Thirteen Colonies
group of 13 North American colonies of Great Britain from the founding of Georgia until American Independence (1732–1776)
The Thirteen Colonies were the British colonies on the Atlantic coast of North America which broke away from the British Crown in the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783), and joined to form the United States of America.
The Thirteen Colonies in their traditional groupings were: the New England Colonies (Province of New Hampshire, Province of Massachusetts Bay, Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, and Connecticut Colony); the Middle Colonies (Province of New York, Province of New Jersey, Province of Pennsylvania, and Delaware Colony); and the Southern Colonies (Province of Maryland, Colony of Virginia, Province of North Carolina, Province of South Carolina, and Province of Georgia). These colonies were part of British America, which also included territory in the Floridas, the Caribbean, and what is today Canada.
The Thirteen Colonies were separately administered under the Crown, but had similar political, constitutional, and legal systems, and each was dominated by Protestant English-speakers. The first of the colonies, Virginia, was established at Jamestown in 1607. Maryland, Pennsylvania, and the New England Colonies 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 the former Dutch colony of New Netherland.
Between 1625 and 1775, the colonial population grew from 2 thousand to 2.4 million, largely displacing the region's Native Americans. The population included people subject to a system of slavery, which was legal in all of the colonies.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Thirteen Colonies” as group of 13 North American colonies of Great Britain from the founding of Georgia until American Independence (1732–1776). Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as group of 13 North American colonies of Great Britain from the founding of Georgia until American Independence (1732–1776). Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 10, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q179997. Authority coordinates are 39.284, -76.610. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1775, 1783, 1607 and 1625.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Thirteen Colonies” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.