United States of America

United States of America
Founded	1776
Founder	Founding Fathers
Population	318,880,944 (2014)
Capital	District of Columbia
Continent	North America
Area	3,717,813 sq mi (9,629,091 km² )

The United States of America, or USA, U.S.A, US, or just the States, is the third largest country via population and third largest via land area.

Early settlement

After Columbus discovery of South America many where inspired and they continued to explore. First the Spanish discovered Florida, there were also many French atempts to colonize North America but the first English successes (and probably the most important regarding USA s history) was the colonial settlement: Jamestown (in the state that would later be named Virgina) many of the first colonial immigrants were Catholics/protestants/etc who were seeking freedom of faith.

With the colonization of Georgia in 1732, the 13 colonies that would become the United States of America were established. All had local governments with elections open to most free men, with a growing devotion to the ancient rights of Englishmen and a sense of self-government stimulating support for republicanism.With extremely high birth rates, low death rates, and steady settlement, the colonial population grew rapidly. Relatively small Native American populations were eclipsed.

Independence

The American Revolution was the first colonial war to succeed.

By the late 18th century Americans had developed an ideology of republicanism that held government rested on the will of the people as expressed in their local legislatures. And when the British Empire started to see how deep in debt they were they decided to tax the American englishmen, a big mistake, to do so they imposed a series of taxes that the americans did not accept stating that the parliment did not have the right to tax them withput representation (Hence the Revolutionary lema "No taxation without representation").

As tension rised following the Boston "Tea Party" and several other boycotts to British trade the first Continental Congress( a convention of delegates called together from the Thirteen Colonies that became the governing body of the United States during the American Revolution) that

From 1803 to 1848, the size of the new nation nearly tripled as settlers (many embracing the concept of pushed beyond national boundaries even before the Louisiana Purchase. The expansion was tempered somewhat by the stalemate in the War of 1812, but was subsequently reinvigorated by victory in the Mexican–American War in 1848.

As new territories were being incorporated, the nation was divided over the issue of states' rights, the role of the federal government, and, by the 1820s, the expansion of slavery. The Northern states were opposed to the expansion of slavery whereas the Southern states saw the opposition as an attack on their way of life, since their economy was dependent on slave labor. The failure to permanently resolve these issues led to the Civil War, following the secession of many slave states in the South to form the Confederate States of America after the 1860 election of Abraham Lincoln. The 1865 Union victory in the Civil War effectively ended slavery and settled the question of whether a state had the right to secede. The event was a major turning point in American history, with an increase in federal power.

After the Civil War, an unprecedented influx of immigrants, who helped to provide labor for American industry and create diverse communities in undeveloped areas, together with high tariff protections, national infrastructure building, and national banking regulations, hastened the country's rise to international power. The growing power of the United States enabled it to acquire new territories, including the annexation of Puerto Rico after victory in the Spanish–American War, which marked the debut of the United States as a major world power.

At the start of the First World War, in 1914, the United States remained neutral. In 1917, however, the United States joined the Allied Powers, helping to turn the tide against the Central Powers. For historical reasons, American sympathies were very much in favor of the British and French, even though a sizable number of citizens, mostly Irish and German, were opposed to intervention. After the war, the Senate did not ratify the Treaty of Versailles, because of a fear that it would pull the United States into European affairs. Instead, the country pursued a policy of unilateralism that bordered at times on isolationism.

During most of the 1920s, the United States enjoyed a period of unbalanced prosperity as farm prices fell and industrial profits grew. A rise in debt and an inflated stock market culminated in a crash in 1929, triggering the Great Depression. After his election as President in 1932, Franklin Delano Roosevelt instituted his plan for a New Deal, which increased government intervention in the economy in response to the Great Depression.

The nation did not fully recover until 1941, when the United States was driven to join the Allies against the Axis Powers after a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor by the Japanese. World War II was the costliest war in American history, but helped to pull the economy out of depression as the required production of military materiel provided much-needed jobs and women entered the workforce in large numbers for the first time.

After World War II, the United States and the Soviet Union became superpowers in an era of ideological rivalry dubbed the Cold War. The United States promoted liberal democracy and capitalism, while the Soviet Union communism and a centrally planned economy. The result was a series of proxy wars, including the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the tense nuclear showdown of the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the Soviet war in Afghanistan.

The perception that the United States was losing the space race spurred government efforts to raise proficiency in mathematics and science in schools and led to President Kennedy's call for the United States to land "a man on the moon" by the end of the 1960s, which was realized in 1969.

Meanwhile, American society experienced a period of sustained economic expansion. At the same time, discrimination across the United States, especially in the South, was increasingly challenged by a growing civil-rights movement headed by prominent African Americans such as Martin Luther King, Jr., which led to the abolition of the Jim Crow laws in the South.

After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, the United States continued to intervene militarily overseas, for example in the Gulf War.

Following the September 11, 2001 Attacks, U.S. foreign policy focused on the threat of terrorist attacks. In response, the government under George W. Bush began a series of military and legal operations termed the War on Terror, beginning with the overthrow of Afghanistan's Taliban government in October 2001. Soon after, the United States launched the controversial 2003 invasion of Iraq, with support from 30 governments, which George W. Bush referred to as the 'Coalition of the Willing'. Although the Bush administration justified its invasion with a charge that Iraq had stockpiled weapons of mass destruction, no such stockpile was found, and the Bush administration later admitted having acted on flawed intelligence.

Sciences and Technologies

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Also see

States (1787- present)

Cities (1787- present)

Churches (1787- present)

United States of America (1787- present)