North American colonies’ compact geography enabled a continental ‘American’ identity to coalesce.

Evidence

The Protestant, English-speaking creoles to the north were much more favourably situated for realizing the idea of ‘America’ and indeed eventually succeeded in appropriating the everyday title of ‘Americans’. The original Thirteen Colonies comprised an area smaller than Venezuela, and one third the size of Argentina. Bunched geographically together, their market-centres in Boston, New York, and Philadelphia were readily accessible to one another, and their populations were relatively tightly linked by print as well as commerce. The ‘United States’ could gradually multiply in numbers over the next 183 years, as old and new populations moved westwards out of the old east coast core. — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, 240

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Colonial map coloring evolved into a detachable logo-map that fueled national identity. — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on…, 664; The 1783 United States comprised only the thirteen Atlantic colonies — Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the…, 7

Related

• The 1783 United States comprised only the thirteen Atlantic colonies (similarity 0.83)
• Colonial map coloring evolved into a detachable logo-map that fueled national identity. (similarity 0.81)

Broader Connections

• The 1783 United States comprised only the thirteen Atlantic colonies #qualifies (0.80) — Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the…, 7