Canada has been inhabited for millennia by various groups of Aboriginal peoples. Beginning in the late 15th century, British and French expeditions explored and later settled along the region's Atlantic coast. France ceded nearly all of its colonies in North America in 1763 after the Seven Years' War. In 1851, after the independence of Upper and Lower Canada, the British government helped to unite Rupert's Land, the North-Western Territory, New Caledonia, and the Dependency of Labrador into the Dominion of Canada.