United States
From The UCSC Wikipedia Trust Project
Template:Sprotected2Template:DablinkTemplate:Infobox Country or territoryThe United States of America (often shortened to the United States, USA, U.S. or colloquially America) is a country of the western hemisphere, comprising fifty states and numerous outlying territories. Forty-eight contiguous states lie in central North America between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, bound on land by Canada to the north and Mexico to the south; Alaska is in the northwest of the continent with Canada to its east, and Hawaii is in the mid-Pacific. The United States is a federal constitutional republic, with its capital in Washington, D.C.[2][3]
At over 3.7 million square miles (over 9.6 million km²) and with over 300 million people, the United States is the third largest country by both total area and population. [4] With a gross domestic product (GDP) of over $13 trillion, the U.S. has the largest national economy in the world.[5] GDP per capita ranks first among the larger economies of the world, and third or eighth overall, depending on the measurement. The product of large-scale historical immigration and home to a complex social structure[6] as well as a wide array of household arrangements,[7] the U.S. is one of the world's most ethnically and socially diverse nations.[8]
The nation was founded by thirteen colonies declaring their independence from Great Britain on July 4, 1776 and ratifying the Articles of Confederation, on March 1, 1781. It adopted the current constitution on September 17, 1787. The country greatly expanded in territory thoughout the 19th century acquiring lands from France and Mexico. With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, it became the world's sole remaining superpower. The United States continues to exert dominant economic, political, cultural, and military influence around the globe.[9]
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Etymology
Common names and abbreviations of the United States of America include the United States, the U.S., the U.S.A., the USA, the U.S. of A., the States (informal), and America. The earliest known use of the name America is attributed to the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller who, while working in Saint-Dié-des-Vosges in 1507, created a globe and a large map showing North and South America.[10] Although the origin of the name is uncertain,[11] the most widely held belief is that expressed in an accompanying bookTemplate:Fact, Cosmographiae Introductio, which explains it as the feminine version of the Latin name of Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci (Americus Vespucius); 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 20th century, when it fell into relative disuse; it is still used poetically, and appears in various names and titles.[12][13][14] One female personification of the country is called Columbia; she is similar to Britannia.[15] Columbus Day is a holiday in the United States, and other countries in the Americas, commemorating Columbus' October 1492 landing.
The phrase "united States of America" [sic] was first used officially in the Declaration of Independence, adopted on July 4, 1776. On November 15, 1777, the Second Continental Congress adopted the Articles of Confederation, the first of which stated "The Stile [sic] of this Confederacy shall be 'The United States of America.'" The name was originally proposed by Thomas Paine.
The most common adjectival and demonymic form for the United States is American; this term is used for U.S. citizens living abroad, and for cultural characteristics ("American language," "American sports") and is rarely used to refer to people not connected to the U.S.
Geography
The United States is the world's third largest country by total area, and the third largest by land area alone, after Russia and Canada.[16] Its contiguous portion is bounded by the North Atlantic Ocean to the east, the North Pacific Ocean to the west, Mexico and the Gulf of Mexico to the south, and Canada to the north. Alaska (the largest state in area) is bound by Canada to its east, with the Pacific Ocean to its south, the Arctic Ocean to its north, and the Bering Strait to the west. The state of Hawaii occupies an archipelago in the Pacific Ocean, southwest of the North American mainland.
Deciduous vegetation and grasslands prevail in the eastern U.S., transitioning to prairies, boreal forests, and the Rocky Mountains in the west, and deserts in the southwest. In the northeast, the coasts of the Great Lakes and Atlantic seaboard host much of the country's population.
Terrain
The U.S. has an extremely varied geography, particularly in the West. The eastern seaboard has a coastal plain which is widest in the south and narrows in the north. The coastal plain does not exist north of New Jersey, although there are glacial outwash plains on Long Island, Martha's Vineyard, and Nantucket. In the extreme southeast, Florida is home to the ecologically unique Everglades.
Beyond the coastal plain, the rolling hills of the Piedmont region end at the Appalachian Mountains, which rise above 6,000 feet (1,830 m) in North Carolina, Tennessee, and New Hampshire. From the west slope of the Appalachians, the Interior Plains of the Midwest are relatively flat and are the location of the Great Lakes as well as the Mississippi-Missouri River, the world's 4th longest river system.[17] West of the Mississippi River, the Interior Plains slope uphill and blend into the vast and often featureless Great Plains.
The abrupt rise of the Rocky Mountains, at the western edge of the Great Plains, extends north to south across the continental U.S., reaching altitudes over 14,000 feet (4,270 m) in Colorado.[18] In the past, the Rocky Mountains had a higher level of volcanic activity; nowadays, the range only has one area of volcanism (the supervolcano underlying Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming, possibly the world's largest volcano), although rift volcanism has occurred relatively recently near the Rockies' southern margin in New Mexico.[19]
Alaska has numerous mountain ranges; including Mount McKinley (Denali), the highest peak in North America. Numerous volcanoes can be found throughout the Alexander and Aleutian Islands extending south and west of the Alaskan mainland.
The Hawaiian Islands are tropical, volcanic islands extending over 1,500 miles (2,400 km), and consisting of six larger islands and another dozen smaller ones that are inhabited.
Climate
Due to its large size and wide range of geographic features, the United States contains examples of nearly every global climate. The climate is temperate in most areas, tropical in Hawaii and southern Florida, polar in Alaska, semiarid in the Great Plains west of the 100th meridian, Mediterranean in coastal California and arid in the Great Basin. Its comparatively generous climate contributed (in part) to the country's rise as a world power, with infrequent severe drought in the major agricultural regions, a general lack of widespread flooding, and a mainly temperate climate that receives adequate precipitation.
History
Native Americans
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 peoples, 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.[20]
European colonization
The first confirmed European landing in present-day United States territory was by Christopher Columbus, who visited Puerto Rico on November 19, 1493, during his second voyage. The settlement of San Juan, Puerto Rico was founded on August 8, 1508 by Juan Ponce de León. Ponce de León went on to become the first confirmed European to arrive in what would become the continental United States when he landed in Florida on April 2, 1513. Florida was home to the earliest European colonies on the mainland; these were Pensacola (founded by Tristán de Luna y Arellano in 1559), Fort Caroline (by René Goulaine de Laudonnière in 1564), and St. Augustine (by Pedro Menéndez de Avilés in 1565), the last of which is the only one to have been continuously inhabited since its foundation.
French colonists explored and settled parts of the Great Lakes and Mississippi Valley regions, while the Spanish colonized much of what became the Southwestern United States, along with Florida. The first successful English settlement was at Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607, followed in 1620 by the Pilgrims' landing at Plymouth, Massachusetts, 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 (and later Great Britain) 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, and the loyal colonies of East and West Florida—numbered thirteen.
American Revolution and Early Republic
Tensions between American colonials and the British during the revolutionary period of the 1760s and 1770s led to open military conflict in 1775. George Washington commanded the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783) as the Second Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. The Congress had been formed to confront British actions and created the Continental Army, but it 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. Dissatisfaction with the strength of the national government led to a constitutional convention in 1787. By June of 1788, enough states had ratified the United States Constitution to establish the new government, which took office in 1789. The Constitution, which strengthened the union and the federal government, has since remained the supreme law of the land.[21]
Westward expansion
From 1803 to 1848, the size of the new nation nearly tripled as settlers (many embracing the concept of Manifest Destiny as an inevitable consequence of American exceptionalism) pushed beyond national boundaries even before the Louisiana Purchase.[22] The expansion was tempered somewhat by the stalemate in the War of 1812, but it was subsequently reinvigorated by victory in the Mexican-American War in 1848.
Between 1830–1880 up to 40 million American Buffalo were slaughtered for skins and meat, and to aid railway expansion. The expansion of the railways reduced transit times for both goods and people, made westward expansion less arduous for the pioneers, and increased conflicts with the Indians over the land and its uses. The loss of the buffalo, a primary resource for the plains Indians, added to the pressures on native cultures and individuals for survival.
Civil War
Template:MainAs 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 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.[23] 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 and resulted in an increase in federal power.[24]
Reconstruction and industrialization
Template:MainAfter 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 and the Philippines after victory in the Spanish-American War,[25] which marked the debut of the United States as a major world power.
World Wars I and II
Template:MainAt the outbreak of World War I 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.[26] 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 continued to pursue its policy of unilateralism that bordered at times on isolationism.[27]
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, and combined with the Dust Bowl, triggered 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 economic terms in American history,[28][29] but it helped to pull the economy out of depression because 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. The Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs were the second and third nuclear devices detonated and the only ones ever employed as weapons.
Japan surrendered soon after, on 2 September 1945, which ended World War II.[30]
Cold War and civil rights
Template:MainAfter 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 officially promoted liberal democracy and capitalism, while the Soviet Union officially promoted communism and a centrally planned economy. Both sides sometimes supported politically convenient oppressive regimes. 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[31] and led to President John F. 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.[31]
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.[32]
After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, the United States continued to intervene in overseas military conflicts such as the Gulf War. It remains the world's only superpower.
War on Terrorism
Template:Main After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, which killed nearly 3,000 people, U.S. foreign policy focused on the global threat of terrorism, and the government under President George W. Bush began a series of military and legal operations termed the War on Terror. It began with military operations in Afghanistan which led to the removal of the Taliban and the expulsion of the terrorist organization al-Qaeda. The administration formed a preemptive policy against threats to U.S. security known as the Bush Doctrine.
In his 2002 State of the Union address,