History of the United Kingdom Britain as the world's dominant colonial power. During the 1760s and 1770s, relations between the Thirteen Colonies and Britain became increasingly strained, primarily because of opposition to Parliament's repeated attempts to tax American colonists without their consent. Disagreement turned to violence and in 1775 the American Revolutionary War began. In 1776 the Patriots expelled royal officials and declared the independence of the United States of America. After capturing a British invasion army in 1777, the US formed an alliance with France (and in turn Spain aided France), evening out the military balance. The British army controlled only a handful of
Decolonization of the Americas and France has fully "integrated" most of its former colonies as fully constituent "departments" of France. The United States of America declared independence from Great Britain on July 2, 1776 (although the event is now commemorated on July 4, the date when the Declaration of Independence was officially adopted by Congress), in so doing becoming the first independent, foreign-recognized nation in the Americas and the first European colonial entity to break from its mother country. Britain formally acknowledged American independence in 1783 after its defeat in the American Revolutionary War. Although initially occupying only the land east of the Mississippi