Thirteen Colonies

The Thirteen Colonies is the name that has been historically to colonial possessions of Great Britain on the Atlantic coast of North America between Scotia and Florida, and that in the late eighteenth century were united under an independent government to create the existing USA.

Britain had established colonies in North America since 1607, when he founded the first permanent British settlers at Jamestown (Virginia). Throughout the seventeenth century increased the population of this settlement and established many other colonies of British origin, usually equipped with a large autonomy in their internal affairs but subject to the dominion of Great Britain.

The War of Independence of the United States was a conflict between the thirteen American colonies in North America with the Kingdom of Great Britain. Occurred between 1775 and 1783, ending with the signing of the Treaty of Versailles. Tensions eased when Lord North, the new British Prime Minister, removed all the new taxes except that on tea. In 1773, a group of patriots responded to this tax through the Tea Party: disguised as Indians, boarded British merchant ships in Boston harbor and threw teabags into the water.

In 1775 the war officially began, whose initial development was clearly of British rule, but its course changed when after the battle of Saratoga (first great colonial victory) France and then Spain go to war to support American independence.
On July 4, 1776 representatives of the thirteen colonies drafted the Declaration of Independence, being the United States of America, the continent's first independent nation. Finally, in 1783 by the Treaty of Paris, the UK is forced to recognize that independence.