Thirteen Colonies   • Print   • Cite   Traditionally, when we
tell the story of “Colonial America,” we are talking about the
English colonies along the Eastern seaboard. That story is
incomplete–by the time Englishmen had begun to establish
colonies in earnest, there were plenty of French, Spanish, Dutch
and even Russian colonial outposts on the American continent–but
the story of those 13 colonies (New Hampshire, Massachusetts,
Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania,
Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and
Georgia) is an important one. It was those colonies that came
together to form the United States.  Sixteenth-century England
was a tumultuous place. Because they could make more money from
selling wool than from selling food, many of the nation’s
landowners were converting farmers’ fields into pastures for
sheep. This led to a food shortage; at the same time, many
agricultural workers lost their jobs.  The 16th century was also
the age of mercantilism, an ext