Province of Carolina

The Province of Carolina was an English, later British, colony in North America that existed from 1663 to 1712. In March 1663 Charles II granted the land between Virginia and Spanish Florida to eight Lords Proprietors as a reward for their support in the Restoration; a second charter in 1665 extended the grant southward and westward. The colony was named in honour of Charles I, from the Latin Carolus. Settlement began with Virginian emigrants around Albemarle Sound in the 1650s, and the proprietors encouraged orderly government through the Fundamental Constitutions drafted with John Locke, though the document was never fully put into effect. The northern and southern settlements grew apart: the Albemarle region depended on tobacco and the Virginia trade, while the Ashley River settlement at Charles Town, founded in 1670, developed rice and deerskin exports and a majority enslaved population. Disputes over quitrents, Indian policy and the powers of the proprietors culminated in the Tuscarora War of 1711-1713 and in the Crown's decision to buy out the proprietors. In 1712 Carolina was divided into the provinces of North Carolina and South Carolina, which became royal colonies in 1729.