The British Crown colony of New York is subdivided into 12 counties.
The Province of New York (1664–1776) was a British proprietary colony and later royal colony on the northeast coast of North America. As one of the Middle Colonies, New York achieved independence and worked with the others to found the United States.
In 1664, during the Second Anglo-Dutch War, the Dutch Province of New Netherland in America was awarded by Charles II of England to his brother James, Duke of York. James raised a fleet to take it from the Dutch and the Governor surrendered to the English fleet without recognition from the Dutch West Indies Company that had authority over it. The province was renamed for the Duke of York, as its proprietor. England seized de facto control of the colony from the Dutch in 1664, and was given de jure sovereign control in 1667 in the Treaty of Breda and again in the Treaty of Westminster (1674). It was not until 1674 that English common law was applied in the colony. The colony was one of the Middle Colonies, and ruled at first directly from England. When the Duke of York ascended to the throne of England as James II, the province became a royal colony.
When the English arrived, the Dutch colony somewhat vaguely included claims to all of the present U.S. states of New York, New Jersey, Delaware and Vermont, along with inland portions of Connecticut, Massachusetts and Maine in addition to eastern Pennsylvania. Much of this land was soon reassigned by the crown, leaving the territory of the modern State of New York, including the valleys of the Hudson and Mohawk Rivers, and future Vermont. The territory of western New York was disputed with the indigenous Iroquois Confederacy, and also disputed between the English and the French from their northern colonial province of New France (modern eastern Canada). The province remained an important military and economic link to Canada throughout its history. Vermont was disputed with the Province of New Hampshire to the east.
The revolutionary New York Provincial Congress of local representatives assumed the government on May 22, 1775, declared the province the "State of New York" in 1776, and ratified the first New York Constitution in 1777. During the ensuing American Revolutionary War the British regained and occupied the strategic port and harbor of New York Town in September 1776, using it as its military and political base of operations in British North America; though a British governor was technically in office, much of the remainder of the upper part of the colony was held by the rebel Patriots. British claims in New York were ended by the Treaty of Paris of 1783, with New York establishing its independence from the crown. The final evacuation of all of New York by the British Army was followed by the return of General George Washington's Continental Army on November 25, 1783, in a grand parade and celebration.