<P> Much of the historiography concerns the reasons why the Americans rebelled in the 1770s and successfully broke away . Since the 1960s, the mainstream of historiography has emphasized the growth of American consciousness and nationalism and the colonial republican value - system, in opposition to the aristocratic viewpoint of British leaders . </P> <P> Historians in recent decades have mostly used one of three approaches to analyze the American Revolution: </P> <Ul> <Li> The Atlantic history view places North American events in a broader context, including the French Revolution and Haitian Revolution . It tends to integrate the historiographies of the American Revolution and the British Empire . </Li> <Li> The new social history approach looks at community social structure to find issues that became magnified into colonial cleavages . </Li> <Li> The ideological approach centers on republicanism in the Thirteen Colonies . The ideas of republicanism dictated that the United States would have no royalty or aristocracy or national church . They did permit continuation of the British common law, which American lawyers and jurists understood, approved of, and used in their everyday practice . Historians have examined how the rising American legal profession adapted the British common law to incorporate republicanism by selective revision of legal customs and by introducing more choice for courts . </Li> </Ul> <Li> The Atlantic history view places North American events in a broader context, including the French Revolution and Haitian Revolution . It tends to integrate the historiographies of the American Revolution and the British Empire . </Li>

Where were the original settlements in the thirteen british colonies located