The 13 colonies founded along the Eastern seaboard in the 17th and 18th centuries weren’t the first colonial outposts on the American continent, but they were the ones where colonists eventually pushed back against British rule and designed their own version of government to form the United States.
These 13 original colonies (New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia) were established by British colonists for a range of reasons, from the pursuit of fortunes, to escape from religious prosecution to the desire to create new forms of government.