American Map. Territorial Claims Of The Thirteen Colonies

I chose this map of the USA because it is not only interesting but it also demonstrates two things which drove early America. The first and more obvious one is the idea that the early American settlers want to expand westwards until they reach the pacific ocean, and in the process of doing so civilize and harvest the land for it's resources. You can see this clearly from the fact that most of the colonies land claims go much farther westwards than their modern borders do, the most interesting example being Massachusetts which claims a large part of modern Illinois as part of it territory! Other maps even disregard French Louisiana (which at this point in time was barley even settled compared to the British colonies) and just chart the colonies as stretching across the (then uncharted) American continent to the Pacific ocean, how far that was they didn't know.

This then leads on to the second driving force behind early America, independence; for one of the main driving forces for independence from Great Britain especially in Virginia was the fact that the British Government (perhaps not unreasonably) forbade any further westward expansion beyond the Appalachian mountains because it would risk war with the French and Indians, which due to the wish to expand westwards as explained in the previous point got the Americans rather miffed.