The Province of Georgia was founded for a couple of purposes. First of all, its founder James Oglethorpe saw the land as a place where English debtors could make a new life. In the early 1700s, countless people in England found themselves in debtors prisons. Oglethorpe was concerned with this growing social issue at home and envisioned his colony as a haven for the impoverished of England and for people he called "the worthy poor."

Georgia was also to serve as a buffer between empires. With the Spanish to the south in Florida and the French to the west in Louisiana, there was a concern that they might make incursions into British territory which would threaten the other colonies. Oglethorpe wanted to set up Georgia as a barrier defended by frontiersmen and backcountry farmers who would act as the first line of defense along the frontier of British North America.