Encyclopedia
The
United States of America, also known as the
United States, the
U.S., the
U.S.A., and
America, is a country in
North America. A
federal republic, the United States shares land borders with
Canada and
Mexico, and extends from the
Atlantic Ocean to the
Pacific Ocean.The United States is also in extremely close proximity to Russia via the state of
Alaska; separated only by the
Bering Strait. Its
capital is
Washington, D.C.The present-day continental United States has been inhabited for at least 15,000 years by
indigenous tribes. After
European exploration and settlement in the
16th century, the
English established their own colonies, and gained control of others that had been begun by other European nations, in the eastern portion of the continent in the 17th and early 18th centuries. On 4 July 1776, at
war with
Britain over fair governance,
thirteen of these colonies declared their independence; in 1783, the war ended in British acceptance of the new nation. Since then, the country has more than quadrupled in size: it now consists of 50
states and one
federal district, and has a number of .
At over 3.7 million square miles , the U.S. is the
third or fourth largest country by total area, depending on whether or not the disputed areas of
China are included. It is also the world's third most populous nation, with nearly 300 million people.
The United States has maintained a
liberal democratic political system since it adopted its
Articles of Confederation on 1 March 1781 and the
Constitution, the Articles' replacement, on 17 September 1787. American military, economic, cultural, and political influence increased throughout the 20th century; with the
collapse of the Soviet Union at the end of the
Cold War, the nation emerged as the world's sole remaining
superpower. Today it plays a major role in world affairs.
Name
See also: List of meanings of countries' namesThe earliest known use of the name
America is from 1507, when a globe and a large map created by the
German cartographer
Martin Waldseemüller in
Saint-Die-des-Vosges described the combined continents of North and South America. Although the origin of the name is uncertain, the most widely held belief is that expressed in an accompanying book,
Cosmographiae Introductio was a book published in 1507 to accompany Martin Waldseemller [i]'s map of ...
, which explains it as a feminized version of the
Latin name of Italian explorer
Amerigo Vespucci ; in Latin, the other continents' names were all feminine. Vespucci theorized, correctly, that
Christopher Columbus, on reaching islands in the
Caribbean Sea in 1492, had come not to
India but to a "
New World".
The Americas were also known as
Columbia, after Columbus, prompting the name
District of Columbia for the land set aside as the U.S. capital.
Columbia remained a popular name for the United States until the early
twentieth century, when it fell into relative disuse; but it is still used poetically and appears in various names and titles. A female
personification of the country is also called
Columbia; she is similar to
Britannia.
Columbus Day, a holiday in the U.S. and other countries in the Americas, commemorates Columbus's October 1492 landing.
The term "united States of America" was first used officially in the
Declaration of Independence, adopted on 4 July 1776. On 15 November 1777, the
Second Continental Congress adopted the
Articles of Confederation, the first of which stated "The Stile of this Confederacy shall be 'The United States of America.'"
The adjectival and demonymic forms for the United States are
American, a point of
controversy among some.
History
Before the
European colonization of the Americas, a process that began at the end of the 15th century, the present-day continental U.S. was inhabited exclusively by various
indigenous tribes, including Alaskan natives, who migrated to the
continent over a period that may have begun 35,000 years ago and may have ended as recently as 11,000 years ago. The first confirmed European landing in the present-day United States was by a Spaniard,
Juan Ponce de Leon, who landed in 1513 in
Florida, and as part of his claim, the first
European settlement was established by Don
Pedro Menendez de Aviles on the site of a
Timucuan Indian village in 1565 at St. Augustine, Florida. The
French colonized some of the
northeastern portions, and the
Spanish colonized most of the
southern and
western United States. The first successful
English settlement was at
Jamestown,
Virginia, in 1607, followed in 1620 by the
Pilgrims' landing at
Plymouth,
Massachusetts, and then the arrival of the colony of Massachusetts Bay, started by the Puritans. In 1609 and 1617, respectively, the
Dutch settled in part of what became
New York and
New Jersey. In 1638, the
Swedes founded
New Sweden, in part of what became
Delaware, New Jersey, and
Pennsylvania after passing through Dutch hands. Throughout the 17th and early 18th centuries, England established new colonies, took over Dutch colonies, and split others. With the division of the Carolinas, in 1729, and the colonization of
Georgia, in 1732, the British colonies in North America, excluding present-day Canada, numbered thirteen. These
thirteen colonies would be drawn closer together over the coming decades.
Tensions between American colonials and the British during the
revolutionary period of the 1760s and 1770s led to open military conflict in 1775. It should be noted that the British Colonies of
East and
West Florida, and Quebec added by Treaty in 1763 did not join in the rebellion against
Great Britain.
George Washington commanded the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War as the
Second Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence on 4 July 1776. The Second Continental Congress had been formed to confront British actions, and did create the
Continental Army, but did not have the authority to levy
taxes or make federal laws. In 1777, the Congress adopted the
Articles of Confederation, uniting the states under a weak federal government, which operated from 1781 until 1788, when enough states had ratified the
United States Constitution. The Constitution, which strengthened the union and the federal government, has since remained the supreme law of the land.
From 1803 to 1848, the size of the new nation nearly tripled as settlers pushed beyond national boundaries even before the
Louisiana Purchase. The expansion was tempered somewhat by the stalemate in the
War of 1812, but was subsequently reinvigorated by victory in the
Mexican–American War in 1848.
As new territories were being incorporated, the nation was divided over the issue of states' rights, the role of the federal government, and, by the 1820s, the expansion of
slavery, which had been legal in all thirteen of the colonies but was rarer in the north, where it was abolished by 1804. The Northern states were opposed to the expansion of slavery whereas the
Southern states saw the opposition as an attack on their way of life, since their economy was dependent on slave labor. The failure to permanently resolve these issues led to the
Civil War, following the secession of many slave states in the South to form the
Confederate States of America after the
1860 election of
Abraham Lincoln. The 1865 Union victory in the Civil War effectively ended slavery and settled the question of whether a state had the right to secede. The event was a major turning point in American history, with an increase in federal power.
After the Civil War, an unprecedented influx of
immigrants, who helped to provide labor for American industry and create diverse communities in
undeveloped areas, together with high tariff protections, national infrastructure building, and national banking regulations, hastened the country's rise to international power. The growing power of the United States enabled it to acquire new territories, including the annexation of
Puerto Rico after victory in the
Spanish–American War, which marked the debut of the United States as a
major world power.
At the start of the
First World War, in 1914, the United States remained neutral. In 1917, however, the United States joined the
Allied Powers, helping to turn the tide against the
Central Powers. For historical reasons, American sympathies were very much in favor of the British and French, even though a sizable number of citizens, mostly Irish and German, were opposed to intervention. After the war, the Senate did not ratify the
Treaty of Versailles, because of a fear that it would pull the United States into European affairs. Instead, the country pursued a policy of unilateralism that bordered at times on isolationism.
During
most of the 1920s, the United States enjoyed a period of unbalanced prosperity as farm prices fell and industrial profits grew. A rise in debt and an inflated
stock market culminated in a
crash in 1929, triggering the
Great Depression. After his election as President in 1932, Franklin Delano Roosevelt instituted his plan for a
New Deal, which increased government intervention in the economy in response to the Great Depression.
The nation did not fully recover until 1941, when the United States was driven to join the
Allies against the
Axis Powers after a surprise
attack on Pearl Harbor by
Japan.
World War II was the costliest war in American history, but helped to pull the economy out of depression as the required production of military
materiel provided much-needed jobs, and women entered the workforce in large numbers for the first time. During this war,
scientists working for the United States federal government succeeded in producing
nuclear weapons, making the United States the world's first
nuclear power. Toward the end of World War II, after the
end of World War II in Europe, the United States dropped
atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan.
Japan surrendered soon after, on September 2, 1945, which ended World War II.
After World War II, the United States and the
Soviet Union became superpowers in an era of ideological rivalry dubbed the
Cold War. The United States promoted
liberal democracy and
capitalism, while the Soviet Union
communism and a centrally planned economy. The result was a series of proxy wars, including the
Korean War, the
Vietnam War, the tense nuclear showdown of the
Cuban Missile Crisis, and the
Soviet war in Afghanistan.
The perception that the United States was losing the
space race spurred government efforts to raise proficiency in mathematics and science in schools and led to
President Kennedy's call for the United States to land "a man on the
moon" by the end of the 1960s, which was realized in 1969.
Meanwhile, American society experienced a period of sustained economic expansion. At the same time, discrimination across the United States, especially in the South, was increasingly challenged by a growing civil-rights movement headed by prominent African Americans such as
Martin Luther King, Jr., which led to the abolition of the
Jim Crow laws in the South.
After the
fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, the United States continued to intervene militarily overseas, for example in the
Gulf War.
Following the September 11, 2001 attacks, U.S. foreign policy focused on the threat of
terrorist attacks. In response, the government under
George W. Bush began a series of military and legal operations termed the
War on Terror, beginning with the overthrow of Afghanistan's
Taliban government in October 2001. Soon after, the United States launched the controversial
2003 invasion of Iraq, with support from 30 governments, which George W. Bush referred to as the '
Coalition of the Willing'. Although the Bush administration justified its invasion with a charge that Iraq had stockpiled weapons of mass destruction, no such stockpile was found and the Bush administration later admitted having acted on flawed intelli
