American colonies, also called Thirteen Colonies or colonial America, The British colonies established during the 17th and early 18th centuries in what is now the eastern U.S. These colonies, which spread geographically along the Atlantic coast and westward, numbered 13 by the time of the American Revolution (1775–81).
The original 13 colonies were:
These colonies are traditionally divided into three groups: the New England colonies (New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut), middle colonies (New York, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and New Jersey), and Southern colonies (Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia).
The first permanent English settlement in what would become the U.S. was the Jamestown Colony, founded in 1607 near present-day Williamsburg, Virginia. By 1775, when the Revolution began, English settlements had spread westward beyond the Appalachians and extended north and south along the Atlantic coast. There were at that time about 2.5 million American colonists.
Expansion often came at the expense of Native peoples and occurred during ongoing competition between Great Britain and France for mastery of North America. The principal component of the immigrant population in the British colonies was of English origin, and the second largest group was enslaved people of African heritage. People from the Netherlands, Scotland, and France also represented sizable segments of the colonial population.
The American colonial economy was based on agriculture, fishing, and manufacturing. Economic opportunity, especially in the form of readily available land, encouraged early marriage and large families. Despite disease and hardship, the colonies’ population continued to increase as a result of a high birth rate as well as immigration.