The Thirteen Colonies and the War of Independence

The thirteen British colonies of North America were founded progressively over more than a century, from Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607 to Georgia in 1733, developing three distinct regional economies: the plantation societies of the South, built on tobacco, rice, and enslaved labor; the diversified maritime economy of New England, shaped by Puritan self-government; and the ethnically and religiously mixed Middle Colonies. Despite formal subordination to the British Crown, decades of "salutary neglect" allowed local assemblies to develop substantial practical self-government, while African slavery, introduced into Virginia as early as 1619, gradually spread through every colony. The French and Indian War (1754-1763) pitted the colonists and Britain against France and allied Indigenous nations; the 1763 Treaty of Paris that ended it gave Britain control of Canada and the lands east of the Mississippi, but also left Britain with a heavy war debt that it looked to the colonies to help repay.