Empire · approximate1607 – 1776 · 169 years
British Thirteen Colonies (1750)
The largest empire in history — at one point the British crown ruled a quarter of the world's land and people.
What it was
Built piecemeal from the 17th century onward through trading companies, naval power, settler colonization, and outright conquest, the British Empire reached its greatest extent in 1922 covering 35 million km² and 458 million people. Decolonization between 1947 and 1980 dismantled most of it; Hong Kong's 1997 return to China is sometimes cited as the closing date.
Why it mattered
English as a world language, common-law legal systems across five continents, the borders of dozens of modern states, and the shape of global trade are all direct legacies — for better and for very much worse.
From Wikipedia
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.
Wikipedia: Thirteen Colonies·CC BY-SA 4.0
Borders & accuracy
Dashed borders mark empires whose extent we can date but whose precise frontiers are contested or undocumented.
- SOURCEreconstructed from Natural Earth country boundaries
- DETAILreconstructed-clipped-country
- SNAPSHOT1763
- POLITY TYPEstate
Also during this period
No conflict record yet names this polity as a belligerent; these overlap its dates only.
- Thirty Years' War1618–48World-changing · 8.0M dead
- Portuguese Conquest of Brazil1500–1750World-changing · 5.0M dead
- American Indian Wars1500–1800World-changing · 5.0M dead
- Qing Conquest of Ming China1618–83World-changing · 5.0M dead
- Manchu Conquest of China1616–83World-changing · 3.0M dead
- Seven Years' War1756–63World-changing · 1.4M dead
Open in the atlas →Seeks the timeline to 1607 and fits the map to these borders.
Cite as: British Thirteen Colonies (1750) (1607 – 1776). War Atlas. https://waratlas.org/e/americas-british-thirteen-colonies · Sources & methodology