603, the Scots had protection of the law in all areas subject to the crown, which meant that they could settle in England, Wales, Virginia, the Carolinas, or wherever they were inclined to go. I suppose you could use the term Scots or British to describe the settlers in America. There was certainly a notion of Britishness after 1603, and James VI and I liked to style himself as 'King of Great Britain', though legally speaking no such entity existed. By the middle of the seventeenth century, moreover, the Protestant settlers in the north of Ireland were almost always referred to as British. Clio the Muse08:39, 7 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
