Page "Anglican Communion" Paragraph 77

However, the enormous expansion in the 18th and 19th centuries of the British Empire brought Anglicanism along with it.

At first all these colonial churches were under the jurisdiction of the Bishop of London.

After the American Revolution, the parishes in the newly independent country found it necessary to break formally from a church whose Supreme Governor was ( and remains ) the British monarch.

Thus they formed their own dioceses and national church, the Episcopal Church in the United States of America, in a mostly amicable separation.