18 February 2023 | Author/Destination: North America / Nordamerika | Rubric: General
Reading Time: 7 minutes© Richard Zietz/cc-by-sa-3.0
The Thirteen Colonies, also known as the Thirteen British Colonies, the Thirteen American Colonies, or later as the
United Colonies, were a group of
British colonies on the Atlantic coast of
North America. Founded in the 17th and 18th centuries, they began fighting the
American Revolutionary War in April 1775 and formed the
United States of America by
declaring full independence in July 1776. Just prior to declaring independence, the Thirteen Colonies in their traditional groupings were: New England (
New Hampshire;
Massachusetts;
Rhode Island;
Connecticut); Middle (
New York;
New Jersey;
Pennsylvania;
Delaware); Southern (
Maryland;
Virginia;
North Carolina;
South Carolina; and
Georgia). The Thirteen Colonies came to have very similar political, constitutional, and legal systems, dominated by
Protestant English-speakers. The first of these colonies was
Virginia Colony in 1607, a
Southern colony. While all these colonies needed to become economically viable, the founding of the
New England colonies, as well as the colonies of Maryland and Pennsylvania, were substantially motivated by their founders’ concerns related to the practice of religion. The other colonies were founded for business and economic expansion. The
Middle Colonies were established on an earlier Dutch colony,
New Netherland. All the Thirteen Colonies were part of
Britain’s possessions in the New World, which also included territory in
Canada,
Florida, and the
Caribbean.
read more…