The American Revolution was the conflict in which the thirteen British colonies in North America rejected imperial rule, declaring independence in July 1776 and securing it militarily by 1783 with the Treaty of Paris. The new republic was founded on Enlightenment principles of popular sovereignty, representative government and individual rights, codified later in the Constitution of 1787. Its leaders self-consciously designed institutions to limit and balance power. The settlement created the first large modern republic.
It provided an influential model of constitutional self-government that shaped later revolutions and political thought. It also led directly to the planned national capital at Washington, laid out by L'Enfant as a deliberate expression of the new republican order.