The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country
primarily located in
North America
North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere and almost entirely within the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and the Car ...
. It consists of 50
states, a
federal district
A federal district is a type of administrative division of a federation, usually under the direct control of a federal government and organized sometimes with a single municipal body. Federal districts often include capital districts, and they e ...
, five major
unincorporated territories
Territories of the United States are sub-national administrative divisions overseen by the federal government of the United States. The various American territories differ from the U.S. states and tribal reservations as they are not sover ...
, nine
Minor Outlying Islands, and 326
Indian reservation
An Indian reservation is an area of land held and governed by a federally recognized Native American tribal nation whose government is accountable to the United States Bureau of Indian Affairs and not to the state government in which it ...
s. The United States is also in
free association with three
Pacific Island
Collectively called the Pacific Islands, the islands in the Pacific Ocean are further categorized into three major island groups: Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia. Depending on the context, the term ''Pacific Islands'' may refer to one of se ...
sovereign states
A sovereign state or sovereign country, is a political entity represented by one central government that has supreme legitimate authority over territory. International law defines sovereign states as having a permanent population, defined terri ...
: the
Federated States of Micronesia
The Federated States of Micronesia (; abbreviated FSM) is an island country in Oceania. It consists of four states from west to east, Yap, Chuuk, Pohnpei and Kosraethat are spread across the western Pacific. Together, the states comprise a ...
, the
Marshall Islands
The Marshall Islands ( mh, Ṃajeḷ), officially the Republic of the Marshall Islands ( mh, Aolepān Aorōkin Ṃajeḷ),'' () is an independent island country and microstate near the Equator in the Pacific Ocean, slightly west of the Internati ...
, and the
Republic of Palau
Palau,, officially the Republic of Palau and historically ''Belau'', ''Palaos'' or ''Pelew'', is an island country and microstate in the western Pacific. The nation has approximately 340 islands and connects the western chain of the Caro ...
. It is the world's
third-largest country by both land and total area. It shares land borders
with Canada to its north and
with Mexico to its south and has maritime borders with the
Bahamas
The Bahamas (), officially the Commonwealth of The Bahamas, is an island country within the Lucayan Archipelago of the West Indies in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic. It takes up 97% of the Lucayan Archipelago's land area and is home to ...
,
Cuba
Cuba ( , ), officially the Republic of Cuba ( es, República de Cuba, links=no ), is an island country comprising the island of Cuba, as well as Isla de la Juventud and several minor archipelagos. Cuba is located where the northern Caribbea ...
,
Russia
Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a List of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia, Northern Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the ...
, and other nations. With a population of over 333 million, it is the
most populous country in the
Americas
The Americas, which are sometimes collectively called America, are a landmass comprising the totality of North and South America. The Americas make up most of the land in Earth's Western Hemisphere and comprise the New World.
Along with th ...
and the
third most populous in the world. The national capital of the United States is
Washington, D.C.
)
, image_skyline =
, image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, ...
and its
most populous city and principal
financial center
A financial centre ( BE), financial center ( AE), or financial hub, is a location with a concentration of participants in banking, asset management, insurance or financial markets with venues and supporting services for these activities to t ...
is
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
.
Paleo-Americans migrated from Siberia to the North American mainland at least 12,000 years ago, and advanced cultures began to appear later on. These societies had almost completely declined when
Europeans
Europeans are the focus of European ethnology, the field of anthropology related to the various ethnic groups that reside in the states of Europe. Groups may be defined by common genetic ancestry, common language, or both. Pan and Pfeil (2004) ...
arrived in North America and began
colonizing it.
Great Britain
Great Britain is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean off the northwest coast of continental Europe. With an area of , it is the largest of the British Isles, the largest European island and the ninth-largest island in the world. It is ...
's
Thirteen Colonies
The Thirteen Colonies, also known as the Thirteen British Colonies, the Thirteen American Colonies, or later as the United Colonies, were a group of Kingdom of Great Britain, British Colony, colonies on the Atlantic coast of North America. Fo ...
quarreled with the British Crown over taxation and
political representation
Political representation is the activity of making citizens "present" in public policy-making processes when political actors act in the best interest of citizens. This definition of political representation is consistent with a wide variety of vi ...
, leading to the
American Revolution
The American Revolution was an ideological and political revolution that occurred in British America between 1765 and 1791. The Americans in the Thirteen Colonies formed independent states that defeated the British in the American Revolut ...
(1765–1791). After the Revolution, the United States gained independence, the first
nation-state
A nation state is a political unit where the state and nation are congruent. It is a more precise concept than "country", since a country does not need to have a predominant ethnic group.
A nation, in the sense of a common ethnicity, may inc ...
founded on
Enlightenment
Enlightenment or enlighten may refer to:
Age of Enlightenment
* Age of Enlightenment, period in Western intellectual history from the late 17th to late 18th century, centered in France but also encompassing (alphabetically by country or culture): ...
principles of
liberal democracy
Liberal democracy is the combination of a liberal political ideology that operates under an indirect democratic form of government. It is characterized by elections between multiple distinct political parties, a separation of powers into diff ...
.
In the late 18th century, the U.S. began expanding across North America, gradually
obtaining new territories, sometimes through war, frequently
displacing Native Americans, and admitting new states. By 1848, the United States spanned the
continent
A continent is any of several large landmasses. Generally identified by convention rather than any strict criteria, up to seven geographical regions are commonly regarded as continents. Ordered from largest in area to smallest, these seven ...
from east to west. The controversy surrounding the practice of
slavery
Slavery and enslavement are both the state and the condition of being a slave—someone forbidden to quit one's service for an enslaver, and who is treated by the enslaver as property. Slavery typically involves slaves being made to perf ...
culminated in the secession of the
Confederate States of America
The Confederate States of America (CSA), commonly referred to as the Confederate States or the Confederacy was an unrecognized breakaway republic in the Southern United States that existed from February 8, 1861, to May 9, 1865. The Confeder ...
, which fought the remaining states of the
Union
Union commonly refers to:
* Trade union, an organization of workers
* Union (set theory), in mathematics, a fundamental operation on sets
Union may also refer to:
Arts and entertainment
Music
* Union (band), an American rock group
** ''Un ...
during the
American Civil War
The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by other names) was a civil war in the United States. It was fought between the Union ("the North") and the Confederacy ("the South"), the latter formed by states th ...
(1861–1865). With the Union's victory and preservation, slavery was abolished by the
Thirteenth Amendment.
By 1890, the United States had grown to become the
world's largest economy, and the
Spanish–American War
, partof = the Philippine Revolution, the decolonization of the Americas, and the Cuban War of Independence
, image = Collage infobox for Spanish-American War.jpg
, image_size = 300px
, caption = (clock ...
and
World War I
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
established the country as a
world power
A great power is a sovereign state that is recognized as having the ability and expertise to exert its influence on a global scale. Great powers characteristically possess military and economic strength, as well as diplomatic and soft power inf ...
. After Japan's
surprise attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, the U.S. entered
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
on the
Allied side. The aftermath of the war left the United States and the
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...
as the world's two
superpower
A superpower is a state with a dominant position characterized by its extensive ability to exert influence or project power on a global scale. This is done through the combined means of economic, military, technological, political and cultural s ...
s, and led to the
Cold War
The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because the ...
, which commenced in 1945 and ended in 1991 with the
Soviet Union's dissolution. During the Cold War, both countries engaged in a struggle for ideological dominance but avoided direct military conflict. They also competed in the
Space Race
The Space Race was a 20th-century competition between two Cold War rivals, the United States and the Soviet Union, to achieve superior spaceflight capability. It had its origins in the ballistic missile-based nuclear arms race between the tw ...
, which culminated in the
1969 American spaceflight in which the U.S. was the first nation to land humans on the
Moon
The Moon is Earth's only natural satellite. It is the fifth largest satellite in the Solar System and the largest and most massive relative to its parent planet, with a diameter about one-quarter that of Earth (comparable to the width of ...
. Simultaneously, the
civil rights movement
The civil rights movement was a nonviolent social and political movement and campaign from 1954 to 1968 in the United States to abolish legalized institutional Racial segregation in the United States, racial segregation, Racial discrimination ...
(1954–1968) led to legislation abolishing state and local
Jim Crow laws
The Jim Crow laws were state and local laws enforcing racial segregation in the Southern United States. Other areas of the United States were affected by formal and informal policies of segregation as well, but many states outside the Sout ...
and other codified racial discrimination against
African Americans
African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of ens ...
. With the Soviet Union's dissolution in 1991 and the end of the Cold War, the United States emerged as the world's sole superpower. In 2001, following the
September 11 attacks
The September 11 attacks, commonly known as 9/11, were four coordinated suicide terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. That morning, nineteen terrorists hijacked four commercia ...
, the United States became a lead member of the
Global War on Terrorism
The war on terror, officially the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT), is an ongoing international counterterrorism military campaign initiated by the United States following the September 11 attacks. The main targets of the campaign are militant ...
, which included the
War in Afghanistan
War in Afghanistan, Afghan war, or Afghan civil war may refer to:
*Conquest of Afghanistan by Alexander the Great (330 BC – 327 BC)
*Muslim conquests of Afghanistan (637–709)
*Conquest of Afghanistan by the Mongol Empire (13th century), see als ...
(2001–2021) and the
Iraq War
{{Infobox military conflict
, conflict = Iraq War {{Nobold, {{lang, ar, حرب العراق (Arabic) {{Nobold, {{lang, ku, شەڕی عێراق (Kurdish languages, Kurdish)
, partof = the Iraq conflict (2003–present), I ...
(2003–2011).
The United States is a
federal republic
A federal republic is a federation of states with a republican form of government. At its core, the literal meaning of the word republic when used to reference a form of government means: "a country that is governed by elected representatives ...
with
three separate branches of government, including a
bicameral legislature
Bicameralism is a type of legislature, one divided into two separate assemblies, chambers, or houses, known as a bicameral legislature. Bicameralism is distinguished from unicameralism, in which all members deliberate and vote as a single grou ...
. It is a liberal democracy and has a
market economy
A market economy is an economic system in which the decisions regarding investment, production and distribution to the consumers are guided by the price signals created by the forces of supply and demand, where all suppliers and consumers ...
. It
ranks very high in international measures of
quality of life
Quality of life (QOL) is defined by the World Health Organization as "an individual's perception of their position in life in the context of the culture and value systems in which they live and in relation to their goals, expectations, standards ...
,
income
Income is the consumption and saving opportunity gained by an entity within a specified timeframe, which is generally expressed in monetary terms. Income is difficult to define conceptually and the definition may be different across fields. For ...
and
wealth
Wealth is the abundance of Value (economics), valuable financial assets or property, physical possessions which can be converted into a form that can be used for financial transaction, transactions. This includes the core meaning as held in the ...
,
economic competitiveness,
human rights
Human rights are Morality, moral principles or Social norm, normsJames Nickel, with assistance from Thomas Pogge, M.B.E. Smith, and Leif Wenar, 13 December 2013, Stanford Encyclopedia of PhilosophyHuman Rights Retrieved 14 August 2014 for ce ...
,
innovation
Innovation is the practical implementation of ideas that result in the introduction of new goods or services or improvement in offering goods or services. ISO TC 279 in the standard ISO 56000:2020 defines innovation as "a new or changed entity ...
, and
education
Education is a purposeful activity directed at achieving certain aims, such as transmitting knowledge or fostering skills and character traits. These aims may include the development of understanding, rationality, kindness, and honesty. Va ...
; it has low levels of
perceived corruption. The United States has the highest
median income per person of any
polity
A polity is an identifiable Politics, political entity – a group of people with a collective identity, who are organized by some form of Institutionalisation, institutionalized social relation, social relations, and have a capacity to mobilize ...
in the world. It has high levels of
incarceration
Imprisonment is the restraint of a person's liberty, for any cause whatsoever, whether by authority of the government, or by a person acting without such authority. In the latter case it is "false imprisonment". Imprisonment does not necessari ...
and
inequality
Inequality may refer to:
Economics
* Attention inequality, unequal distribution of attention across users, groups of people, issues in etc. in attention economy
* Economic inequality, difference in economic well-being between population groups
* ...
and lacks
universal health care
Universal health care (also called universal health coverage, universal coverage, or universal care) is a health care system in which all residents of a particular country or region are assured access to health care. It is generally organized ar ...
. As a
melting pot
The melting pot is a monocultural metaphor for a heterogeneous society becoming more homogeneous, the different elements "melting together" with a common culture; an alternative being a homogeneous society becoming more heterogeneous throug ...
of
cultures
Culture () is an umbrella term which encompasses the social behavior, institutions, and norms found in human societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, customs, capabilities, and habits of the individuals in these groups.Tyl ...
and
ethnicities
An ethnic group or an ethnicity is a grouping of people who identify with each other on the basis of shared attributes that distinguish them from other groups. Those attributes can include common sets of traditions, ancestry, language, history, ...
, the U.S. has been shaped by
centuries of immigration.
The United States is a highly
developed country
A developed country (or industrialized country, high-income country, more economically developed country (MEDC), advanced country) is a sovereign state that has a high quality of life, developed economy and advanced technological infrastruct ...
, and
its economy accounts for approximately a quarter of global
GDP and is the world's
largest by GDP at market exchange rates. By value, the United States is the world's
largest importer and
second-largest exporter. Although it accounts for just over 4.2% of the world's total population, the U.S. holds
over 30% of the total wealth in the world, the largest share held by any country. The United States is a founding member of the
United Nations,
World Bank,
International Monetary Fund,
Organization of American States
The Organization of American States (OAS; es, Organización de los Estados Americanos, pt, Organização dos Estados Americanos, french: Organisation des États américains; ''OEA'') is an international organization that was founded on 30 April ...
,
NATO, the
Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, and is a
permanent member of the
United Nations Security Council. The country is responsible for more than a third of
global military spending and is the
foremost military power in the world and a leading
political, cultural, and
scientific force.
Etymology
The first known use of the name "
America
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
" dates to 1507, when it appeared on
a world map produced by the German cartographer
Martin Waldseemüller in
Saint Dié,
Lorraine (now northeastern France). On his map, the name is shown in large letters on what would now be considered
South America, honoring
Amerigo Vespucci. The Italian explorer was the first to postulate that the
West Indies did not represent Asia's eastern limit but were part of a previously unknown landmass. In 1538, the Flemish cartographer
Gerardus Mercator
Gerardus Mercator (; 5 March 1512 – 2 December 1594) was a 16th-century geographer, cosmographer and cartographer from the County of Flanders. He is most renowned for creating the 1569 world map based on a new projection which represented ...
used the name "America" to refer to the entire
Western Hemisphere.
The first documentary evidence of the phrase "United States of America" dates back to a letter from January 2, 1776, written by
Stephen Moylan to
Joseph Reed, George Washington's
aide-de-camp. Moylan expressed his wish to go "with full and ample powers from the United States of America to Spain" to seek assistance in the revolutionary war effort. The first known publication of the phrase "United States of America" was in an anonymous essay in ''
The Virginia Gazette'' newspaper in
Williamsburg
Williamsburg may refer to:
Places
*Colonial Williamsburg, a living-history museum and private foundation in Virginia
*Williamsburg, Brooklyn, neighborhood in New York City
*Williamsburg, former name of Kernville (former town), California
*Williams ...
, on April 6, 1776.
The second draft of the
Articles of Confederation
The Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union was an agreement among the 13 Colonies of the United States of America that served as its first frame of government. It was approved after much debate (between July 1776 and November 1777) by ...
and
Perpetual Union, prepared by
John Dickinson and completed no later than June 17, 1776, declared "The name of this Confederation shall be the 'United States of America'." The final version of the Articles, sent to the states for ratification in late 1777, stated that "The Stile of this Confederacy shall be 'The United States of America'." In June 1776,
Thomas Jefferson wrote the phrase "UNITED STATES OF AMERICA" in the headline of his "original Rough draught" of the
Declaration of Independence. 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.
The phrase "United States" was originally plural in American usage. It described a collection of states—e.g., "the United States are..." The singular form became popular after the end of the Civil War and is now standard usage. A
citizen of the United States
Citizenship of the United States is a legal status that entails Americans with specific rights, duties, protections, and benefits in the United States. It serves as a foundation of fundamental rights derived from and protected by the Constituti ...
is called an "
American
American(s) may refer to:
* American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America"
** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America
** American ancestry, pe ...
". "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 directly connected with the United States.
History
Early history
![Extreme_Makeover,_Mesa_Verde_Edition_-_panoramio](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4f/Extreme_Makeover%2C_Mesa_Verde_Edition_-_panoramio.jpg)
It is generally accepted that the
first inhabitants of North America migrated from
Siberia by way of the
Bering land bridge and arrived at least 12,000 years ago; however, some evidence suggests an even earlier date of arrival. The
Clovis culture, which appeared around 11,000 BC, is believed to represent the first wave of human settlement of the Americas. This was likely the first of three major waves of migration into North America; later waves brought the ancestors of present-day
Athabaskans,
Aleuts, and
Eskimo
Eskimo () is an exonym used to refer to two closely related Indigenous peoples: the Inuit (including the Alaska Native Iñupiat, the Greenlandic Inuit, and the Canadian Inuit) and the Yupik peoples, Yupik (or Siberian Yupik, Yuit) of eastern Si ...
s.
Over time, indigenous cultures in North America grew increasingly sophisticated, and some, such as the pre-Columbian
Mississippian culture
The Mississippian culture was a Native Americans in the United States, Native American civilization that flourished in what is now the Midwestern United States, Midwestern, Eastern United States, Eastern, and Southeastern United States from appr ...
in the southeast, developed advanced
agriculture,
architecture, and complex societies. The city-state of
Cahokia is the largest, most complex pre-Columbian
archaeological site in the modern-day United States. In the
Four Corners
The Four Corners is a region of the Southwestern United States consisting of the southwestern corner of Colorado, southeastern corner of Utah, northeastern corner of Arizona, and northwestern corner of New Mexico. The Four Corners area ...
region,
Ancestral Puebloan culture developed from centuries of agricultural experimentation. The
Algonquian are one of the most populous and widespread
North America
North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere and almost entirely within the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and the Car ...
n
native
Native may refer to:
People
* Jus soli, citizenship by right of birth
* Indigenous peoples, peoples with a set of specific rights based on their historical ties to a particular territory
** Native Americans (disambiguation)
In arts and entert ...
language groups. This grouping consists of the peoples who speak
Algonquian languages. Historically, these peoples were prominent along the Atlantic Coast and into the interior along the
Saint Lawrence River and around the
Great Lakes. Before Europeans came into contact, most Algonquian settlements lived by hunting and fishing, although many supplemented their diet by cultivating
corn
Maize ( ; ''Zea mays'' subsp. ''mays'', from es, maíz after tnq, mahiz), also known as corn (North American and Australian English), is a cereal grain first domesticated by indigenous peoples in southern Mexico about 10,000 years ago. Th ...
,
bean
A bean is the seed of several plants in the family Fabaceae, which are used as vegetables for human or animal food. They can be cooked in many different ways, including boiling, frying, and baking, and are used in many traditional dishes th ...
s and
squash (the "
Three Sisters"). The
Ojibwe cultivated
wild rice. The
Haudenosaunee confederation of the
Iroquois, located in the southern Great Lakes region, was established at some point between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries.
Estimating the native population of North America during European contact is difficult.
Douglas H. Ubelaker
Douglas H. Ubelaker (born 1946) is an American forensic anthropologist. He works as a curator for the Smithsonian Institution, and has published numerous papers and monographs that have helped establish modern procedures in forensic anthropology. H ...
of the
Smithsonian Institution estimated a population of 93,000 in the
South Atlantic states and a population of 473,000 in the Gulf states, but most academics regard this figure as too low. Anthropologist
Henry F. Dobyns believed the populations were much higher, suggesting around 1.1 million along the shores of the
Gulf of Mexico, 2.2 million people living between
Florida and
Massachusetts, 5.2 million in the
Mississippi Valley and tributaries, and around 700,000 people in the
Florida peninsula.
Colonial America
![The_Mayflower_Compact_1620_cph](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/63/The_Mayflower_Compact_1620_cph.3g07155.jpg)
Claims of very early colonization of
coastal New England by the
Norse are disputed and controversial.
Christopher Columbus had landed in
Puerto Rico on his
1493 voyage, and
San Juan San Juan, Spanish for Saint John, may refer to:
Places Argentina
* San Juan Province, Argentina
* San Juan, Argentina, the capital of that province
* San Juan, Salta, a village in Iruya, Salta Province
* San Juan (Buenos Aires Underground), ...
was settled by the Spanish a decade later.
The first documented arrival of Europeans in the continental United States is that of Spanish
conquistador
Conquistadors (, ) or conquistadores (, ; meaning 'conquerors') were the explorer-soldiers of the Spanish and Portuguese Empires of the 15th and 16th centuries. During the Age of Discovery, conquistadors sailed beyond Europe to the Americas, O ...
s such as
Juan Ponce de León
Juan Ponce de León (, , , ; 1474 – July 1521) was a Spanish explorer and '' conquistador'' known for leading the first official European expedition to Florida and for serving as the first governor of Puerto Rico. He was born in Santervá ...
, who made his first expedition to
Florida in 1513. The Italian explorer
Giovanni da Verrazzano, sent by France to the New World in 1525, encountered native inhabitants of what is now
New York Bay
New York Bay is the large tidal body of water in the New York–New Jersey Harbor Estuary where the Hudson River, Raritan River, and Arthur Kill empty into the Atlantic Ocean between Sandy Hook and Rockaway Point.
Geography
New York Bay is usu ...
. The Spanish set up the first settlements in Florida and New Mexico, such as
Saint Augustine, often considered the nation's oldest city, and
Santa Fe. The French
established their own settlements along the
Mississippi River and
Gulf of Mexico, notably
New Orleans and
Mobile.
Successful
English settlement
''English Settlement'' is the fifth studio album and first double album by the English rock band XTC, released 12 February 1982 on Virgin Records. It marked a turn towards the more pastoral pop songs that would dominate later XTC releases, wit ...
of the eastern coast of North America began with the
Virginia Colony in 1607 at
Jamestown and with the
Pilgrims'
colony at Plymouth in 1620.
The continent's first elected legislative assembly, Virginia's
House of Burgesses, was founded in 1619.
Harvard College was established in the
Massachusetts Bay Colony
The Massachusetts Bay Colony (1630–1691), more formally the Colony of Massachusetts Bay, was an English settlement on the east coast of North America around the Massachusetts Bay, the northernmost of the several colonies later reorganized as the ...
in 1636 as the first institution of higher education. The
Mayflower Compact
The Mayflower Compact, originally titled Agreement Between the Settlers of New Plymouth, was the first governing document of Plymouth Colony. It was written by the men aboard the ''Mayflower,'' consisting of separatist Puritans, adventurers, an ...
and the
Fundamental Orders of Connecticut established precedents for representative self-government and constitutionalism that would develop throughout the American colonies.
Many English settlers were
dissenting Christians who came seeking
religious freedom. The
native population of America declined after European arrival for various reasons, primarily from diseases such as
smallpox and
measles
Measles is a highly contagious infectious disease caused by measles virus. Symptoms usually develop 10–12 days after exposure to an infected person and last 7–10 days. Initial symptoms typically include fever, often greater than , cough, ...
.
![Map of territorial growth 1775](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/38/Map_of_territorial_growth_1775.svg)
In the early days of colonization, many European settlers experienced food shortages, disease, and conflicts with
Native Americans, such as in
King Philip's War. Native Americans were also often fighting neighboring tribes and European settlers. In many cases, however, the natives and settlers came to depend on each other. Settlers
traded
Trade involves the transfer of goods and services from one person or entity to another, often in exchange for money. Economists refer to a system or network that allows trade as a market.
An early form of trade, barter, saw the direct excha ...
for food and animal pelts; natives for guns, tools and other European goods. Natives taught many settlers to cultivate corn, beans, and other foodstuffs. European missionaries and others felt it was important to "civilize" the Native Americans and urged them to adopt European agricultural practices and lifestyles. However, with the increased European
colonization
Colonization, or colonisation, constitutes large-scale population movements wherein migrants maintain strong links with their, or their ancestors', former country – by such links, gain advantage over other inhabitants of the territory. When ...
of North America,
Native Americans were displaced and often killed during conflicts.
European settlers also began
trafficking African slaves
Slavery has historically been widespread in Africa. Systems of servitude and slavery were common in parts of Africa in ancient times, as they were in much of the rest of the ancient world. When the trans-Saharan slave trade, Indian Ocean sl ...
into Colonial America via the
transatlantic slave trade. Because of a lower prevalence of tropical diseases and relatively better
treatment, slaves had a much higher life expectancy in North America than in South America, leading to a rapid increase in their numbers. Colonial society was largely divided over the religious and moral implications of slavery, and several colonies passed acts for or against the practice.
[ Lien, 1913, p. 522][ Davis, 1996, p. 7] However, by the turn of the 18th century, African slaves had supplanted European
indentured servants as
cash crop
A cash crop or profit crop is an Agriculture, agricultural crop which is grown to sell for profit. It is typically purchased by parties separate from a farm. The term is used to differentiate marketed crops from staple crop (or "subsistence crop") ...
labor, especially in the American South.
[ Quirk, 2011, p. 195]
The
Thirteen Colonies
The Thirteen Colonies, also known as the Thirteen British Colonies, the Thirteen American Colonies, or later as the United Colonies, were a group of Kingdom of Great Britain, British Colony, colonies on the Atlantic coast of North America. Fo ...
that would become the United States of America were administered by the British as overseas dependencies.
All nonetheless had local governments with elections open to most free men.
With very high birth rates, low death rates, and steady settlement, the colonial population grew rapidly, eclipsing Native American populations. The
Christian revival
Christian revivalism is increased spiritual interest or renewal in the life of a church congregation or society, with a local, national or global effect. This should be distinguished from the use of the term "revival" to refer to an evangelis ...
ist movement of the 1730s and 1740s known as the
Great Awakening
Great Awakening refers to a number of periods of religious revival in American Christian history. Historians and theologians identify three, or sometimes four, waves of increased religious enthusiasm between the early 18th century and the late ...
fueled interest both in religion and in religious liberty.
During the
Seven Years' War (1756–1763), known in the U.S. as the
French and Indian War, British forces captured Canada from the French. With the creation of the
Province of Quebec, Canada's
francophone
French became an international language in the Middle Ages, when the power of the Kingdom of France made it the second international language, alongside Latin. This status continued to grow into the 18th century, by which time French was the l ...
population would remain isolated from the English-speaking colonial dependencies of
Nova Scotia,
Newfoundland
Newfoundland and Labrador (; french: Terre-Neuve-et-Labrador; frequently abbreviated as NL) is the easternmost province of Canada, in the country's Atlantic region. The province comprises the island of Newfoundland and the continental region ...
and the Thirteen Colonies. Excluding the Native Americans who lived there, the Thirteen Colonies had a population of over 2.1 million in 1770, about a 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. The colonies' distance from Britain had allowed the development of self-government, but their unprecedented success motivated British monarchs to periodically seek to reassert royal authority.
American Revolution and the early federal republic
![Declaration independence](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f9/Declaration_of_Independence_%281819%29%2C_by_John_Trumbull.jpg)
The
American Revolution
The American Revolution was an ideological and political revolution that occurred in British America between 1765 and 1791. The Americans in the Thirteen Colonies formed independent states that defeated the British in the American Revolut ...
separated the Thirteen Colonies from the
British Empire, and was the first successful
war of independence by a non-European entity against a European power in
modern history
The term modern period or modern era (sometimes also called modern history or modern times) is the period of history that succeeds the Middle Ages (which ended approximately 1500 AD). This terminology is a historical periodization that is applie ...
. By the 18th century the
American Enlightenment
The American Enlightenment was a period of intellectual ferment in the thirteen American colonies in the 18th to 19th century, which led to the American Revolution, and the creation of the United States of America. The American Enlightenment was ...
and
the political philosophies of liberalism were pervasive among leaders. Americans began to develop an ideology of "
republicanism", asserting that government rested on the
consent of the governed. They demanded their "
rights as Englishmen" and "
no taxation without representation". The British insisted on administering the colonies through a
Parliament that did not have a single representative responsible for any American constituency, and the conflict escalated into war.
In 1774, the
First Continental Congress
The First Continental Congress was a meeting of delegates from 12 of the 13 British colonies that became the United States. It met from September 5 to October 26, 1774, at Carpenters' Hall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, after the British Navy ...
passed the
Continental Association, which mandated a
colonies-wide boycott of British goods. The
American Revolutionary War began the following year, catalyzed by events like the
Stamp Act and the
Boston Tea Party that were rooted in colonial disagreement with British governance. The
Second Continental Congress
The Second Continental Congress was a late-18th-century meeting of delegates from the Thirteen Colonies that united in support of the American Revolutionary War. The Congress was creating a new country it first named "United Colonies" and in 1 ...
, an assembly representing the
United Colonies, unanimously adopted the
Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776 (annually celebrated as
Independence Day
An independence day is an annual event commemorating the anniversary of a nation's independence or statehood, usually after ceasing to be a group or part of another nation or state, or more rarely after the end of a military occupation. Man ...
).
In 1781, the
Articles of Confederation
The Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union was an agreement among the 13 Colonies of the United States of America that served as its first frame of government. It was approved after much debate (between July 1776 and November 1777) by ...
and
Perpetual Union established a decentralized government that operated until 1789.
A celebrated early turn in the war for the Americans was
George Washington
George Washington (February 22, 1732, 1799) was an American military officer, statesman, and Founding Father who served as the first president of the United States from 1789 to 1797. Appointed by the Continental Congress as commander of th ...
leading the Americans to
cross the frozen Delaware River in a surprise attack the night of December 25–26, 1776. Another victory, in 1777, at the
Battle of Saratoga
The Battles of Saratoga (September 19 and October 7, 1777) marked the climax of the Saratoga campaign, giving a decisive victory to the Americans over the British in the American Revolutionary War. British General John Burgoyne led an invasion ...
resulted in the capture of a British army, and led to
France and
Spain joining in the war against them. After the surrender of a second British army at the
siege of Yorktown in 1781, Britain signed a
peace treaty
A peace treaty is an agreement between two or more hostile parties, usually countries or governments, which formally ends a state of war between the parties. It is different from an armistice, which is an agreement to stop hostilities; a surr ...
. American sovereignty became internationally recognized, and the new nation took possession of substantial territory east of the
Mississippi River, from what is today
Canada in the north and
Florida in the south.
As it became increasingly apparent that the Confederation was insufficient to govern the new country,
nationalists advocated for and led the
Philadelphia Convention of 1787 in writing the
United States Constitution
The Constitution of the United States is the Supremacy Clause, supreme law of the United States, United States of America. It superseded the Articles of Confederation, the nation's first constitution, in 1789. Originally comprising seven ar ...
to replace it,
ratified in state conventions in 1788. Going into force in 1789, this constitution reorganized the government into a
federation administered by
three equal branches (executive, judicial and legislative), on the principle of creating salutary
checks and balances. George Washington, who had led the
Continental Army
The Continental Army was the army of the United Colonies (the Thirteen Colonies) in the Revolutionary-era United States. It was formed by the Second Continental Congress after the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War, and was establis ...
to victory and then willingly relinquished power, 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.
[ Boyer, 2007, pp. 192–193] Tensions with Britain remained, however, leading to the
War of 1812, which was fought to a draw.
Although the federal government
outlawed American participation in the
Atlantic slave trade
The Atlantic slave trade, transatlantic slave trade, or Euro-American slave trade involved the transportation by slave traders of enslaved African people, mainly to the Americas. The slave trade regularly used the triangular trade route and i ...
in 1807, after 1820, cultivation of the highly profitable cotton crop exploded in the
Deep South
The Deep South or the Lower South is a cultural and geographic subregion in the Southern United States. The term was first used to describe the states most dependent on plantations and slavery prior to the American Civil War. Following the war ...
, and along with it, the use of
slave labor.
The
Second Great Awakening, especially in the period 1800–1840, converted millions to
evangelical Protestantism. In the North, it energized multiple social reform movements, including
abolitionism
Abolitionism, or the abolitionist movement, is the movement to end slavery. In Western Europe and the Americas, abolitionism was a historic movement that sought to end the Atlantic slave trade and liberate the enslaved people.
The Britis ...
;
in the South,
Methodists and
Baptists
Baptists form a major branch of Protestantism distinguished by baptizing professing Christian believers only ( believer's baptism), and doing so by complete immersion. Baptist churches also generally subscribe to the doctrines of soul compe ...
proselytized among slave populations.
![U](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/94/U.S._Territorial_Acquisitions.png)
In the late 18th century, American settlers began to
expand further westward, some of them with a sense of
manifest destiny
Manifest destiny was a cultural belief in the 19th century in the United States, 19th-century United States that American settlers were destined to expand across North America.
There were three basic tenets to the concept:
* The special vir ...
.
The 1803
Louisiana Purchase almost doubled the nation's area,
Spain ceded Florida and other Gulf Coast territory in 1819,
the
Republic of Texas
The Republic of Texas ( es, República de Tejas) was a sovereign state in North America that existed from March 2, 1836, to February 19, 1846, that bordered Mexico, the Republic of the Rio Grande in 1840 (another breakaway republic from Mex ...
was
annexed
Annexation (Latin ''ad'', to, and ''nexus'', joining), in international law, is the forcible acquisition of one state's territory by another state, usually following military occupation of the territory. It is generally held to be an illegal act ...
in 1845 during a period of expansionism,
and the 1846
Oregon Treaty
The Oregon Treaty is a treaty between the United Kingdom and the United States that was signed on June 15, 1846, in Washington, D.C. The treaty brought an end to the Oregon boundary dispute by settling competing American and British claims to t ...
with Britain led to U.S. control of the present-day
American Northwest
The Northwestern United States, also known as the American Northwest or simply the Northwest, is an informal geographic region of the United States. The region consistently includes the states of Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana and Wyoming. ...
.
Additionally, the
Trail of Tears in the 1830s exemplified the
Indian removal policy that forcibly resettled Indians. This further expanded acreage under mechanical cultivation, increasing surpluses for international markets. This prompted a long series of
American Indian Wars west of the
Mississippi River from 1810 to at least 1890. and eventually, conflict with Mexico.
Most of these conflicts ended with the cession of Native American territory and their confinement to
Indian reservation
An Indian reservation is an area of land held and governed by a federally recognized Native American tribal nation whose government is accountable to the United States Bureau of Indian Affairs and not to the state government in which it ...
s. Victory in the
Mexican–American War resulted in the 1848
Mexican Cession
The Mexican Cession ( es, Cesión mexicana) is the region in the modern-day southwestern United States that Mexico originally controlled, then ceded to the United States in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848 after the Mexican–American War ...
of
California and much of the present-day
American Southwest, and the U.S. spanned the continent.
The
California Gold Rush
The California Gold Rush (1848–1855) was a gold rush that began on January 24, 1848, when gold was found by James W. Marshall at Sutter's Mill in Coloma, California. The news of gold brought approximately 300,000 people to California fro ...
of 1848–1849 spurred migration to the Pacific coast, which led to the
California Genocide and the creation of additional western states.
Economic development was spurred by giving vast quantities of land, nearly 10% of the total area of the United States, to white European settlers as part of the
Homestead Acts, as well as making
land grants to private railroad companies and
colleges
A college (Latin: ''collegium'') is an educational institution or a constituent part of one. A college may be a degree-awarding tertiary educational institution, a part of a collegiate or federal university, an institution offerin ...
. Prior to the Civil War,
the prohibition or expansion of slavery into these territories exacerbated tensions over
the debate around abolitionism.
The Civil War and Reconstruction
![US Secession map 1861](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7b/US_Secession_map_1861.svg)
Irreconcilable sectional conflict regarding
the enslavement of Africans and
African Americans
African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of ens ...
ultimately
led to the American Civil War. With the
1860 election
The following elections occurred in the year 1860. Most notably, the 1860 United States presidential election was one of the events that precipitated the American Civil War.
North America United States
* California's at-large congressional distr ...
of Republican
Abraham Lincoln, conventions in eleven slave states declared
secession and formed the
Confederate States of America
The Confederate States of America (CSA), commonly referred to as the Confederate States or the Confederacy was an unrecognized breakaway republic in the Southern United States that existed from February 8, 1861, to May 9, 1865. The Confeder ...
, while the federal government (the "
Union
Union commonly refers to:
* Trade union, an organization of workers
* Union (set theory), in mathematics, a fundamental operation on sets
Union may also refer to:
Arts and entertainment
Music
* Union (band), an American rock group
** ''Un ...
") maintained that
secession was unconstitutional and illegal. On April 12, 1861, the Confederacy initiated military conflict by
bombarding Fort Sumter, a federal garrison in
Charleston harbor, South Carolina. This would be the spark of the Civil War, which lasted for four years (1861–1865) and became the deadliest military conflict in American history. The war would result in the deaths of approximately 620,000 soldiers from both sides and upwards of 50,000 civilians, almost all of them in the South.
Reconstruction began in earnest following the war. While President Lincoln attempted to foster friendship and forgiveness between the Union and the former Confederacy,
his assassination on April 14, 1865 drove a wedge between North and South again. Republicans in the federal government made it their goal to oversee the rebuilding of the South and to ensure the rights of African Americans. They persisted until the
Compromise of 1877
The Compromise of 1877, also known as the Wormley Agreement or the Bargain of 1877, was an unwritten deal, informally arranged among members of the United States Congress, to settle the intensely disputed 1876 presidential election between Ruth ...
, when the Republicans agreed to cease protecting the rights of African Americans in the South in order for Democrats to concede the
presidential election of 1876
The following elections occurred in the year 1876.
Europe
* 1876 Dalmatian parliamentary election
* 1876 French legislative election
* 1876 Leominster by-election
* 1876 Spanish general election
North America Canada
* 1876 Prince Edward Isla ...
. Southern white Democrats, calling themselves "
Redeemers", took control of the South after the end of Reconstruction, beginning the
nadir of American race relations. From 1890 to 1910, the Redeemers established so-called
Jim Crow laws
The Jim Crow laws were state and local laws enforcing racial segregation in the Southern United States. Other areas of the United States were affected by formal and informal policies of segregation as well, but many states outside the Sout ...
,
disenfranchising
Disfranchisement, also called disenfranchisement, or voter disqualification is the restriction of suffrage (the right to vote) of a person or group of people, or a practice that has the effect of preventing a person exercising the right to vote. D ...
almost all blacks and some impoverished whites throughout the region. Blacks would face
racial segregation nationwide, especially in the South. They also lived under constant threat of vigilante violence, including
lynching
Lynching is an extrajudicial killing by a group. It is most often used to characterize informal public executions by a mob in order to punish an alleged transgressor, punish a convicted transgressor, or intimidate people. It can also be an ex ...
.
Industrial Age and the Progressive Era
In the North,
urbanization and an unprecedented
influx of immigrants from
Southern
Southern may refer to:
Businesses
* China Southern Airlines, airline based in Guangzhou, China
* Southern Airways, defunct US airline
* Southern Air, air cargo transportation company based in Norwalk, Connecticut, US
* Southern Airways Express, M ...
and
Eastern Europe supplied a surplus of labor for the country's industrialization and transformed its culture.
National infrastructure, including
telegraph and
transcontinental railroads, spurred economic growth and greater settlement and development of the
American Old West
The American frontier, also known as the Old West or the Wild West, encompasses the geography, history, folklore, and culture associated with the forward wave of American expansion in mainland North America that began with European colonial ...
. After the
American Civil War
The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by other names) was a civil war in the United States. It was fought between the Union ("the North") and the Confederacy ("the South"), the latter formed by states th ...
, new transcontinental
railways
Rail transport (also known as train transport) is a means of transport that transfers passengers and goods on wheeled vehicles running on rails, which are incorporated in tracks. In contrast to road transport, where the vehicles run on a pre ...
made relocation easier for settlers, expanded internal trade, and increased conflicts with Native Americans.
The later inventions of
electric light
An electric light, lamp, or light bulb is an electrical component that produces light. It is the most common form of artificial lighting. Lamps usually have a base made of ceramic, metal, glass, or plastic, which secures the lamp in the soc ...
and the
telephone would also affect communication and urban life.
Mainland expansion also included the
purchase of Alaska from
Russia in 1867. In 1893, pro-American elements in Hawaii
overthrew the
Hawaiian monarchy
The Hawaiian Kingdom, or Kingdom of Hawaiʻi (Hawaiian language, Hawaiian: ''Ko Hawaiʻi Pae ʻĀina''), was a sovereign state located in the Hawaiian Islands. The country was formed in 1795, when the warrior chief Kamehameha the Great, of the ...
and formed the
Republic of Hawaii
The Republic of Hawaii ( Hawaiian: ''Lepupalika o Hawaii'') was a short-lived one-party state in Hawaii between July 4, 1894, when the Provisional Government of Hawaii had ended, and August 12, 1898, when it became annexed by the United State ...
, which the U.S.
annexed
Annexation (Latin ''ad'', to, and ''nexus'', joining), in international law, is the forcible acquisition of one state's territory by another state, usually following military occupation of the territory. It is generally held to be an illegal act ...
in 1898. Puerto Rico,
Guam, and the
Philippines were ceded by Spain in the same year, following the
Spanish–American War
, partof = the Philippine Revolution, the decolonization of the Americas, and the Cuban War of Independence
, image = Collage infobox for Spanish-American War.jpg
, image_size = 300px
, caption = (clock ...
.
American Samoa was acquired by the United States in 1900 after the end of the
Second Samoan Civil War. The
U.S. Virgin Islands
The United States Virgin Islands,. Also called the ''American Virgin Islands'' and the ''U.S. Virgin Islands''. officially the Virgin Islands of the United States, are a group of Caribbean islands and an unincorporated and organized territory ...
were purchased from
Denmark in 1917.
Rapid economic development during the late 19th and early 20th centuries fostered the rise of many prominent industrialists.
Tycoons
A business magnate, also known as a tycoon, is a person who has achieved immense wealth through the ownership of multiple lines of enterprise. The term characteristically refers to a powerful entrepreneur or investor who controls, through perso ...
like
Cornelius Vanderbilt,
John D. Rockefeller, and
Andrew Carnegie led the nation's progress in the
railroad,
petroleum, and
steel
Steel is an alloy made up of iron with added carbon to improve its strength and fracture resistance compared to other forms of iron. Many other elements may be present or added. Stainless steels that are corrosion- and oxidation-resistant ty ...
industries. Banking became a major part of the economy, with
J. P. Morgan playing a notable role. The American economy boomed, becoming the world's largest.
These dramatic changes were accompanied by
growing inequality and social unrest, which prompted the rise of
organized labor
A trade union (labor union in American English), often simply referred to as a union, is an organization of workers intent on "maintaining or improving the conditions of their employment", ch. I such as attaining better wages and Employee ben ...
along with
populist,
socialist, and
anarchist
Anarchism is a political philosophy and movement that is skeptical of all justifications for authority and seeks to abolish the institutions it claims maintain unnecessary coercion and hierarchy, typically including, though not neces ...
movements. This period eventually ended with the advent of the
Progressive Era, which saw significant reforms including
health and safety regulation of consumer goods, the rise of
labor unions, and greater
antitrust measures to ensure competition among businesses and attention to worker conditions.
The rise to world power, The New Deal, and World War II
![Trinity_Detonation_T&B_(cropped)](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9e/Trinity_Detonation_T%26B_%28cropped%29.jpg)
The United States remained neutral from the outbreak of
World War I
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
in 1914 until 1917 when it joined the war as an "associated power" alongside the
Allies of World War I, helping to turn the tide against the
Central Powers. In 1919, President
Woodrow Wilson took a leading diplomatic role at the
Paris Peace Conference and advocated strongly for the U.S. to join the
League of Nations. However, the Senate refused to approve this and did not ratify the
Treaty of Versailles that established the League of Nations.
[McDuffie, Jerome; Piggrem, Gary Wayne; Woodworth, Steven E. (2005). ''U.S. History Super Review''. Piscataway, NJ: Research & Education Association. p. 418. .]
Around this time, millions of rural African Americans began
a mass migration from the South to northern urban centers; it would continue until about 1970. The last vestiges of the Progressive Era resulted in
women's suffrage and
alcohol prohibition
Prohibition is the act or practice of forbidding something by law; more particularly the term refers to the banning of the manufacture, storage (whether in barrels or in bottles), transportation, sale, possession, and consumption of alcoholic be ...
. In 1920, the women's rights movement won passage of a
constitutional amendment
A constitutional amendment is a modification of the constitution of a polity, organization or other type of entity. Amendments are often interwoven into the relevant sections of an existing constitution, directly altering the text. Conversely, t ...
granting
women's suffrage.
The 1920s and 1930s saw the rise of
radio for
mass communication
Mass communication is the process of imparting and exchanging information through mass media to large segments of the population. It is usually understood for relating to various forms of media, as its technologies are used for the dissemination o ...
and the invention of early
television. The prosperity of the
Roaring Twenties ended with the
Wall Street Crash of 1929 and the onset of the
Great Depression
The Great Depression (19291939) was an economic shock that impacted most countries across the world. It was a period of economic depression that became evident after a major fall in stock prices in the United States. The economic contagio ...
. After his election as president in 1932,
Franklin D. Roosevelt responded with the
New Deal
The New Deal was a series of programs, public work projects, financial reforms, and regulations enacted by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the United States between 1933 and 1939. Major federal programs agencies included the Civilian Cons ...
. The
Dust Bowl of the mid-1930s impoverished many farming communities and spurred a new wave of western migration.
At first
neutral during World War II, the United States in March 1941
began supplying materiel to the
Allies
An alliance is a relationship among people, groups, or states that have joined together for mutual benefit or to achieve some common purpose, whether or not explicit agreement has been worked out among them. Members of an alliance are called ...
. On December 7, 1941, the
Empire of Japan launched a surprise
attack on Pearl Harbor, prompting the United States to join the Allies against the
Axis powers, and in the following year, to
intern about 120,000 Japanese and Japanese Americans.
The U.S. pursued a "
Europe first" defense policy, leaving
the Philippines
The Philippines (; fil, Pilipinas, links=no), officially the Republic of the Philippines ( fil, Republika ng Pilipinas, links=no),
* bik, Republika kan Filipinas
* ceb, Republika sa Pilipinas
* cbk, República de Filipinas
* hil, Republ ...
, an
American colony
American(s) may refer to:
* American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America"
** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America
** American ancestry, pe ...
, isolated and alone to fight Japan's
invasion and occupation until the U.S.-led
Philippines campaign (1944–1945) Philippines campaign may refer to various military campaigns that have been fought in the Philippine Islands, including:
Spanish colonial period (1565–1898)
*Numerous revolts against Spain during the Spanish colonial period; see Philippine revol ...
. During the war, the United States was one of the "
Four Powers" who met to plan the postwar world, along with Britain, the Soviet Union, and China. The United States emerged
relatively unscathed from the war, and with even greater economic and military influence.
The United States played a leading role in the
Bretton Woods Bretton Woods can refer to:
* Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, a village in the United States
**Bretton Woods Mountain Resort, a ski resort located in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire
*The 1944 Bretton Woods Conference, also known as the "United Nations ...
and
Yalta conferences, which signed agreements on new international financial institutions and Europe's postwar reorganization. As an
Allied victory was won in Europe, a 1945
international conference
International is an adjective (also used as a noun) meaning "between nations".
International may also refer to:
Music Albums
* ''International'' (Kevin Michael album), 2011
* ''International'' (New Order album), 2002
* ''International'' (The T ...
held in
San Francisco produced the
United Nations Charter, which became active after the war. The United States and Japan then fought each other in the largest naval battle in history, the
Battle of Leyte Gulf
The Battle of Leyte Gulf ( fil, Labanan sa golpo ng Leyte, lit=Battle of Leyte gulf; ) was the largest naval battle of World War II and by some criteria the largest naval battle in history, with over 200,000 naval personnel involved. It was fou ...
.
The United States developed the
first nuclear weapons and used them on Japan
in the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945; the Japanese
surrendered
Surrender, in military terms, is the relinquishment of control over territory, combatants, fortifications, ships or armament to another power. A surrender may be accomplished peacefully or it may be the result of defeat in battle. A sovereign ...
on September 2, ending
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
.
Cold War and late 20th century
![LevittownPA](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/64/LevittownPA.jpg)
After World War II, the United States financed and implemented the
Marshall Plan to help rebuild western Europe; disbursements paid between 1948 and 1952 would total $13 billion ($115 billion in 2021). Also at this time,
geopolitical tensions between the United States and
Russia led to the
Cold War
The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because the ...
, driven by an ideological divide between
capitalism and
communism.
They dominated the military affairs of Europe, with the U.S. and its
NATO allies on one side and the Soviet Union and its
Warsaw Pact allies on the other.
The U.S. often opposed
Third World movements that it viewed as Soviet-sponsored, sometimes pursuing direct action for
regime change against
left-wing governments. American troops fought the communist forces in the
Korean War of 1950–1953,
and the U.S. became increasingly involved in the
Vietnam War (1955–1975), introducing combat forces in 1965. Their competition to achieve superior
spaceflight capability led to the
Space Race
The Space Race was a 20th-century competition between two Cold War rivals, the United States and the Soviet Union, to achieve superior spaceflight capability. It had its origins in the ballistic missile-based nuclear arms race between the tw ...
, which culminated in the U.S. becoming the first nation to
land people on the Moon in 1969.
While both countries engaged in
proxy wars and developed powerful
nuclear weapons, they avoided direct military conflict.
At home, the United States experienced
sustained economic expansion,
urbanization, and a
rapid growth of its population and
middle class following World War II. Construction of an
Interstate Highway System transformed the nation's transportation infrastructure in decades to come.
In 1959, the United States admitted
Alaska and
Hawaii to become the 49th and 50th states, formally expanding beyond the
contiguous United States
The contiguous United States (officially the conterminous United States) consists of the 48 adjoining U.S. states and the Federal District of the United States of America. The term excludes the only two non-contiguous states, Alaska and Hawaii ...
.
![Martin_Luther_King_-_March_on_Washington_(cropped)](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5b/Martin_Luther_King_-_March_on_Washington_%28cropped%29.jpg)
The growing
civil rights movement
The civil rights movement was a nonviolent social and political movement and campaign from 1954 to 1968 in the United States to abolish legalized institutional Racial segregation in the United States, racial segregation, Racial discrimination ...
used
nonviolence
Nonviolence is the personal practice of not causing harm to others under any condition. It may come from the belief that hurting people, animals and/or the environment is unnecessary to achieve an outcome and it may refer to a general philosoph ...
to confront
racism, with
Martin Luther King Jr. becoming a prominent leader and figurehead. President
Lyndon B. Johnson initiated legislation that led to a series of policies addressing poverty and racial inequalities, in what he termed the "
Great Society". The launch of a "
War on Poverty" expanded
entitlements and welfare spending, leading to the creation of the
Food Stamp Program,
Aid to Families with Dependent Children, along with national
health insurance
Health insurance or medical insurance (also known as medical aid in South Africa) is a type of insurance that covers the whole or a part of the risk of a person incurring medical expenses. As with other types of insurance, risk is shared among ma ...
programs
Medicare and
Medicaid. A combination of court decisions and legislation, culminating in the
Civil Rights Act of 1968
The Civil Rights Act of 1968 () is a landmark law in the United States signed into law by United States President Lyndon B. Johnson during the King assassination riots.
Titles II through VII comprise the Indian Civil Rights Act, which applie ...
, made significant improvements. Meanwhile, a
counterculture movement
The counterculture of the 1960s was an anti-establishment cultural phenomenon that developed throughout much of the Western world in the 1960s and has been ongoing to the present day. The aggregate movement gained momentum as the civil rights mo ...
grew, which was fueled by
opposition to the Vietnam War, the
Black Power movement, and the
sexual revolution
The sexual revolution, also known as the sexual liberation, was a social movement that challenged traditional codes of behavior related to sexuality and interpersonal relationships throughout the United States and the developed world from the 1 ...
. The
women's movement in the U.S. broadened the debate on women's rights and made
gender equality a major social goal. The
1960s Sexual Revolution liberalized American attitudes to sexuality; the 1969
Stonewall riots
The Stonewall riots (also known as the Stonewall uprising, Stonewall rebellion, or simply Stonewall) were a series of spontaneous protests by members of the gay community in response to a police raid that began in the early morning hours of Ju ...
in New York City marked the beginning of the fledgling
gay rights
Rights affecting lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people vary greatly by country or jurisdiction—encompassing everything from the legal recognition of same-sex marriage to the death penalty for homosexuality.
Notably, , 3 ...
movement.
The United States supported
Israel during the
Yom Kippur War; in response, the country faced an oil
embargo from
OPEC
The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC, ) is a cartel of countries. Founded on 14 September 1960 in Baghdad by the first five members (Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela), it has, since 1965, been headquart ...
nations, sparking the
1973 oil crisis
The 1973 oil crisis or first oil crisis began in October 1973 when the members of the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries (OAPEC), led by Saudi Arabia, proclaimed an oil embargo. The embargo was targeted at nations that had supp ...
. After a surge in female labor participation around the 1970s, by 1985, the majority of women aged 16 and over were employed. The 1970s and early 1980s also saw the onset of
stagflation. The presidency of
Richard Nixon saw the American withdrawal from Vietnam but also the
Watergate scandal which led to a decline in public trust of government.
[ Ervin, Sam, et al., ''Final Report of the Watergate Committee]''.]
After his election in 1980 President
Ronald Reagan
Ronald Wilson Reagan ( ; February 6, 1911June 5, 2004) was an American politician, actor, and union leader who served as the 40th president of the United States from 1981 to 1989. He also served as the 33rd governor of California from 1967 ...
responded to economic stagnation with
neoliberal reforms and initiated the more aggressive
rollback strategy towards the Soviet Union. During Reagan's presidency, the federal debt held by the public nearly tripled in nominal terms, from $738 billion to $2.1 trillion. This led to the United States moving from the world's largest international creditor to the world's largest debtor nation.
The
dissolution of the Soviet Union
The dissolution of the Soviet Union, also negatively connoted as rus, Разва́л Сове́тского Сою́за, r=Razvál Sovétskogo Soyúza, ''Ruining of the Soviet Union''. was the process of internal disintegration within the Sov ...
in 1991 ended the Cold War, ensuring a global
unipolarity in which the U.S. was unchallenged as the world's dominant
superpower
A superpower is a state with a dominant position characterized by its extensive ability to exert influence or project power on a global scale. This is done through the combined means of economic, military, technological, political and cultural s ...
.
Fearing the spread of
regional international instability from the
Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, in August 1991, President
George H. W. Bush
George Herbert Walker BushSince around 2000, he has been usually called George H. W. Bush, Bush Senior, Bush 41 or Bush the Elder to distinguish him from his eldest son, George W. Bush, who served as the 43rd president from 2001 to 2009; pr ...
launched and led the
Gulf War against Iraq, expelling Iraqi forces and restoring the
Kuwaiti monarchy. During the administration of President
Bill Clinton in 1994, the U.S. signed the
North American Free Trade Agreement
The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA ; es, Tratado de Libre Comercio de América del Norte, TLCAN; french: Accord de libre-échange nord-américain, ALÉNA) was an agreement signed by Canada, Mexico, and the United States that crea ...
(NAFTA), causing trade among the U.S., Canada, and Mexico to soar. Due to the
dot-com boom, stable monetary policy, and
reduced social welfare spending, the 1990s saw the
longest economic expansion in modern U.S. history.
21st century
On
September 11, 2001,
al-Qaeda
Al-Qaeda (; , ) is an Islamic extremism, Islamic extremist organization composed of Salafist jihadists. Its members are mostly composed of Arab, Arabs, but also include other peoples. Al-Qaeda has mounted attacks on civilian and military ta ...
terrorist hijackers flew passenger planes into the
World Trade Center in New York City and
the Pentagon near Washington, D.C., killing nearly 3,000 people. In response, President
George W. Bush
George Walker Bush (born July 6, 1946) is an American politician who served as the 43rd president of the United States from 2001 to 2009. A member of the Republican Party, Bush family, and son of the 41st president George H. W. Bush, he ...
launched the
War on Terror, which included a nearly 20-year
war in Afghanistan from 2001 to 2021 and the 2003–2011
Iraq War
{{Infobox military conflict
, conflict = Iraq War {{Nobold, {{lang, ar, حرب العراق (Arabic) {{Nobold, {{lang, ku, شەڕی عێراق (Kurdish languages, Kurdish)
, partof = the Iraq conflict (2003–present), I ...
. Government policy designed to promote affordable housing, widespread failures in corporate and regulatory governance, and historically low interest rates set by the Federal Reserve led to a
housing bubble in 2006. This culminated in the
financial crisis of 2007–2008 and the
Great Recession, the nation's largest economic contraction since the Great Depression.
Barack Obama, the first
multiracial
Mixed race people are people of more than one race or ethnicity. A variety of terms have been used both historically and presently for mixed race people in a variety of contexts, including ''multiethnic'', ''polyethnic'', occasionally ''bi-ethn ...
president with
African-American ancestry,
was elected in 2008 amid the financial crisis.
By the end of his second term, the stock market, median household income and net worth, and the number of persons with jobs were all at record levels, while the unemployment rate was well below the historical average.
His signature legislative accomplishment was the
Affordable Care Act (ACA), popularly known as "Obamacare". It represented the
U.S. healthcare system
The United States far outspends any other nation on health care, measured both in ''per capita'' spending and as a percentage of GDP. Despite this, the country has significantly worse healthcare outcomes when compared to peer nations. The Uni ...
's most significant regulatory overhaul and expansion of coverage since Medicare in 1965. As a result, the uninsured share of the population was cut in half, while the number of newly insured Americans was estimated to be between 20 and 24 million.
After Obama served two terms, Republican
Donald Trump was elected as the
45th president in 2016.
His election is viewed as one of the biggest political upsets in American history. Trump held office through
the first waves of the
COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting
COVID-19 recession starting in 2020 that exceeded even the Great Recession earlier in the century.
The early 2020s saw the country become more divided, with various social issues sparking debate and protest. The
murder of George Floyd in 2020 led to
widespread civil unrest in urban centers and a national debate about
police brutality
Police brutality is the excessive and unwarranted use of force by law enforcement against an individual or a group. It is an extreme form of police misconduct and is a civil rights violation. Police brutality includes, but is not limited to, ...
and lingering
institutional racism. The nationwide increase in the frequency of instances and number of deaths related to
mass shootings added to the societal tensions. On January 6, 2021, supporters of the outgoing president, Trump,
stormed the U.S. Capitol in an unsuccessful effort to disrupt the
Electoral College vote count that would confirm Democrat
Joe Biden as the 46th president. In 2022, the Supreme Court
ruled that there is no constitutional right to an abortion, causing
another wave of protests across the country and stoking international reactions as well. Despite these divisions, the country has remained unified against
Russia after
Vladimir Putin's
2022 invasion of Ukraine
On 24 February 2022, in a major escalation of the Russo-Ukrainian War, which began in 2014. The invasion has resulted in tens of thousands of deaths on both sides. It has caused Europe's largest refugee crisis since World War II. An ...
, with politicians and individuals across the political spectrum supporting arms shipments to Ukraine and many large American corporations pulling out of Russia and Belarus altogether.
Geography
![Wonder Lake and Denali](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/91/Wonder_Lake_and_Denali.jpg)
The
48 contiguous states and the District of Columbia occupy a combined area of . Of this area, is contiguous land, composing 83.65% of total U.S. land area.
About 15% is occupied by
Alaska, a state in northwestern North America, with the remainder in
Hawaii, a state and
archipelago in the central
Pacific, and the five populated but
unincorporated insular territories of
Puerto Rico,
American Samoa,
Guam, the
Northern Mariana Islands, and the
U.S. Virgin Islands
The United States Virgin Islands,. Also called the ''American Virgin Islands'' and the ''U.S. Virgin Islands''. officially the Virgin Islands of the United States, are a group of Caribbean islands and an unincorporated and organized territory ...
. Measured by only land area, the United States is third in size behind Russia and China, and just ahead of Canada.
The United States is the world's
third- or fourth-largest nation by total area (land and water), ranking behind Russia and Canada and nearly equal to China. The ranking varies depending on how two territories disputed by China and India are counted, and how the total size of the United States is measured.
The
coastal plain of the
Atlantic seaboard gives way further inland to
deciduous forests and the rolling hills of the
Piedmont. The
Appalachian Mountains and the
Adirondack massif divide the eastern seaboard from the
Great Lakes and the grasslands of the
Midwest
The Midwestern United States, also referred to as the Midwest or the American Midwest, is one of four Census Bureau Region, census regions of the United States Census Bureau (also known as "Region 2"). It occupies the northern central part of ...
.
The
Mississippi–
Missouri River, the world's
fourth longest river system, runs mainly north–south through the heart of the country. The flat, fertile
prairie of the
Great Plains
The Great Plains (french: Grandes Plaines), sometimes simply "the Plains", is a broad expanse of flatland in North America. It is located west of the Mississippi River and east of the Rocky Mountains, much of it covered in prairie, steppe, an ...
stretches to the west, interrupted by
a highland region in the southeast.
The
Rocky Mountains, west of the Great Plains, extend north to south across the country, peaking at over in
Colorado. Farther west are the rocky
Great Basin
The Great Basin is the largest area of contiguous endorheic basin, endorheic watersheds, those with no outlets, in North America. It spans nearly all of Nevada, much of Utah, and portions of California, Idaho, Oregon, Wyoming, and Baja California ...
and deserts such as the
Chihuahua Chihuahua may refer to:
Places
*Chihuahua (state), a Mexican state
**Chihuahua (dog), a breed of dog named after the state
**Chihuahua cheese, a type of cheese originating in the state
**Chihuahua City, the capital city of the state
**Chihuahua Mun ...
,
Sonoran, and
Mojave. The
Sierra Nevada
The Sierra Nevada () is a mountain range in the Western United States, between the Central Valley of California and the Great Basin. The vast majority of the range lies in the state of California, although the Carson Range spur lies primarily ...
and
Cascade
Cascade, Cascades or Cascading may refer to:
Science and technology Science
*Cascade waterfalls, or series of waterfalls
* Cascade, the CRISPR-associated complex for antiviral defense (a protein complex)
* Cascade (grape), a type of fruit
* Bioc ...
mountain ranges run close to the
Pacific coast
Pacific coast may be used to reference any coastline that borders the Pacific Ocean.
Geography Americas
Countries on the western side of the Americas have a Pacific coast as their western or southwestern border, except for Panama, where the Pac ...
, both ranges also reaching altitudes higher than . The
lowest and highest points in the contiguous United States are in the state of California, and only about apart. At an elevation of , Alaska's
Denali is the highest peak in the country and in North America. Active
volcanoes are common throughout Alaska's
Alexander and
Aleutian Islands, and Hawaii consists of volcanic islands. The
supervolcano
A supervolcano is a volcano that has had an eruption with a Volcanic Explosivity Index (VEI) of 8, the largest recorded value on the index. This means the volume of deposits for such an eruption is greater than 1,000 cubic kilometers (240 cubic ...
underlying
Yellowstone National Park in the
Rockies is the continent's largest volcanic feature.
Climate
![Köppen Climate Types US 50](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/77/K%C3%B6ppen_Climate_Types_US_50.png)
The United States, with its large size and geographic variety, includes most climate types. To the east of the
100th meridian, the climate ranges from
humid continental in the north to
humid subtropical in the south.
The Great Plains west of the 100th meridian are
semi-arid. Many mountainous areas of the American West have an
alpine climate. The climate is
arid in the Great Basin, desert in the Southwest,
Mediterranean in
coastal California, and
oceanic in coastal
Oregon and
Washington and southern Alaska. Most of Alaska is
subarctic
The subarctic zone is a region in the Northern Hemisphere immediately south of the true Arctic, north of humid continental regions and covering much of Alaska, Canada, Iceland, the north of Scandinavia, Siberia, and the Cairngorms. Generally, ...
or
polar
Polar may refer to:
Geography
Polar may refer to:
* Geographical pole, either of two fixed points on the surface of a rotating body or planet, at 90 degrees from the equator, based on the axis around which a body rotates
* Polar climate, the c ...
. Hawaii and the southern tip of
Florida are
tropical, as well as its territories in the
Caribbean
The Caribbean (, ) ( es, El Caribe; french: la Caraïbe; ht, Karayib; nl, De Caraïben) is a region of the Americas that consists of the Caribbean Sea, its islands (some surrounded by the Caribbean Sea and some bordering both the Caribbean Se ...
and the Pacific.
States bordering the
Gulf of Mexico are prone to
hurricanes, and most of the world's
tornadoes occur in the country, mainly in
Tornado Alley areas in the Midwest and South. Overall, the United States receives more high-impact extreme weather incidents than any other country in the world.
Extreme weather has become more frequent in the U.S., with three times the number of reported
heat waves as in the 1960s. Of the ten warmest years ever recorded in the 48 contiguous states, eight have occurred since 1998. In the
American Southwest, droughts have become more persistent and more severe.
Biodiversity and conservation
The U.S. is one of 17
megadiverse countries containing large numbers of
endemic species: about 17,000 species of
vascular plants occur in the contiguous United States and Alaska, and more than 1,800 species of
flowering plants are found in Hawaii, few of which occur on the mainland. The United States is home to 428
mammal
Mammals () are a group of vertebrate animals constituting the class Mammalia (), characterized by the presence of mammary glands which in females produce milk for feeding (nursing) their young, a neocortex (a region of the brain), fur or ...
species, 784
birds, 311
reptile
Reptiles, as most commonly defined are the animals in the class Reptilia ( ), a paraphyletic grouping comprising all sauropsids except birds. Living reptiles comprise turtles, crocodilians, squamates (lizards and snakes) and rhynchocephalians ( ...
s, and 295
amphibian
Amphibians are tetrapod, four-limbed and ectothermic vertebrates of the Class (biology), class Amphibia. All living amphibians belong to the group Lissamphibia. They inhabit a wide variety of habitats, with most species living within terres ...
s,
and 91,000
insect species.
There are 63
national parks and hundreds of other federally managed parks, forests, and
wilderness
Wilderness or wildlands (usually in the plural), are natural environments on Earth that have not been significantly modified by human activity or any nonurbanized land not under extensive agricultural cultivation. The term has traditionally re ...
areas, which are managed by the
National Park Service. Altogether, the government owns about 28% of the country's land area,
mostly in the
western states
The Western world, also known as the West, primarily refers to the various nations and states in the regions of Europe, North America, and Oceania. .
Most of this land is
protected
Protection is any measure taken to guard a thing against damage caused by outside forces. Protection can be provided to physical objects, including organisms, to systems, and to intangible things like civil and political rights. Although th ...
, though some is leased for oil and gas drilling, mining, logging, or cattle ranching, and about .86% is used for military purposes.
Environmental issues include debates on oil and
nuclear energy
Nuclear energy may refer to:
*Nuclear power, the use of sustained nuclear fission or nuclear fusion to generate heat and electricity
* Nuclear binding energy, the energy needed to fuse or split a nucleus of an atom
*Nuclear potential energy
...
, dealing with air and water pollution, the economic costs of protecting
wildlife, logging and
deforestation, and
climate change. The most prominent environmental agency is the
Environmental Protection Agency
A biophysical environment is a biotic and abiotic surrounding of an organism or population, and consequently includes the factors that have an influence in their survival, development, and evolution. A biophysical environment can vary in scale f ...
(EPA), created by presidential order in 1970.
The idea of wilderness has shaped the management of public lands since 1964, with the
Wilderness Act. The
Endangered Species Act
The Endangered Species Act of 1973 (ESA or "The Act"; 16 U.S.C. § 1531 et seq.) is the primary law in the United States for protecting imperiled species. Designed to protect critically imperiled species from extinction as a "consequence of ec ...
of 1973 is intended to protect threatened and endangered species and their habitats, which are monitored by the
United States Fish and Wildlife Service.
As of 2020, the U.S. ranked 24th among nations in the
Environmental Performance Index. The country joined the
Paris Agreement
The Paris Agreement (french: Accord de Paris), often referred to as the Paris Accords or the Paris Climate Accords, is an international treaty on climate change. Adopted in 2015, the agreement covers climate change mitigation, Climate change a ...
on climate change in 2016, and has many other environmental commitments. It
withdrew from the Paris Agreement in 2020 but rejoined it in 2021.
Government and politics
The United States is a federal republic of 50
states, a
federal district,
five territories and several uninhabited
island possessions. It is the world's oldest surviving
federation. It is a
federal republic
A federal republic is a federation of states with a republican form of government. At its core, the literal meaning of the word republic when used to reference a form of government means: "a country that is governed by elected representatives ...
and a
representative democracy "in which
majority rule is tempered by
minority rights protected by
law."
[Scheb, John M.; Scheb, John M. II (2002). ''An Introduction to the American Legal System''. Florence, KY: Delmar, p. 6. .] In the American
federal
Federal or foederal (archaic) may refer to:
Politics
General
*Federal monarchy, a federation of monarchies
*Federation, or ''Federal state'' (federal system), a type of government characterized by both a central (federal) government and states or ...
system, sovereignty is shared between
two levels of government: federal and state. Citizens of the states are also governed by local governments, which are administrative divisions of the states. The territories are administrative divisions of the federal government.
The
U.S. Constitution serves as the country's supreme legal document. The Constitution establishes the structure and responsibilities of the federal government and its relationship with the individual states. The Constitution has been amended 27 times; the first ten amendments (
Bill of Rights) and the
Fourteenth Amendment form the central basis of Americans' individual rights. All laws and governmental procedures are subject to
judicial review, and any law can be voided if the courts determine that it violates the Constitution. The principle of judicial review, not explicitly mentioned in the Constitution, was established by the Supreme Court in ''
Marbury v. Madison
''Marbury v. Madison'', 5 U.S. (1 Cranch) 137 (1803), was a List of landmark court decisions in the United States, landmark Supreme Court of the United States, U.S. Supreme Court case that established the principle of Judicial review in the Uni ...
'' (1803).
The United States has operated under a
two-party system for most of its history.
In American
political culture
Political culture describes how culture impacts politics. Every political system is embedded in a particular political culture.
Definition
Gabriel Almond defines it as "the particular pattern of orientations toward political actions in which ...
, the
center-right
Centre-right politics lean to the right of the political spectrum, but are closer to the centre. From the 1780s to the 1880s, there was a shift in the Western world of social class structure and the economy, moving away from the nobility and mer ...
Republican Party is considered "
conservative" and the
center-left Democratic Party is considered "
liberal". On
Transparency International's 2019
Corruption Perceptions Index
The Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) is an index which ranks countries "by their perceived levels of public sector corruption, as determined by expert assessments and opinion surveys." The CPI generally defines corruption as an "abuse of entru ...
, its
public sector position deteriorated from a score of 76 in 2015 to 69 in 2019. In 2021, the U.S. ranked 26th on the
Democracy Index, and is described as a "flawed democracy".
Federal government
The federal government comprises three branches, which are headquartered in Washington, D.C. and regulated by a system of
checks and balances defined by the Constitution.
*
Legislative: The
bicameral Congress, made up of the
Senate
A senate is a deliberative assembly, often the upper house or chamber of a bicameral legislature. The name comes from the ancient Roman Senate (Latin: ''Senatus''), so-called as an assembly of the senior (Latin: ''senex'' meaning "the el ...
and the
House of Representatives, makes
federal law,
declares war, approves treaties, has the
power of the purse, and has the power of
impeachment
Impeachment is the process by which a legislative body or other legally constituted tribunal initiates charges against a public official for misconduct. It may be understood as a unique process involving both political and legal elements.
In ...
, by which it can remove sitting members of the federal government.
*
Executive:
The president is the
commander-in-chief of the military, can veto
legislative bills before they become law (subject to congressional override), and appoints the
members of the Cabinet (subject to Senate approval) and other officers, who administer and enforce federal laws and policies.
*
Judicial: The
Supreme Court
A supreme court is the highest court within the hierarchy of courts in most legal jurisdictions. Other descriptions for such courts include court of last resort, apex court, and high (or final) court of appeal. Broadly speaking, the decisions of ...
and lower
federal courts
Federal court may refer to:
United States
* Federal judiciary of the United States
** United States district court, a particular federal court
Elsewhere
* Federal Court of Australia
* Federal courts of Brazil
* Federal Court (Canada)
* Federal co ...
, whose judges are appointed by the president with Senate approval, interpret laws and overturn those they find
unconstitutional.
The
lower house
A lower house is one of two Debate chamber, chambers of a Bicameralism, bicameral legislature, the other chamber being the upper house. Despite its official position "below" the upper house, in many legislatures worldwide, the lower house has co ...
, the
House of Representatives, has 435 voting members, each representing a
congressional district for a two-year term. House seats are
apportioned among the states by population. Each state then draws single-member districts to conform with the census apportionment. The District of Columbia and the five major U.S. territories each have
one member of Congress—these members are not allowed to vote.
The
upper house, the
Senate
A senate is a deliberative assembly, often the upper house or chamber of a bicameral legislature. The name comes from the ancient Roman Senate (Latin: ''Senatus''), so-called as an assembly of the senior (Latin: ''senex'' meaning "the el ...
, has 100 members with each state having two senators, elected
at large to six-year terms; one-third of Senate seats are up for election every two years. The District of Columbia and the five major U.S. territories do not have senators.
The Senate is unique among upper houses in being the most prestigious and powerful portion of the country's
bicameral system; political scientists have frequently labeled it the "most powerful upper house" of any government.
The president serves a four-year term and may be elected to the office
no more than twice. The president is
not elected by direct vote, but by an indirect
electoral college system in which the determining votes are apportioned to the states and the District of Columbia.
The Supreme Court, led by the
chief justice of the United States, has nine members, who serve for life.
Political divisions
Each of the 50 states holds jurisdiction over a geographic territory, where it shares
sovereignty with the federal government. They are subdivided into
counties or county equivalents, and further divided into
municipalities. The District of Columbia is a
federal district that contains the capital of the United States, the
city of Washington
The District of Columbia was created in 1801 as the federal district of the United States, with territory previously held by the states of Maryland and Virginia ceded to the federal government of the United States for the purpose of creating its ...
. Each state has the amount
presidential electors equal to the number of their representatives plus senators in Congress, and the District of Columbia has three electors. Territories of the United States do not have presidential electors, therefore people there cannot vote for the president.
Citizenship is granted at birth in all states, the District of Columbia, and all major U.S. territories except American Samoa.
The United States observes limited
tribal sovereignty of the American Indian nations, like states' sovereignty. American Indians are U.S. citizens and tribal lands are subject to the jurisdiction of the U.S. Congress and the federal courts. Like the states, tribes have some autonomy restrictions. They are prohibited from making war, engaging in their own foreign relations, and printing or issuing independent currency.
Indian reservation
An Indian reservation is an area of land held and governed by a federally recognized Native American tribal nation whose government is accountable to the United States Bureau of Indian Affairs and not to the state government in which it ...
s are usually contained within one state, but there are 12 reservations that cross state boundaries.
Foreign relations
The United States has an established structure of foreign relations, and it had the world's second-largest diplomatic corps in 2019. It is a
permanent member of the
United Nations Security Council, and home to the
United Nations headquarters. The United States is also a member of the
G7,
G20, and
OECD intergovernmental organizations. Almost all countries have
embassies and many have
consulates (official representatives) in the country. Likewise, nearly all nations host formal
diplomatic missions with United States, except
Iran,
North Korea, and
Bhutan. Though
Taiwan does not have formal diplomatic relations with the U.S., it maintains close, if unofficial, relations. The United States also regularly supplies Taiwan with
military equipment
A military, also known collectively as armed forces, is a heavily armed, highly organized force primarily intended for warfare. It is typically authorized and maintained by a sovereign state, with its members identifiable by their distinct ...
.
The United States has a "
Special Relationship
The Special Relationship is a term that is often used to describe the politics, political, social, diplomacy, diplomatic, culture, cultural, economics, economic, law, legal, Biophysical environment, environmental, religion, religious, military ...
" with the
United Kingdom and strong ties with
Canada,
Australia
Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...
,
New Zealand,
the Philippines
The Philippines (; fil, Pilipinas, links=no), officially the Republic of the Philippines ( fil, Republika ng Pilipinas, links=no),
* bik, Republika kan Filipinas
* ceb, Republika sa Pilipinas
* cbk, República de Filipinas
* hil, Republ ...
,
Japan
Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...
,
South Korea,
Israel, and several
European Union countries (
France,
Italy,
Germany,
Spain, and
Poland). The U.S. works closely with its
NATO allies on military and
national security
National security, or national defence, is the security and defence of a sovereign state, including its citizens, economy, and institutions, which is regarded as a duty of government. Originally conceived as protection against military atta ...
issues, and with nations in the Americas through the
Organization of American States
The Organization of American States (OAS; es, Organización de los Estados Americanos, pt, Organização dos Estados Americanos, french: Organisation des États américains; ''OEA'') is an international organization that was founded on 30 April ...
and the
United States–Mexico–Canada Free Trade Agreement. In
South America,
Colombia
Colombia (, ; ), officially the Republic of Colombia, is a country in South America with insular regions in North America—near Nicaragua's Caribbean coast—as well as in the Pacific Ocean. The Colombian mainland is bordered by the Car ...
is traditionally considered to be the closest ally of the United States. The U.S. exercises full international defense authority and responsibility for
Micronesia, the
Marshall Islands
The Marshall Islands ( mh, Ṃajeḷ), officially the Republic of the Marshall Islands ( mh, Aolepān Aorōkin Ṃajeḷ),'' () is an independent island country and microstate near the Equator in the Pacific Ocean, slightly west of the Internati ...
and
Palau through the
Compact of Free Association. Since the
2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine
On 24 February 2022, in a major escalation of the Russo-Ukrainian War, which began in 2014. The invasion has resulted in tens of thousands of deaths on both sides. It has caused Europe's largest refugee crisis since World War II. An ...
, the U.S. has become a key ally of
Ukraine since
Russia
Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a List of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia, Northern Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the ...
annexed Crimea in 2014 and began an
invasion of Ukraine in 2022, significantly deteriorating relations with Russia in the process. The U.S. has also experienced a deterioration of relations with
China
China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...
and grown closer to
Taiwan.
Military
![B-2 Spirit](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/45/B-2_Spirit.jpg)
The president is the
commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces and appoints its leaders, the
secretary of defense
A defence minister or minister of defence is a cabinet official position in charge of a ministry of defense, which regulates the armed forces in sovereign states. The role of a defence minister varies considerably from country to country; in som ...
and the
Joint Chiefs of Staff. The
Department of Defense, which is headquartered at
the Pentagon near Washington, D.C., administers five of the six service branches, which are made up of the
Army,
Marine Corps,
Navy,
Air Force, and
Space Force
A space force is a military branch of a nation's armed forces that conducts military operations in outer space and space warfare. The world's first space force was the Russian Space Forces, established in 1992 as an independent military service. ...
. The
Coast Guard is administered by the
Department of Homeland Security in peacetime and can be transferred to the
Department of the Navy Navy Department or Department of the Navy may refer to:
* United States Department of the Navy,
* Navy Department (Ministry of Defence), in the United Kingdom, 1964-1997
* Confederate States Department of the Navy, 1861-1865
* Department of the Na ...
in wartime. The United States spent $649 billion on its military in 2019, 36% of global military spending. At 4.7% of GDP, the percentage was the second-highest among all countries, after
Saudi Arabia.
It also has
more than 40% of the world's nuclear weapons, the second-largest after Russia.
In 2019, all six branches of the U.S. Armed Forces reported 1.4 million personnel on active duty.
The
Reserves and
National Guard brought the total number of troops to 2.3 million.
The Department of Defense also employed about 700,000 civilians, not including
contractors. Military service in the United States is voluntary, although
conscription
Conscription (also called the draft in the United States) is the state-mandated enlistment of people in a national service, mainly a military service. Conscription dates back to antiquity and it continues in some countries to the present day un ...
may occur in wartime through the
Selective Service System
The Selective Service System (SSS) is an Independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the Federal government of the United States, United States government that maintains information on U.S. Citizenship of the Unite ...
. The United States has the third-largest combined armed forces in the world, behind the
Chinese People's Liberation Army and
Indian Armed Forces.
Today, American forces can be rapidly deployed by the Air Force's large fleet of
transport aircraft, the Navy's 11 active
aircraft carrier
An aircraft carrier is a warship that serves as a seagoing airbase, equipped with a full-length flight deck and facilities for carrying, arming, deploying, and recovering aircraft. Typically, it is the capital ship of a fleet, as it allows a ...
s, and
Marine expeditionary units at sea with the Navy, and Army's
XVIII Airborne Corps and
75th Ranger Regiment
The 75th Ranger Regiment, also known as Army Rangers, is the U.S. Army's premier light infantry unit and special operations force within the United States Army Special Operations Command. The regiment is headquartered at Fort Benning, Georgi ...
deployed by Air Force transport aircraft. The Air Force can strike targets across the globe through its fleet of
strategic bomber
A strategic bomber is a medium- to long-range penetration bomber aircraft designed to drop large amounts of air-to-ground weaponry onto a distant target for the purposes of debilitating the enemy's capacity to wage war. Unlike tactical bombers, ...
s, maintains the
air defense
Anti-aircraft warfare, counter-air or air defence forces is the battlespace response to aerial warfare, defined by NATO as "all measures designed to nullify or reduce the effectiveness of hostile air action".AAP-6 It includes surface based, ...
across the United States, and provides
close air support
In military tactics, close air support (CAS) is defined as air action such as air strikes by fixed or rotary-winged aircraft against hostile targets near friendly forces and require detailed integration of each air mission with fire and moveme ...
to Army and Marine Corps ground forces.
The Space Force operates the
Global Positioning System
The Global Positioning System (GPS), originally Navstar GPS, is a satellite-based radionavigation system owned by the United States government and operated by the United States Space Force. It is one of the global navigation satellite sy ...
, operates the
Eastern and
Western Ranges for all space launches, and operates the United States's
Space Surveillance and
Missile Warning networks. The military operates about 800 bases and facilities abroad, and maintains
deployments greater than 100 active duty personnel in 25 foreign countries.
Law enforcement and crime
![US incarceration timeline-clean](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/54/US_incarceration_timeline-clean.svg)
There are about 18,000 U.S. police agencies from local to federal level in the United States. Law in the United States is mainly
enforced
In law, coming into force or entry into force (also called commencement) is the process by which legislation, regulations, treaties and other legal instruments come to have legal force and effect. The term is closely related to the date of this t ...
by local police departments and
sheriff
A sheriff is a government official, with varying duties, existing in some countries with historical ties to England where the office originated. There is an analogous, although independently developed, office in Iceland that is commonly transla ...
's offices. The
state police
State police, provincial police or regional police are a type of sub-national territorial police force found in nations organized as federations, typically in North America, South Asia, and Oceania. These forces typically have jurisdiction o ...
provides broader services, and
federal agencies such as the
Federal Bureau of Investigation
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic intelligence and security service of the United States and its principal federal law enforcement agency. Operating under the jurisdiction of the United States Department of Justice, t ...
(FBI) and the
U.S. Marshals Service
The United States Marshals Service (USMS) is a federal law enforcement agency in the United States. The USMS is a bureau within the U.S. Department of Justice, operating under the direction of the Attorney General, but serves as the enforcem ...
have specialized duties, such as protecting
civil rights,
national security
National security, or national defence, is the security and defence of a sovereign state, including its citizens, economy, and institutions, which is regarded as a duty of government. Originally conceived as protection against military atta ...
and enforcing
U.S. federal courts
The federal judiciary of the United States is one of the three branches of the federal government of the United States organized under the United States Constitution and laws of the federal government. The U.S. federal judiciary consists primaril ...
' rulings and federal laws.
State courts conduct most civil and criminal trials, and federal courts handle designated crimes and appeals from the state criminal courts.
, the United States has an
intentional homicide rate of 7 per 100,000 people. A cross-sectional analysis of the
World Health Organization Mortality Database from 2010 showed that United States homicide rates "were 7.0 times higher than in other high-income countries, driven by a gun homicide rate that was 25.2 times higher."
, the United States has the
sixth highest documented incarceration rate and
second largest prison population in the world. In 2019, the total prison population for those sentenced to more than a year is 1,430,800, corresponding to a ratio of 419 per 100,000 residents and the lowest since 1995. Some estimates place that number higher, such
Prison Policy Initiative's 2.3 million.
Various states have attempted to
reduce their prison populations via government policies and grassroots initiatives.
Although most nations have abolished
capital punishment,
it is sanctioned in the United States for certain federal and military crimes, and in 27 states out of 50 and in one territory. Several of these states have
moratoriums on carrying out the penalty, each imposed by the state's governor. Since 1977, there have been more than 1,500 executions, giving the U.S. the sixth-highest number of executions in the world, following
China
China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...
,
Iran,
Saudi Arabia,
Iraq, and
Egypt. However, the number is trended down nationally, with
several states recently abolishing the penalty.
Economy
![US one dollar bill, obverse, series 2009](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/23/US_one_dollar_bill%2C_obverse%2C_series_2009.jpg)
According to the
International Monetary Fund, the U.S.
gross domestic product (GDP) of $22.7 trillion constitutes 24% of the
gross world product at market exchange rates and over 16% of the gross world product at
purchasing power parity
Purchasing power parity (PPP) is the measurement of prices in different countries that uses the prices of specific goods to compare the absolute purchasing power of the countries' currency, currencies. PPP is effectively the ratio of the price of ...
(PPP).
From 1983 to 2008, U.S. real compounded annual GDP growth was 3.3%, compared to a 2.3% weighted average for the rest of the G7.
The country ranks fifth in the world in
nominal GDP per capita
The figures presented here do not take into account differences in the cost of living in different countries, and the results vary greatly from one year to another based on fluctuations in the exchange rates of the country's currency. Such flu ...
and seventh in
GDP per capita at PPP.
The country has been the
world's largest economy since at least 1900.
The United States is the most
technologically powerful and
innovative nation, especially in
artificial intelligence,
computers
A computer is a machine that can be programmed to carry out sequences of arithmetic or logical operations (computation) automatically. Modern digital electronic computers can perform generic sets of operations known as programs. These programs ...
,
pharmaceuticals
A medication (also called medicament, medicine, pharmaceutical drug, medicinal drug or simply drug) is a drug used to diagnose, cure, treat, or prevent disease. Drug therapy (pharmacotherapy) is an important part of the medical field and rel ...
, and medical, aerospace, and military equipment. The nation's economy is fueled by abundant natural resources, a well-developed infrastructure, and high productivity.
[Wright, Gavin, and Jesse Czelusta, "Resource-Based Growth Past and Present", in ''Natural Resources: Neither Curse Nor Destiny'', ed. Daniel Lederman and William Maloney (World Bank, 2007), p. 185. .] It has the second-highest total-estimated value of natural resources, valued at United States dollar, US$ 44.98trillion in 2019, although sources differ on their estimates. Americans have the highest average Household income, household and List of countries by average wage, employee income among
OECD member states. In 2013, they had the sixth-highest median household income, down from fourth-highest in 2010.
The United States dollar, U.S. dollar is the currency most used in international trade, international transactions and is the world's foremost reserve currency, backed by its economy, its United States Armed Forces, military, the petrodollar, petrodollar system and its linked eurodollar and large U.S. Treasury, U.S. treasuries market.
Several countries International use of the US dollar, use it as their official currency and in others it is the de facto currency, ''de facto'' currency.
[Benjamin J. Cohen, ''The Future of Money'', Princeton University Press, 2006, ; ''cf.'' "the dollar is the de facto currency in Cambodia", Charles Agar, ''Frommer's Vietnam'', 2006, , p. 17] The New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq are the world's List of stock exchanges, largest stock exchanges by market capitalization and trade volume.
[Table A – Market Capitalization of the World's Top Stock Exchanges (As at end of June 2012)](_blank)
Securities and Exchange Commission (China).
The List of the largest trading partners of the United States, largest U.S. trading partners are
China
China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...
, the
European Union,
Canada, Mexico, India, Japan, South Korea, the United Kingdom, and
Taiwan.
The U.S. is the world's List of countries by imports, largest importer and the List of countries by exports, second-largest exporter. It has free trade agreements with United States free-trade agreements, several countries, including the United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement, USMCA. The U.S. ranked second in the Global Competitiveness Report in 2019, after Singapore.
Of the world's Fortune Global 500, 500 largest companies, 124 are headquartered in the U.S.
While its economy has reached a post-industrial society, post-industrial level of development, the United States remains an industrial power.
It has a smaller welfare state and redistributes less income through government action than most other World Bank high-income economy, high-income countries. The United States ranked the 41st highest in income inequality among 156 countries in 2017, and the highest compared to the rest of the developed world.
As of January 1, 2023, the United States had a national debt of $31.4 trillion.
Income and poverty
![US Wealth Inequality - v2](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ea/US_Wealth_Inequality_-_v2.png)
At $46,625 USD in 2021, American citizens have the highest median income in the world. Despite the fact that they only account for 4.24% of the World population, global population, they collectively List of countries by total wealth, possess 30.2% of the world's total wealth as of 2021, the largest percentage of any country. The U.S. also ranks first in the number of dollar billionaires and millionaires in the world, with 724 billionaires (as of 2021) and nearly 22 million millionaires (2021).
Wealth in the United States is Wealth inequality in the United States, highly concentrated; the richest 10% of the adult population own 72% of the country's household wealth, while the bottom 50% own just 2%. Income inequality in the United States, Income inequality in the U.S. remains at record highs, with the top fifth of earners taking home more than half of all income and giving the U.S. one of the widest income distributions among OECD members.
The United States is the only advanced economy that does not List of statutory minimum employment leave by country, guarantee its workers paid vacation and is one of a few countries in the world without paid family leave as a legal right. The United States also has a higher percentage of low-income workers than almost any other developed nation, largely because of a weak collective bargaining system and lack of government support for at-risk workers.
There were about 567,715 sheltered and unsheltered Homelessness in the United States, homeless persons in the U.S. in January 2019, with almost two-thirds staying in an emergency shelter or transitional housing program.
Attempts to combat homelessness include the Section 8 (housing), Section 8 housing voucher program and implementation of the Housing First strategy across all levels of government.
In 2011, Hunger in the United States#Children, 16.7 million children lived in food-insecure households, about 35% more than 2007 levels, though only 845,000 U.S. children (1.1%) saw reduced food intake or disrupted eating patterns at some point during the year, and most cases were not chronic. 40 million people, roughly 12.7% of the U.S. population, were living in poverty, including 13.3 million children. Of those impoverished, 18.5 million live in "deep poverty", family income below one-half of the federal government's poverty threshold.
Science, technology, and energy
![Buzz_salutes_the_U](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/90/Buzz_salutes_the_U.S._Flag-crop.jpg)
The United States has been a leader in technological innovation since the late 19th century and scientific research since the mid-20th century. Methods for producing interchangeable parts and the establishment of a machine tool industry enabled the American system of manufacturing, U.S. to have large-scale manufacturing of sewing machines, bicycles, and other items in the late 19th century. In the early 20th century, factory electrification, the introduction of the assembly line, and other labor-saving techniques created the system of mass production. In the 21st century, approximately two-thirds of research and development funding comes from the private sector. In 2020, the United States was the country with the List of countries by number of scientific and technical journal articles, second-highest number of published scientific papers and second most patents granted, both after China. In 2021, the United States launched a total of 51 spaceflights. (China reported 55.) The U.S. had 2,944 active satellites in space in December 2021, the highest number of any country.
In 1876, Alexander Graham Bell was awarded the first U.S. Invention of the telephone, patent for the telephone. Thomas Edison's Research institute, research laboratory developed the phonograph, the first Incandescent light bulb, long-lasting light bulb, and the first viable Kinetoscope, movie camera.
The Wright brothers in 1903 made the Wright Flyer, first sustained and controlled heavier-than-air powered flight, and the automobile companies of Ransom E. Olds and Henry Ford popularized the assembly line in the early 20th century. The rise of fascism and Nazism in the 1920s and 30s led many European scientists, such as Albert Einstein, Enrico Fermi, and John von Neumann, to immigrate to the United States.
During World War II, the Manhattan Project developed nuclear weapons, ushering in the Atomic Age. During the Cold War, competition for superior missile capability ushered in the
Space Race
The Space Race was a 20th-century competition between two Cold War rivals, the United States and the Soviet Union, to achieve superior spaceflight capability. It had its origins in the ballistic missile-based nuclear arms race between the tw ...
between the U.S. and Soviet Union. The invention of the transistor in the 1950s, a key component in almost all modern electronics, led to the development of microprocessors, software, personal computers and the Internet.
In 2022, the United States ranked 2nd in the Global Innovation Index.
, the United States receives approximately 80% of its energy from fossil fuels.
In 2019, the largest source of the country's energy came from petroleum (36.6%), followed by natural gas (32%), coal (11.4%), renewable sources (11.4%) and nuclear power (8.4%).
Americans constitute less than 5% of the world population, world's population, but consume 17% of the Energy use in the United States, world's energy. They account for about 25% of the world's Oil consumption, petroleum consumption, while producing only 6% of the world's annual petroleum supply.
The U.S. ranks as second-highest emitter of greenhouse gases, exceeded only by China.
Transportation
![Bright_Atlanta](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8f/Bright_Atlanta.jpg)
The United States's Rail transport in the United States, rail network, nearly all Standard-gauge railway, standard gauge, is the List of countries by rail transport network size, longest in the world, and exceeds . It handles mostly freight, with intercity passenger service provided by Amtrak to all but four states. The country's Inland waterways of the United States, inland waterways are the world's List of countries by waterways length, fifth-longest, and total .
Personal transportation is dominated by automobiles, which operate on a network of of public roads. The United States has the world's second-largest automobile market, and has the highest vehicle ownership per capita in the world, with 816.4 vehicles per 1,000 Americans (2014). In 2017, there were 255 million non-two wheel motor vehicles, or about 910 vehicles per 1,000 people.
The List of airlines of the United States, civil airline industry is entirely privately owned and has been largely Airline Deregulation Act, deregulated since 1978, while List of airports in the United States, most major airports are publicly owned. The three largest airlines in the world by passengers carried are U.S.-based; American Airlines is number one after its 2013 acquisition by US Airways. Of the List of the world's busiest airports by passenger traffic, world's 50 busiest passenger airports, 16 are in the United States, including the busiest, Hartsfield–Jackson Atlanta International Airport. Of the List of busiest container ports, fifty busiest container ports, four are located in the United States, of which the busiest is the Port of Los Angeles.
Demographics
Population
The United States Census Bureau, U.S. Census Bureau reported 331,449,281 residents as of April 1, 2020,
making the United States the
third most populous nation in the world, after China and India.
According to the Bureau's U.S. and World Population Clock, U.S. Population Clock, on January 28, 2021, the U.S. population had a net gain of one person every 100 seconds, or about 864 people per day. In 2018, 52% of Americans age 15 and over were married, 6% were widowed, 10% were divorced, and 32% had never been married. In 2020, the U.S. had a total fertility rate stood at 1.64 children per woman and the world's highest rate (23%) of children living in Single parents in the United States, single-parent households.
The United States of America has a diverse population; 37 American ancestries, ancestry groups have more than one million members.
White Americans with ancestry from Europe, the Middle East or North Africa, form the largest race (human classification), racial and ethnic group at 57.8% of the United States population. Hispanic and Latino Americans form the second-largest group and are 18.7% of the United States population.
African Americans
African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of ens ...
constitute the nation's third-largest ancestry group and are 12.1% of the total United States population.
Asian Americans are the country's fourth-largest group, composing 5.9% of the United States population, while the country's 3.7 million
Native Americans account for about 1%.
In 2020, the median age of the United States population was 38.5 years.
In 2018, there were almost 90 million immigrants and Second-generation immigrants in the United States, U.S.-born children of immigrants in the United States, accounting for 28% of the overall U.S. population. In 2017, out of the U.S. foreign-born population, some 45% (20.7 million) were naturalized citizens, 27% (12.3 million) were lawful permanent residents, 6% (2.2 million) were temporary lawful residents, and 23% (10.5 million) were unauthorized immigrants.
The United States led the world in refugee resettlement for decades, admitting more refugees than the rest of the world combined.
Language
English (specifically, American English) is the de facto national language of the United States. Although there is no official language at the federal level, some laws—such as Naturalized citizen of the United States, U.S. naturalization requirements—standardize English, and most states have declared English as the official language. Three states and four U.S. territories have recognized local or indigenous languages in addition to English, including Hawaii (Hawaiian language, Hawaiian), Alaska (Alaska Native languages, twenty Native languages), South Dakota (Sioux language, Sioux),
American Samoa (Samoan language, Samoan), Puerto Rico (Spanish language, Spanish), Guam (Chamorro language, Chamorro), and the Northern Mariana Islands (Carolinian language, Carolinian and Chamorro). In Puerto Rico, Spanish is more widely spoken than English.
According to the American Community Survey, in 2010 some 229 million people (out of the total U.S. population of 308 million) spoke only English at home. More than 37 million spoke Spanish language in the United States, Spanish at home, making it the second most commonly used language in the United States. Other languages spoken at home by one million people or more include Chinese language, Chinese (2.8 million), Tagalog language, Tagalog (1.6 million), Vietnamese language, Vietnamese (1.4 million), French language, French (1.3 million), Korean language, Korean (1.1 million), and German language, German (1 million).
The List of most commonly learned foreign languages in the United States, most widely taught foreign languages in the United States, in terms of enrollment numbers from kindergarten through university undergraduate education, are Spanish (around 7.2 million students), French (1.5 million), and German language in the United States, German (500,000). Other commonly taught languages include Latin, Japanese language education in the United States, Japanese, American Sign Language, Italian language in the United States, Italian, and Chinese language in the United States, Chinese.
Religion
A large variety of faiths have historically flourished within the country. According to the World Values Survey in 2017, the United States is more Secularity, secular than the median country; they ranked the United States the 32nd least religious country in the world.
Until the 1990s, the country was a substantial outlier among other Developed country, highly developed countries: uniquely Wealth and religion, combining a high level of religiosity and wealth, although this has lessened significantly since then.
Studies during the early 2020s found that about 81% of Americans believe in some conception of God, 45% report Prayer, praying on a daily basis, 41% report that religion plays a very important role in their lives, and 31% report attending religious services weekly or near weekly.
According to ''Gallup, Inc., Gallup'' in December 2022, 58% of Americans report "seldom" or "never" attending religious services.
According to the ''Institute for Family Studies'' in 2022, around 28% of Americans attended at least once or twice a month''.''
In a 2020 survey, about 64% of adults in the United States identified themselves as Christianity in the United States, Christians making it the country with the Christianity by country, largest Christian population.
Protestantism in the United States, Protestantism is the largest Christian religious grouping in the United States, accounting for around a third of all Americans. In the so-called Bible Belt, located primarily within the Southern United States, socially conservative evangelical Protestantism plays a significant role culturally. By contrast, religion plays the least important role in New England and the Western United States.
Another 6% claimed a non-Christian faith;
the largest of which are American Jews, Judaism, Islam in the United States, Islam, Hinduism in the United States, Hinduism, and Buddhism in the United States, Buddhism.
Around 30% of Americans describe themselves as having irreligion, no religion.
Membership in a house of worship fell from 70% in 1999 to 47% in 2020, much of the decline related to the number of Americans expressing no religious preference. Membership also fell among those who identified with a specific religious group. According to ''Gallup'', trust in "the church or organized religion" has declined significantly since the 1970s.
The First Amendment to the United States Constitution, First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution guarantees the Free Exercise Clause, free exercise of religion and forbids Congress from passing laws respecting its Establishment Clause, establishment.
Urbanization
About 82% of Americans live in United States urban area, urban areas, including suburbs;
about half of those reside in cities with populations over 50,000. In 2008, 273 List of United States cities by population, incorporated municipalities had populations over 100,000, nine cities had more than one million residents, and four cities (
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Houston) had populations exceeding two million.
Many U.S. metropolitan populations are growing rapidly, particularly in the South and West.
Education
![University-of-Virginia-Rotunda](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a8/University-of-Virginia-Rotunda.jpg)
American state school, public education is operated by state and local governments and regulated by the United States Department of Education through restrictions on federal grants. In most states, children are required to attend school from the age of five or six (beginning with kindergarten or first grade) until they turn 18 (generally bringing them through twelfth grade, the end of high school); some states allow students to leave school at 16 or 17. Of Americans 25 and older, 84.6% graduated from high school, 52.6% attended some college, 27.2% earned a bachelor's degree, and 9.6% earned graduate degrees. The basic literacy rate is approximately 99%.
The United States has many private and public Lists of American institutions of higher education, institutions of higher education. The majority of the world's top Public university, public and Private university, private universities, as listed by various ranking organizations, are in the United States. There are also local community colleges with generally more open admission policies, shorter academic programs, and lower tuition. The U.S. spends more on education per student than any nation in the world, spending an average of $12,794 per year on public elementary and secondary school students in the 2016–2017 school year. As for public expenditures on higher education, the U.S. spends more per student than the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, OECD average, and more than all nations in combined public and private spending.
Despite some student loan forgiveness programs in place, Student debt, student loan debt has increased by 102% in the last decade, and exceeded 1.7 trillion dollars as of 2022.
Health
![Texas medical center](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a3/Texas_medical_center.jpg)
In a preliminary report, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced that U.S. life expectancy at birth had dropped to 76.4 years in 2021 (73.2 years for men and 79.1 years for women), down 0.9 years from 2020. This was the second year of overall decline, and the chief causes listed were the COVID-19 pandemic, accidents, drug overdoses, heart and liver disease, and suicides. Life expectancy was highest among Asians and Hispanics and lowest among Blacks and American Indian–Alaskan Native (AIAN (U.S. Census), AIAN) peoples. Starting in 1998, the average life expectancy in the U.S. fell behind that of other wealthy industrialized countries, and Americans' "health disadvantage" gap has been increasing ever since. The U.S. also has one of the highest Suicide in the United States, suicide rates among high-income countries, and approximately one-third of the U.S. adult population is obese and another third is overweight.
In 2010, coronary artery disease, lung cancer, stroke, chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases, and traffic collisions caused the most years of life lost in the U.S. Low back pain, major depressive disorder, depression, musculoskeletal disorders, neck pain, and anxiety caused the most years lost to disability. The most harmful risk factors were poor diet, tobacco smoking, obesity, Hypertension, high blood pressure, Hyperglycemia, high blood sugar, physical inactivity, and Alcohol consumption and health, alcohol consumption. Alzheimer's disease, substance use disorders, kidney disease, cancer, and falls caused the most additional years of life lost over their age-adjusted 1990 per-capita rates.
Teenage pregnancy in the United States, Teenage pregnancy and Abortion in the United States, abortion rates in the U.S. are substantially higher than in other Western nations, especially among blacks and Hispanics.
The U.S. health care system far List of countries by total health expenditure (PPP) per capita, outspends that of any other nation, measured both in per capita spending and as a percentage of GDP but attains worse healthcare outcomes when compared to peer nations. The United States is the only developed nation Healthcare reform in the United States, without a system of universal health care, and a Health insurance coverage in the United States, significant proportion of the population that does not carry health insurance. The U.S., however, is a global leader in medical innovation, measured either in terms of revenue or the number of new drugs and devices introduced.
[Stats from 2007 Europ.Fed.of Pharm.Indust.and Assoc. Retrieved June 17, 2009, fro]
/ref>
Government-funded health care coverage for the poor ( Medicaid, established in 1965) and for those age 65 and older ( Medicare, begun in 1966) is available to Americans who meet the programs' income or age qualifications. In 2010, former President Obama passed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act or ACA, which the CDC said that the law roughly halved the uninsured share of the population and multiple studies have concluded that ACA had reduced the mortality of enrollees. However, its legacy Criticism of Obamacare, remains controversial.
Culture and society
Americans have traditionally Stereotypes of Americans, been characterized by a strong work ethic, competitiveness, and individualism, as well as a unifying belief in an "American civil religion, American creed" emphasizing liberty, social equality, property rights, democracy, equality under the law, and a preference for limited government. Americans are extremely charitable by global standards: according to a 2016 study by the Charities Aid Foundation, Americans donated 1.44% of total GDP to charity, the List of countries by charitable donation, highest in the world by a large margin. The United States is home to a Multiculturalism, wide variety of ethnic groups, traditions, and values, and exerts major cultural influence Americanization, on a global scale. The country has been described as a society "built on a Moral universalism, universalistic cultural frame rooted in the natural laws of science and human rights."
The Declaration of Independence has become a well-known statement on human rights, particularly its second sentence: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by Higher Power, their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." Stephen Lucas called it "one of the best-known sentences in the English language", with historian Joseph Ellis writing that the document contains "the most potent and consequential words in American history". The passage has since came to represent a moral standard to which the United States should strive. This view was notably promoted by Lincoln, who considered it to be the foundation of his political philosophy and argued that it is a statement of principles through which the Constitution should be interpreted.
Aside from the Native American, Native Hawaiians, Native Hawaiian, and Alaska Natives, Native Alaskan populations, nearly all Americans or their ancestors immigrated or were imported as slaves within the past five centuries. wikt:mainstream, Mainstream American culture is a Western culture largely derived from the European American, traditions of European immigrants with influences from many other sources, such as African-American culture, traditions brought by slaves from Africa. More recent immigration from Asian American, Asia and especially Latin American culture, Latin America has added to a cultural mix that has been described as a homogenizing melting pot
The melting pot is a monocultural metaphor for a heterogeneous society becoming more homogeneous, the different elements "melting together" with a common culture; an alternative being a homogeneous society becoming more heterogeneous throug ...
, and a heterogeneous salad bowl (cultural idea), salad bowl, with immigrants contributing to, and often Assimilation (phonology), assimilating into, mainstream American culture. Nevertheless, there is a high degree of social inequality related to Racial inequality in the United States, race and Wealth inequality in the United States, wealth. The American Dream, or the perception that Americans enjoy high Socio-economic mobility in the United States, social mobility, plays a key role in attracting immigrants. Whether this perception is accurate has been a topic of debate.[*
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*] While mainstream culture holds that the United States is a classless society, scholars identify significant differences between Social class in the United States, the country's social classes, affecting socialization, language, and values.
Americans tend to greatly value socioeconomics, socioeconomic achievement, but being Average Joe, ordinary or average is promoted by some as a noble condition.
In the modern day, the country is considered to have Permissive society, permissive attitudes surrounding human sexuality. LGBT rights in the United States are among the most socially, culturally, and legally permissive and advanced in the world, with Public opinion of same-sex marriage in the United States, public opinion and jurisprudence on the issue changing significantly since the late 1980s. A late 2022 ''Grinnell College National Poll'' found that 74% of Americans agree that same-sex marriage should be a guaranteed right while 13% disagree.
Literature and visual arts
In the 18th and early 19th centuries, American art and literature took most of their cues from Europe, contributing to Western culture. Writers such as Washington Irving, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe, and Henry David Thoreau established a distinctive American literary voice by the middle of the 19th century. Mark Twain and poet Walt Whitman were major figures in the century's second half; Emily Dickinson, virtually unknown during her lifetime, is recognized as an essential American poet.
A work seen as capturing fundamental aspects of the national experience and character—such as Herman Melville's ''Moby-Dick'' (1851), Twain's ''Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn'' (1885), F. Scott Fitzgerald's ''The Great Gatsby'' (1925) and Harper Lee's ''To Kill a Mockingbird'' (1960)—may be dubbed the "Great American Novel."
Thirteen U.S. citizens have won the Nobel Prize in Literature. William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway and John Steinbeck are often named among the most influential writers of the 20th century. The Beat Generation writers opened up new literary approaches, as have postmodern literature, postmodernist authors such as John Barth, Thomas Pynchon, and Don DeLillo.
In the visual arts, the Hudson River School was a mid-19th-century movement in the tradition of European Realism (arts), naturalism. The 1913 Armory Show in New York City, an exhibition of European modern art, modernist art, shocked the public and transformed the U.S. art scene. Georgia O'Keeffe, Marsden Hartley, and others experimented with new, individualistic styles.
Major artistic movements such as the abstract expressionism of Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning and the pop art of Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein developed largely in the United States. The tide of modernism and then postmodernism has brought fame to American architects such as Frank Lloyd Wright, Philip Johnson, and Frank Gehry. Americans have long been important in the modern artistic medium of photography, with major photographers including Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Steichen, Edward Weston, and Ansel Adams.
Cinema and theater
Hollywood, Los Angeles, Hollywood, a northern district of Los Angeles, California, is the leader in motion picture production and the most recognizable movie industry in the world. The major film studios of the United States are the primary source of the List of highest grossing films, most commercially successful and most ticket selling movies in the world.
The world's first commercial motion picture exhibition was given in New York City in 1894, using the Kinetoscope. Since the early 20th century, the U.S. film industry has largely been based in and around Hollywood, although in the 21st century an increasing number of films are not made there, and film companies have been subject to the forces of globalization. The Academy Awards, popularly known as the Oscars, have been held annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences since 1929, and the Golden Globe Awards have been held annually since January 1944.
Director D. W. Griffith, an American filmmaker during the silent film period, was central to the development of film grammar, and producer/entrepreneur Walt Disney was a leader in both animation, animated film and movie merchandising. Directors such as John Ford redefined the image of the American Old West, and, like others such as John Huston, broadened the possibilities of cinema with location shooting. The industry enjoyed its golden years, in what is commonly referred to as the "Classical Hollywood cinema, Golden Age of Hollywood", from the early sound period until the early 1960s, with screen actors such as John Wayne and Marilyn Monroe becoming iconic figures. In the 1970s, "New Hollywood" or the "Hollywood Renaissance" was defined by grittier films influenced by French and Italian realist pictures of the Aftermath of World War II, post-war period.
Theater in the United States derives from the old European theatrical tradition and has been heavily influenced by the Theatre of the United Kingdom, British theater. The central hub of the American theater scene has been Manhattan, with its divisions of Broadway theatre, Broadway, off-Broadway, and off-off-Broadway. Many movie and television stars have gotten their big break working in New York productions. Outside New York City, many cities have professional Regional theater in the United States, regional or resident theater companies that produce their own seasons, with some works being produced regionally with hopes of eventually moving to New York. The biggest-budget theatrical productions are musical theatre, musicals. U.S. theater also has an active community theater culture, which relies mainly on local volunteers who may not be actively pursuing a theatrical career.
Music
American folk music encompasses numerous music genres, variously known as traditional music, traditional folk music, contemporary folk music, or roots music. Many traditional songs have been sung within the same family or folk group for generations, and sometimes trace back to such origins as the British Isles, Mainland Europe, or Africa.["Folk Music and Song", American Folklife Center, Library of Congress]
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Among America's earliest composers was a man named William Billings who, born in Boston, composed patriotic hymns in the 1770s; Billings was a part of the Yankee tunesmiths, First New England School, who dominated American music during its earliest stages. Anthony Heinrich was the most prominent composer before the Civil War. From the mid- to late 1800s, John Philip Sousa of the late Romantic music, Romantic era composed numerous military songs—List of marches by John Philip Sousa, particularly marches—and is regarded as one of America's greatest composers.
The rhythmic and lyrical styles of African-American music have significantly influenced Music of the United States, American music at large, distinguishing it from European and African traditions. Elements from folk idioms such as the blues and what is known as old-time music were adopted and transformed into popular music, popular genres with global audiences. Jazz was developed by innovators such as Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington early in the 20th century. Country music developed in the 1920s, and rhythm and blues in the 1940s.
Elvis Presley and Chuck Berry were among the pioneers of rock and roll in the mid-1950s. Rock bands such as Metallica, the Eagles (band), Eagles, and Aerosmith are among the List of best-selling music artists, highest grossing in worldwide sales. In the 1960s, Bob Dylan emerged from the American folk music revival, folk revival to become one of America's most celebrated songwriters. Mid-20th-century American pop stars such as Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, and Elvis Presley became global celebrities, as have artists of the late 20th century such as Prince (musician), Prince, Michael Jackson, Madonna, Whitney Houston, and Mariah Carey.
Mass media
The four major broadcasters in the U.S. are the National Broadcasting Company (NBC), Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS), American Broadcasting Company (ABC), and Fox Broadcasting Company (FOX). The four major broadcast television networks are all commercial entities. Cable television in the United States, Cable television offers hundreds of channels catering to a variety of niches. , about 83% of Americans over age 12 listen to radio broadcasting, broadcast radio, while about 41% listen to podcasts. , there are 15,433 licensed full-power radio stations in the U.S. according to the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC). Much of the public radio broadcasting is supplied by NPR, incorporated in February 1970 under the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967.
Well-known U.S. newspapers include ''The Wall Street Journal'', ''The New York Times'', and ''USA Today''. More than 800 publications are produced in Spanish, the second most commonly used language in the United States behind English. With very few exceptions, all the newspapers in the U.S. are privately owned, either by large chains such as Gannett Company, Gannett or The McClatchy Company, McClatchy, which own dozens or even hundreds of newspapers; by small chains that own a handful of papers; or, in a situation that is increasingly rare, by individuals or families. Major cities often have alternative newspapers to complement the mainstream daily papers, such as New York City's ''The Village Voice'' or Los Angeles' ''LA Weekly''. The five most popular websites used in the U.S. are Google, YouTube, Amazon (company), Amazon, Yahoo, and Facebook.
The Video games in the United States, American video game industry is the world's 2nd largest by revenue. It generated $90 billion in annual economic output in 2020. Furthermore, the video game industry contributed $12.6 billion in federal, state, and municipal taxes annually. Some of the largest video game companies like Activision Blizzard, Xbox, Sony Interactive Entertainment, Rockstar Games, and Electronic Arts are based in the United States. Some of the most popular and best selling video games like The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (2019 video game), Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and Diablo III are made by American Video game developer, developers. The American video gaming business is still a significant employer. More than 143,000 individuals are employed directly and indirectly by video game companies throughout 50 states. The national compensation for direct workers is US$2.9 billion, or an average wage of US$121,000.
Food
Early settlers were introduced by Native Americans to such indigenous, non-European foods as turkey, sweet potatoes, corn
Maize ( ; ''Zea mays'' subsp. ''mays'', from es, maíz after tnq, mahiz), also known as corn (North American and Australian English), is a cereal grain first domesticated by indigenous peoples in southern Mexico about 10,000 years ago. Th ...
, squash, and maple syrup. They and later immigrants combined these with foods they had known, such as wheat flour, beef, and milk to create a distinctive American cuisine. Homegrown foods are part of a shared national menu on one of America's most popular holidays, Thanksgiving (United States), Thanksgiving, when many Americans make or purchase traditional foods to celebrate the occasion.
The American fast food industry, the world's largest, pioneered the drive-through format in the 1940s. Characteristic American dishes such as apple pie, fried chicken, doughnuts, french fries, macaroni and cheese, ice cream, pizza, hamburgers, and hot dogs derive from the recipes of various immigrants. Mexican cuisine, Mexican dishes such as burritos and tacos and pasta dishes freely adapted from Italian cuisine, Italian sources are widely consumed.
Americans drink three times as much coffee as tea. Marketing by U.S. industries is largely responsible for making orange juice and milk standard List of breakfast drinks, breakfast beverages.
Sports
The most popular sports in the U.S. are American football, basketball, baseball and ice hockey.
While most major U.S. sports such as baseball and American football have evolved out of European practices, basketball, volleyball, skateboarding, and snowboarding are American inventions, some of which have become popular worldwide. Lacrosse and surfing arose from Native American and Native Hawaiian activities that predate European contact.[Liss, Howard. ''Lacrosse'' (Funk & Wagnalls, 1970) pg 13.] The market for professional sports in the United States is roughly $69 billion, roughly 50% larger than that of all of Europe, the Middle East, and Africa combined.
American football is by several measures the most popular spectator sport in the United States; the National Football League (NFL) has the highest average attendance of any sports league in the world, and the Super Bowl is watched by tens of millions globally. Baseball has been regarded as the U.S. national sport since the late 19th century, with Major League Baseball being the top league. Basketball and ice hockey are the country's next two most popular professional team sports, with the top leagues being the National Basketball Association and the National Hockey League. The most-watched individual sports in the U.S. are golf and auto racing, particularly NASCAR and IndyCar.
Eight Olympic Games have taken place in the United States. The 1904 Summer Olympics in St. Louis, Missouri, were the first-ever Olympic Games held outside of Europe. The Olympic Games will be held in the U.S. for a ninth time when Los Angeles hosts the 2028 Summer Olympics. , the United States has won 2,629 medals at the Summer Olympic Games, more than any other country, and 330 in the Winter Olympic Games, the second most behind Norway. In Association football, soccer, the United States men's national soccer team, men's national soccer team qualified for United States at the FIFA World Cup, eleven World Cups and the United States women's national soccer team, women's team has United States at the FIFA Women's World Cup, won the FIFA Women's World Cup four times. The United States hosted the 1994 FIFA World Cup and will host the 2026 FIFA World Cup along with Canada and Mexico. On the collegiate athletics, collegiate level, earnings for the member institutions exceed $1 billion annually,[Sports Illustrated: NCAA Reports $1.1 Billion in Revenues](_blank)
/ref> and college football and College basketball, basketball attract large audiences, as the NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament, NCAA Final Four is one of the most watched sporting events.
See also
* Index of United States–related articles
* Lists of U.S. state topics
* Outline of the United States
Notes
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External links
United States
''The World Factbook''. Central Intelligence Agency.
United States
from the BBC News
Key Development Forecasts for the United States
from International Futures
; Government
Official U.S. Government Web Portal
Gateway to government sites
House
Official site of the United States House of Representatives
Senate
Official site of the United States Senate
White House
Official site of the president of the United States
* [ Supreme Court] Official site of the Supreme Court of the United States
; History
Historical Documents
Collected by the National Center for Public Policy Research
Analysis by the Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance
Collected links to historical data
; Maps
National Atlas of the United States
Official maps from the U.S. Department of the Interior
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Measure of America
A variety of mapped information relating to health, education, income, and demographics for the U.S.
; Photos
Photos of the USA
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United States
Countries in North America
English-speaking countries and territories
Federal constitutional republics
Former British colonies and protectorates in the Americas
Former confederations
G20 nations
Member states of NATO
Member states of the United Nations
States and territories established in 1776
Transcontinental countries