United States
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| United States of America | |||||
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Motto:
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The United States including its territories
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| Capital | Washington, D.C. 38°53′N 77°01′W | ||||
| Largest city | New York City 40°43′N 74°00′W | ||||
| Official languages | None at federal level[fn 1] | ||||
| National language | English[fn 2] | ||||
| Ethnic groups | By race:[8] 77.1% White 13.3% Black 2.6% Other/multiracial 5.6% Asian 1.2% Native 0.2% Pacific Islander Ethnicity: 17.6% Hispanic or Latino 82.4% non-Hispanic or Latino | ||||
| Religion | 70.6% Christian 1.9% Jewish 0.9% Muslim 0.7% Buddhist 0.7% Hindu 1.8% Other faiths 22.8% Irreligious[9] | ||||
| Demonym | American | ||||
| Government | Federal presidentialconstitutional republic | ||||
| Donald Trump | |||||
| Mike Pence | |||||
| Paul Ryan | |||||
| John Roberts | |||||
| Legislature | Congress | ||||
| Senate | |||||
| House of Representatives | |||||
| Independence from Great Britain | |||||
| July 4, 1776 | |||||
| March 1, 1781 | |||||
| September 3, 1783 | |||||
| June 21, 1788 | |||||
| March 24, 1976 | |||||
| Area | |||||
• Total area
| 3,796,742 sq mi (9,833,520 km2)[10][fn 3](3rd/4th) | ||||
• Water (%)
| 6.97 | ||||
• Total land area
| 3,531,905 sq mi (9,147,590 km2) | ||||
| Population | |||||
• 2017 estimate
| 325,145,963[12] (3rd) | ||||
• 2010 census
| 309,349,689[13] (3rd) | ||||
• Density
| 90.6/sq mi (35.0/km2) (180th) | ||||
| GDP (PPP) | 2016 estimate | ||||
• Total
| $18.558 trillion[14] (2nd) | ||||
• Per capita
| $57,220[14] (14th) | ||||
| GDP (nominal) | 2016 estimate | ||||
• Total
| $18.558 trillion[14] (1st) | ||||
• Per capita
| $57,220[14] (6th) | ||||
| Gini (2013) | 40.8[15][16][17] medium | ||||
| HDI (2015) |  0.920[18]very high · 10th | ||||
| Currency | United States dollar ($) (USD) | ||||
| Time zone | (UTC−4 to −12, +10, +11) | ||||
• Summer (DST)
| (UTC−4 to −10[fn 4]) | ||||
| Date format | mm/dd/yyyy (AD) | ||||
| Drives on the | right[fn 5] | ||||
| Calling code | +1 | ||||
| ISO 3166 code | US | ||||
| Internet TLD | .us .gov .mil .edu | ||||
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The United States of America /əˈmɛrɪkə/ (USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a constitutional federal republic composed of 50 states, a federal district, five major self-governing territories, and various possessions.[fn 6] Forty-eight of the fifty states and the federal district are contiguous and located in North America between Canada and Mexico. The state of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east and across the Bering Strait from Russia to the west. The state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U.S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea. Nine time zones are covered. The geography, climate and wildlife of the country are extremely diverse.[20]
At 3.8 million square miles (9.8 million km2)[11] and with over 324 million people, the United States is the world's third- or fourth-largest country by total area,[fn 7] third-largest by land area, and the third-most populous. It is one of the world's most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, and is home to the world's largest immigrant population.[25]The capital is Washington, D.C., and the largest city is New York City; nine other major metropolitan areas—each with at least 4.5 million inhabitants and the largest having more than 13 million people—are Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Philadelphia, Miami, Atlanta, Boston, and San Francisco.
Paleo-Indians migrated from Asia to the North American mainland at least 15,000 years ago.[26] European colonization began in the 16th century. The United States emerged from 13 British colonies along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the colonies following the Seven Years' War led to the American Revolution, which began in 1775. On July 4, 1776, during the course of the American Revolutionary War, the colonies unanimously adopted the Declaration of Independence. The war ended in 1783 with recognition of the independence of the United States by Great Britain, representing the first successful war of independence against a European power.[27] The current constitution was adopted in 1788, after the Articles of Confederation, adopted in 1781, were felt to have provided inadequate federal powers. The first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, were ratified in 1791 and designed to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties.
The United States embarked on a vigorous expansion across North America throughout the 19th century,[28]displacing Native American tribes, acquiring new territories, and gradually admitting new states until it spanned the continent by 1848.[28] During the second half of the 19th century, the American Civil War led to the end of legal slavery in the country.[29][30] By the end of that century, the United States extended into the Pacific Ocean,[31] and its economy, driven in large part by the Industrial Revolution, began to soar.[32] The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the country's status as a global military power. The United States emerged from World War II as a global superpower, the first country to develop nuclear weapons, the only country to use them in warfare, and a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. The end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the world's sole superpower.[33] The U.S. is a founding member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States (OAS), and other international organizations.
The United States is a highly developed country, with the world's largest economy by nominal GDP and second-largest economy by PPP. Though its population is only 4.3% of the world total,[34] Americans hold nearly 40% of the total wealth in the world.[35] The United States ranks among the highest in several measures of socioeconomic performance, including average wage,[36] human development, per capita GDP, and productivity per person.[37]While the U.S. economy is considered post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge economy, the manufacturing sector remains the second-largest in the world.[38] Accounting for approximately a quarter of global GDP[39] and a third of global military spending,[40] the United States is the world's foremost economic and military power. The United States is a prominent political and cultural force internationally, and a leader in scientific research and technological innovations.[41]
Contents
[hide]Etymology
In 1507, the German cartographer Martin WaldseemĂ¼ller produced a world map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere "America" in honor of the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci (Latin: Americus Vespucius).[42] The first documentary evidence of the phrase "United States of America" is from a letter dated January 2, 1776, written by Stephen Moylan, Esq., George Washington's aide-de-camp and Muster-Master General of the Continental Army. Addressed to Lt. Col. Joseph Reed, Moylan expressed his wish to carry the "full and ample powers of the United States of America" to Spain to assist in the revolutionary war effort.[44][45][46]
The first known publication of the phrase "United States of America" was in an anonymous essay in The Virginia Gazette newspaper in Williamsburg, Virginia, on April 6, 1776.[47][48] The second draft of the Articles of Confederation, prepared by John Dickinson and completed by June 17, 1776, at the latest, declared "The name of this Confederation shall be the 'United States of America.'"[49] The final version of the Articles sent to the states for ratification in late 1777 contains the sentence "The Stile of this Confederacy shall be 'The United States of America'".[50] In June 1776, Thomas Jefferson wrote the phrase "UNITED STATES OF AMERICA" in all capitalized letters in the headline of his "original Rough draught" of the Declaration of Independence.[51][52] This draft of the document did not surface until June 21, 1776, and it is unclear whether it was written before or after Dickinson used the term in his June 17 draft of the Articles of Confederation.[49] In the final Fourth of July version of the Declaration, the title was changed to read, "The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America".[53] The preamble of the Constitution states "...establish this Constitution for the United States of America."
The short form "United States" is also standard. Other common forms are the "U.S.", the "USA", and "America". Colloquial names are the "U.S. of A." and, internationally, the "States". "Columbia", a name popular in poetry and songs of the late 18th century, derives its origin from Christopher Columbus; it appears in the name "District of Columbia".[54] In non-English languages, the name is frequently the translation of either the "United States" or "United States of America", and colloquially as "America". In addition, an abbreviation (e.g. USA) is sometimes used.[55]
The phrase "United States" was originally plural, a description of a collection of independent states—e.g., "the United States are"—including in the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, ratified in 1865. The singular form—e.g., "the United States is"—became popular after the end of the American Civil War. The singular form is now standard; the plural form is retained in the idiom "these United States".[56] The difference is more significant than usage; it is a difference between a collection of states and a unit.[57]
A citizen of the United States is an "American". "United States", "American" and "U.S." refer to the country adjectivally ("American values", "U.S. forces"). In English, the word "American" rarely refers to topics or subjects not connected with the United States.[58]
History
Indigenous and European contact
The first inhabitants of North America migrated from Siberia by way of the Bering land bridge and arrived at least 15,000 years ago, though increasing evidence suggests an even earlier arrival.[26] Some, such as the pre-Columbian Mississippian culture, developed advanced agriculture, grand architecture, and state-level societies.[59] The first Europeans to arrive in territory of the modern United States were Spanish conquistadors such as Juan Ponce de LeĂ³n, and made their first contacts in Florida in 1513. The native population declined for various reasons, primarily from diseases such as smallpox and measles. Violence was not a significant factor in the overall decline among Native Americans, though conflict among themselves and with Europeans affected specific tribes and various colonial settlements.[60][61][62][63][64][65] In the Hawaiian Islands, the earliest indigenous inhabitants arrived around 1 AD from Polynesia. Europeans under the British explorer Captain James Cook arrived in the Hawaiian Islands in 1778.
In the early days of colonization, many European settlers were subject to food shortages, disease, and attacks from Native Americans. Native Americans were also often at war with neighboring tribes and allied with Europeans in their colonial wars. At the same time, however, many natives and settlers came to depend on each other. Settlers traded for food and animal pelts, natives for guns, ammunition and other European wares.[66] Natives taught many settlers where, when and how to cultivate corn, beans and squash. European missionaries and others felt it was important to "civilize" the Native Americans and urged them to adopt European agricultural techniques and lifestyles.[67][68]
Settlements
After Spain sent Columbus on his first voyage to the New World in 1492, other explorers followed. The Spanish set up small settlements in New Mexico and Florida. France had several small settlements along the Mississippi River. Successful English settlement on the eastern coast of North America began with the Virginia Colony in 1607 at Jamestown and the Pilgrims'Plymouth Colony in 1620. Early experiments in communal living failed until the introduction of private farm holdings.[69] Many settlers were dissenting Christian groups who came seeking religious freedom. The continent's first elected legislative assembly, Virginia's House of Burgesses created in 1619, the Mayflower Compact, signed by the Pilgrims before disembarking, and the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut, established precedents for the pattern of representative self-government and constitutionalism that would develop throughout the American colonies.[70][71]
Most settlers in every colony were small farmers, but other industries developed within a few decades as varied as the settlements. Cash crops included tobacco, rice and wheat. Extraction industries grew up in furs, fishing and lumber. Manufacturers produced rum and ships, and by the late colonial period Americans were producing one-seventh of the world's iron supply.[72] Cities eventually dotted the coast to support local economies and serve as trade hubs. English colonists were supplemented by waves of Scotch-Irish and other groups. As coastal land grew more expensive freed indentured servants pushed further west.[73]
Slave cultivation of cash crops began with the Spanish in the 1500s, and was adopted by the English, but life expectancy was much higher in North America because of less disease and better food and treatment, leading to a rapid increase in the numbers of slaves.[74][75] Colonial society was largely divided over the religious and moral implications of slavery and colonies passed acts for and against the practice.[76][77] But by the turn of the 18th century, African slaves were replacing indentured servants for cash crop labor, especially in southern regions.[78]
With the British colonization of Georgia in 1732, the 13 colonies that would become the United States of America were established.[79] All had local governments with elections open to most free men, with a growing devotion to the ancient rights of Englishmen and a sense of self-government stimulating support for republicanism.[80] With extremely high birth rates, low death rates, and steady settlement, the colonial population grew rapidly. Relatively small Native American populations were eclipsed.[81] The Christian revivalist movement of the 1730s and 1740s known as the Great Awakening fueled interest in both religion and religious liberty.[82]
During the Seven Years' War (in America, known as the French and Indian War), British forces seized Canada from the French, but the francophone population remained politically isolated from the southern colonies. Excluding the Native Americans, who were being conquered and displaced, the 13 British colonies had a population of over 2.1 million in 1770, about one-third that of Britain. Despite continuing new arrivals, the rate of natural increase was such that by the 1770s only a small minority of Americans had been born overseas.[83] The colonies' distance from Britain had allowed the development of self-government, but their success motivated monarchs to periodically seek to reassert royal authority.[84]
Independence and expansion (1776–1865)
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The American Revolutionary War was the first successful colonial war of independence against a European power. Americans had developed an ideology of "republicanism" asserting that government rested on the will of the people as expressed in their local legislatures. They demanded their rights as Englishmen and "no taxation without representation". The British insisted on administering the empire through Parliament, and the conflict escalated into war.[85]
Following the passage of the Lee Resolution, on July 2, 1776, which was the actual vote for independence, the Second Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4, which proclaimed, in a long preamble, that humanity is created equal in their unalienable rights and that those rights were not being protected by Great Britain, and declared, in the words of the resolution, that the Thirteen Colonies were independent states and had no allegiance to the British crown in the United States. The fourth day of July is celebrated annually as Independence Day. In 1777, the Articles of Confederation established a weak government that operated until 1789.[86]
Britain recognized the independence of the United States following their defeat at Yorktown in 1781.[87] In the peace treaty of 1783, American sovereignty was recognized from the Atlantic coast west to the Mississippi River. Nationalists led the Philadelphia Convention of 1787 in writing the United States Constitution, ratified in state conventions in 1788. The federal government was reorganized into three branches, on the principle of creating salutary checks and balances, in 1789. George Washington, who had led the revolutionary army to victory, was the first president elected under the new constitution. The Bill of Rights, forbidding federal restriction of personal freedoms and guaranteeing a range of legal protections, was adopted in 1791.[88]
Although the federal government criminalized the international slave trade in 1808, after 1820, cultivation of the highly profitable cotton crop exploded in the Deep South, and along with it, the slave population.[89][90][91] The Second Great Awakening, especially 1800–1840, converted millions to evangelical Protestantism. In the North, it energized multiple social reform movements, including abolitionism;[92] in the South, Methodists and Baptists proselytized among slave populations.[93]
Americans' eagerness to expand westward prompted a long series of American Indian Wars.[94] The Louisiana Purchase of French-claimed territory in 1803 almost doubled the nation's area.[95] The War of 1812, declared against Britain over various grievances and fought to a draw, strengthened U.S. nationalism.[96] A series of military incursions into Florida led Spain to cede it and other Gulf Coast territory in 1819.[97] Expansion was aided by steam power, when steamboats began traveling along America's large water systems, which were connected by new canals, such as the Erie and the I&M; then, even faster railroads began their stretch across the nation's land.[98]
From 1820 to 1850, Jacksonian democracy began a set of reforms which included wider white male suffrage; it led to the rise of the Second Party System of Democrats and Whigs as the dominant parties from 1828 to 1854. The Trail of Tears in the 1830s exemplified the Indian removal policy that resettled Indians into the west on Indian reservations. The U.S. annexed the Republic of Texas in 1845 during a period of expansionist Manifest destiny.[99] The 1846 Oregon Treaty with Britain led to U.S. control of the present-day American Northwest.[100] Victory in the Mexican–American War resulted in the 1848 Mexican Cession of California and much of the present-day American Southwest.[101]
The California Gold Rush of 1848–49 spurred western migration and the creation of additional western states.[102] After the American Civil War, new transcontinental railways made relocation easier for settlers, expanded internal trade and increased conflicts with Native Americans.[103] Over a half-century, the loss of the American bison (sometimes called "buffalo") was an existential blow to many Plains Indians cultures.[104] In 1869, a new Peace Policy sought to protect Native-Americans from abuses, avoid further war, and secure their eventual U.S. citizenship, although conflicts, including several of the largest Indian Wars, continued throughout the West into the 1900s.[105]
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