United States of America

The United States of America (USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal union of 50 states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 contiguous states border Canada to the north and Mexico to the south, with the states of Alaska to the northwest and the archipelagic Hawaii in the Pacific Ocean. The United States also asserts sovereignty over five major island territories and various uninhabited islands.^[j] The country has the world’s third-largest land area,^[d] largest exclusive economic zone, and third-largest population, exceeding 334 million.^[k] Its three largest metropolitan areas are New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago, and its three most populous states are California, Texas, and Florida.

Paleo-Indians migrated across the Bering land bridge more than 12,000 years ago, and formed various civilizations and societies. British colonization led to the first settlement of the Thirteen Colonies in Virginia in 1607. Clashes with the British Crown over taxation and political representation sparked the American Revolution, with the Second Continental Congress formally declaring independence on July 4, 1776. Following its victory in the 1775–1783 Revolutionary War, the country continued to expand westward across North America, resulting in the dispossession of native inhabitants. As more states were admitted, a North–South division over slavery led to the secession of the Confederate States of America, which fought states remaining in the Union in the 1861–1865 American Civil War. With the victory and preservation of the United States, slavery was abolished nationally. By 1900, the country had established itself as a great power, a status solidified after its involvement in World War I. After Japan‘s attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, the U.S. entered World War II. Its aftermath left the U.S. and the Soviet Union as the world’s two superpowers and led to the Cold War, during which both countries struggled for ideological dominance and international influence. Following the Soviet Union’s collapse and the end of the Cold War in 1991, the U.S. emerged as the world’s sole superpower, wielding significant geopolitical influence globally.

The U.S. national government is a presidential constitutional federal republic and liberal democracy with three separate branches: legislative, executive, and judicial. It has a bicameral national legislature composed of the House of Representatives, a lower house based on population; and the Senate, an upper house based on equal representation for each state. Federalism provides substantial autonomy to the 50 states, while American values are based on a democratic political tradition that draws its inspiration from the European Enlightenment movement.

One of the world’s most developed countries, the United States has had the largest nominal GDP since about 1890 and accounted for over 15% of the global economy in 2023.^[l] It possesses by far the largest amount of wealth of any country and has the highest disposable household income per capita among OECD countries. The U.S. ranks among the world’s highest in economic competitiveness, productivity, innovation, human rights, and higher education. Its hard power and cultural influence have a global reach. The U.S. is a founding member of the World Bank, the Organization of American States, NATO, and the United Nations,^[m] as well as a permanent member of the UN Security Council.

Etymology

Further information: Names of the United States, Demonyms for the United States, and United Colonies

The first documented use of the phrase “United States of America” is a letter from January 2, 1776. Stephen Moylan, a Continental Army aide to General George Washington, wrote to Joseph Reed, Washington’s aide-de-camp, seeking to go “with full and ample powers from the United States of America to Spain” to seek assistance in the Revolutionary War effort.^[20][21] The first known public usage is an anonymous essay published in the Williamsburg newspaper, The Virginia Gazette, on April 6, 1776.^[20][22][23] By June 1776, the “United States of America” appeared in the Articles of Confederation^[24][25] and the Declaration of Independence.^[24] The Second Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776.^[26]

The term “United States” and the initialism “U.S.”, used as nouns or as adjectives in English, are common short names for the country. The initialism “USA”, a noun, is also common.^[27] “United States” and “U.S.” are the established terms throughout the U.S. federal government, with prescribed rules.^[n] In English, the term “America” rarely refers to topics unrelated to the United States, despite the usage of “the Americas” as the totality of North and South America.^[29] “The States” is an established colloquial shortening of the name, used particularly from abroad;^[30] “stateside” is the corresponding adjective or adverb.^[31]

History

Main article: History of the United States

For a topical guide, see Outline of the history of the United States.

Indigenous peoples

Main article: History of Native Americans in the United States

Further information: Native Americans in the United States and Pre-Columbian era

The first inhabitants of North America migrated from Siberia across the Bering land bridge about 12,000 years ago;^[33][34] the Clovis culture, which appeared around 11,000 BC, is believed to be the first widespread culture in the Americas.^[35][36] Over time, indigenous North American cultures grew increasingly sophisticated, and some, such as the Mississippian culture, developed agriculture, architecture, and complex societies.^[37] In the post-archaic period, the Mississippian cultures were located in the midwestern, eastern, and southern regions, and the Algonquian in the Great Lakes region and along the Eastern Seaboard, while the Hohokam culture and Ancestral Puebloans inhabited the southwest.^[38] Native population estimates of what is now the United States before the arrival of European immigrants range from around 500,000^[39][40] to nearly 10 million.^[40][41]

European settlement and conflict (1607–1765)

Main articles: Colonial history of the United States and Colonial American military history

See also: European colonization of the Americas

Christopher Columbus began exploring the Caribbean for Spain in 1492, leading to Spanish-speaking settlements and missions from Puerto Rico and Florida to New Mexico and California.^[42][43][44] France established its own settlements along the Great Lakes, Mississippi River and Gulf of Mexico.^[45] British colonization of the East Coast began with the Virginia Colony (1607) and Plymouth Colony (1620).^[46][47] The Mayflower Compact and the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut established precedents for representative self-governance and constitutionalism that would develop throughout the American colonies.^[48][49] While European settlers in what is now the United States experienced conflicts with Native Americans, they also engaged in trade, exchanging European tools for food and animal pelts.^[50][o] Relations ranged from close cooperation to warfare and massacres. The colonial authorities often pursued policies that forced Native Americans to adopt European lifestyles, including conversion to Christianity.^[54][55] Along the eastern seaboard, settlers trafficked African slaves through the Atlantic slave trade.^[56]

The original Thirteen Colonies^[p] that would later found the United States were administered as possessions of Great Britain,^[57] and had local governments with elections open to most white male property owners.^[58][59] The colonial population grew rapidly, eclipsing Native American populations;^[60] by the 1770s, the natural increase of the population was such that only a small minority of Americans had been born overseas.^[61] The colonies’ distance from Britain allowed for the development of self-governance,^[62] and the First Great Awakening, a series of Christian revivals, fueled colonial interest in religious liberty.^[63]

For a century, the American colonists had been providing their own troops and materiel in conflicts with indigenous peoples allied with Britain’s colonial rivals, especially France, and the Americans had begun to develop a sense of self-defense and self-reliance separate from Britain. The French and Indian War (1754–1763) took on new significance for all North American colonists after Parliament under William Pitt the Elder concluded that major military resources needed to be devoted to North America to win the war against France. The British colonies’ position as an integral part of the British Empire became more apparent during the war, with British military and civilian officials becoming a more significant presence in American life.

American Revolution and the early republic (1765–1800)

Main articles: American Revolution and American Revolutionary War

Further information: History of the United States (1776–1789) and History of the United States (1789–1815)

Following their victory in the French and Indian War, Britain began to assert greater control over local colonial affairs, resulting in colonial political resistance; one of the primary colonial grievances was a denial of their rights as Englishmen, particularly the right to representation in the British government that taxed them. To demonstrate their dissatisfaction and resolve, the First Continental Congress met in 1774 and passed the Continental Association, a colonial boycott of British goods that proved effective. The British attempt to then disarm the colonists resulted in the 1775 Battles of Lexington and Concord, igniting the American Revolutionary War. At the Second Continental Congress, the colonies appointed George Washington commander-in-chief of the Continental Army, and created a committee that named Thomas Jefferson to draft the Declaration of Independence. Two days after passing the Lee Resolution to create an independent nation the Declaration was adopted on July 4, 1776.^[64] The political values of the American Revolution included liberty, inalienable individual rights; and the sovereignty of the people;^[65] supporting republicanism and rejecting monarchy, aristocracy, and all hereditary political power; civic virtue; and vilification of political corruption.^[66] The Founding Fathers of the United States, who included Washington, Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, James Madison, Thomas Paine, and many others, were inspired by Greco-Roman, Renaissance, and Enlightenment philosophies and ideas.^[67][68]

The Articles of Confederation were ratified in 1781 and established a decentralized government that operated until 1789.^[64] After the British surrender at the siege of Yorktown in 1781 American sovereignty was internationally recognized by the Treaty of Paris (1783), through which the U.S. gained territory stretching west to the Mississippi River, north to present-day Canada, and south to Spanish Florida.^[69] The Northwest Ordinance (1787) established the precedent by which the country’s territory would expand with the admission of new states, rather than the expansion of existing states.^[70] The U.S. Constitution was drafted at the 1787 Constitutional Convention to overcome the limitations of the Articles. It went into effect in 1789, creating a federal republic governed by three separate branches that together ensured a system of checks and balances.^[71] George Washington was elected the country’s first president under the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights was adopted in 1791 to allay skeptics’ concerns about the power of the more centralized government.^[72][73] His resignation as commander-in-chief after the Revolutionary War and his later refusal to run for a third term as the country’s first president established a precedent for the supremacy of civil authority in the United States and the peaceful transfer of power.^[74][75]

Westward expansion and Civil War (1800–1865)

Further information: History of the United States (1815–1849) and History of the United States (1849–1865)

The Louisiana Purchase of 1803 from France nearly doubled the territory of the United States.^[76][77] Lingering issues with Britain remained, leading to the War of 1812, which was fought to a draw.^[78][79] Spain ceded Florida and its Gulf Coast territory in 1819.^[80] In the late 18th century, American settlers began to expand westward, many with a sense of manifest destiny.^[81][82] The Missouri Compromise attempted to balance the desire of northern states to prevent the expansion of slavery into new territories with that of southern states to extend it, admitting Missouri as a slave state and Maine as a free state. It further prohibited slavery in all other lands of the Louisiana Purchase north of the 36°30′ parallel.^[83] As Americans expanded further into land inhabited by Native Americans, the federal government often applied policies of Indian removal or assimilation.^[84][85] The Trail of Tears (1830–1850) was a U.S. government policy that forcibly removed and displaced most Native Americans living east of the Mississippi River to lands far to the west. These and earlier organized displacements prompted a long series of American Indian Wars west of the Mississippi.^[86][87] The Republic of Texas was annexed in 1845,^[88] and the 1846 Oregon Treaty led to U.S. control of the present-day American Northwest.^[89] Victory in the Mexican–American War resulted in the 1848 Mexican Cession of California, Nevada, Utah, and much of present-day Colorado and the American Southwest.^[81][90] The California gold rush of 1848–1849 spurred a huge migration of white settlers to the Pacific coast, leading to even more confrontations with Native populations. One of the most violent, the California genocide of thousands of Native inhabitants, lasted into the early 1870s,^[91] just as additional western territories and states were created.^[92]

During the colonial period, slavery had been legal in the American colonies, though the practice began to be significantly questioned during the American Revolution.^[93] States in the North enacted abolition laws,^[94] though support for slavery strengthened in Southern states, as inventions such as the cotton gin made the institution increasingly profitable for Southern elites.^[95][96][97] This sectional conflict regarding slavery culminated in the American Civil War (1861–1865).^[98][99] Eleven slave states seceded and formed the Confederate States of America, while the other states remained in the Union.^[100][101] War broke out in April 1861 after the Confederates bombarded Fort Sumter.^[102][103] After the January 1863 Emancipation Proclamation, many freed slaves joined the Union army.^[104] The war began to turn in the Union’s favor following the 1863 Siege of Vicksburg and Battle of Gettysburg, and the Confederacy surrendered in 1865 after the Union’s victory in the Battle of Appomattox Court House.^[105] The Reconstruction era followed the war. After the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln, Reconstruction Amendments were passed to protect the rights of African Americans. National infrastructure, including transcontinental telegraph and railroads, spurred growth in the American frontier.^[106]

Post–Civil War era (1865–1917)

Main article: History of the United States (1865–1917)Duration: 2 minutes and 27 seconds.2:27An Edison Studios film showing immigrants arriving at Ellis Island in New York Harbor, a major point of entry for European immigrants in the late 19th and early 20th centuries^[107][108]

From 1865 through 1917 an unprecedented stream of immigrants arrived in the United States, including 24.4 million from Europe.^[109] Most came through the port of New York City, and New York City and other large cities on the East Coast became home to large Jewish, Irish, and Italian populations, while many Germans and Central Europeans moved to the Midwest. At the same time, about one million French Canadians migrated from Quebec to New England.^[110] During the Great Migration, millions of African Americans left the rural South for urban areas in the North.^[111] Alaska was purchased from Russia in 1867.^[112]

The Compromise of 1877 effectively ended Reconstruction and white supremacists took local control of Southern politics.^[113][114] African Americans endured a period of heightened, overt racism following Reconstruction, a time often called the nadir of American race relations.^[115][116] A series of Supreme Court decisions, including Plessy v. Ferguson, emptied the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments of their force, allowing Jim Crow laws in the South to remain unchecked, sundown towns in the Midwest, and segregation in communities across the country, which would be reinforced by the policy of redlining later adopted by the federal Home Owners’ Loan Corporation.^[117]

An explosion of technological advancement accompanied by the exploitation of cheap immigrant labor^[118] led to rapid economic expansion during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, allowing the United States to outpace the economies of England, France, and Germany combined.^[119][120] This fostered the amassing of power by a few prominent industrialists, largely by their formation of trusts and monopolies to prevent competition.^[121] Tycoons led the nation’s expansion in the railroad, petroleum, and steel industries. The United States emerged as a pioneer of the automotive industry.^[122] These changes were accompanied by significant increases in economic inequality, slum conditions, and social unrest, creating the environment for labor unions to begin to flourish.^{[123][124][125]} This period eventually ended with the advent of the Progressive Era, which was characterized by significant reforms.^[126][127]

Pro-American elements in Hawaii overthrew the Hawaiian monarchy; the islands were annexed in 1898. That same year, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, and Guam were ceded to the U.S. by Spain after the latter’s defeat in the Spanish–American War. (The Philippines was granted full independence from the U.S. on July 4, 1946, following World War II. Puerto Rico and Guam have remained U.S. territories.)^[128] American Samoa was acquired by the United States in 1900 after the Second Samoan Civil War.^[129] The U.S. Virgin Islands were purchased from Denmark in 1917.^[130]

Rise as a superpower (1917–1945)

Main article: History of the United States (1917–1945)

The United States entered World War I alongside the Allies, helping to turn the tide against the Central Powers.^[131] In 1920, a constitutional amendment granted nationwide women’s suffrage.^[132] During the 1920s and ’30s, radio for mass communication and the invention of early television transformed communications nationwide.^[133] The Wall Street Crash of 1929 triggered the Great Depression, which President Franklin D. Roosevelt responded to with the New Deal, a series of sweeping programs and public works projects combined with financial reforms and regulations. All were intended to protect against future economic depressions.^[134][135]

Initially neutral during World War II, the U.S. began supplying war materiel to the Allies of World War II in March 1941 and entered the war in December after the Empire of Japan‘s attack on Pearl Harbor.^[136][137] The U.S. developed the first nuclear weapons and used them against the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, ending the war.^[138][139] The United States was one of the “Four Policemen” who met to plan the post-war world, alongside the United Kingdom, Soviet Union, and China.^[140][141] The U.S. emerged relatively unscathed from the war, with even greater economic power and international political influence.^[142]

Cold War (1945–1991)

Main article: Cold War

Further information: History of the United States (1945–1964), History of the United States (1964–1980), and History of the United States (1980–1991)

After World War II, the United States entered the Cold War, where geopolitical tensions between the U.S. and the Soviet Union led the two countries to dominate world affairs.^{[143][144][145]} The U.S. utilized the policy of containment to limit the USSR’s sphere of influence, and prevailed in the Space Race, which culminated with the first crewed Moon landing in 1969.^[146][147] Domestically, the U.S. experienced economic growth, urbanization, and population growth following World War II.^[148] The civil rights movement emerged, with Martin Luther King Jr. becoming a prominent leader in the early 1960s.^[149] The Great Society plan of President Lyndon Johnson‘s administration resulted in groundbreaking and broad-reaching laws, policies and a constitutional amendment to counteract some of the worst effects of lingering institutional racism.^[150] The counterculture movement in the U.S. brought significant social changes, including the liberalization of attitudes toward recreational drug use and sexuality.^[151][152] It also encouraged open defiance of the military draft (leading to the end of conscription in 1973) and wide opposition to U.S. intervention in Vietnam (with the U.S. totally withdrawing in 1975).^[153] A societal shift in the roles of women was significantly responsible for the large increase in female paid labor participation during the 1970s, and by 1985 the majority of American women aged 16 and older were employed.^[154] The late 1980s and early 1990s saw the fall of communism and the collapse of the Soviet Union, which marked the end of the Cold War and left the United States as the world’s sole superpower.^{[155][156][157][158]}

Contemporary (1991–present)

Main articles: History of the United States (1991–2008) and History of the United States (2008–present)

The 1990s saw the longest recorded economic expansion in American history, a dramatic decline in U.S. crime rates, and advances in technology. Throughout this decade, technological innovations such as the World Wide Web, the evolution of the Pentium microprocessor in accordance with Moore’s law, rechargeable lithium-ion batteries, the first gene therapy trial, and cloning either emerged in the U.S. or were improved upon there. The Human Genome Project was formally launched in 1990, while Nasdaq became the first stock market in the United States to trade online in 1998.^[159]

In the Gulf War of 1991, an American-led international coalition of states expelled an Iraqi invasion force that had occupied neighboring Kuwait.^[160] The September 11 attacks on the United States in 2001 by the pan-Islamist militant organization al-Qaeda led to the war on terror, and subsequent military interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq.^[161][162] The cultural impact of the attacks was profound and long-lasting.

The U.S. housing bubble culminated in 2007 with the Great Recession, the largest economic contraction since the Great Depression.^[163] Coming to a head in the 2010s, political polarization in the country increased between liberal and conservative factions.^{[164][165][166]} This polarization was capitalized upon in the January 2021 Capitol attack,^[167] when a mob of insurrectionists^[168] entered the U.S. Capitol and sought to prevent the peaceful transfer of power^[169] in an attempted self-coup d’état.^[170]