United States of America

United States redirects here. You may be looking for the ship.

"Filthy Europ--! I'm a full-blooded American, you snooty bastard!"

The United States of America, often abbreviated USA, is a country in North America which, in 1936, comprised of 48 semi-independent states.

History[]

The country is situated mostly in central North America. Its forty-eight contiguous states and Washington DC, the capital district, lie between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, bordered by Canada to the north and Mexico to the south. Alaska (purchased from Russia in 1867 and made a state in 1959) is in the northwest of the continent, with Canada to its east and Russia to the west across the Bering Strait. Hawaii (annexed in 1898 and made a state in 1959) is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific.^[1] The country also possesses several territories, or insular areas, scattered around the Caribbean and Pacific.

The nation was founded by thirteen colonies of Great Britain located along the Atlantic seaboard. On July 4, 1776, they issued the Declaration of Independence, which proclaimed their independence from Great Britain and their formation of a cooperative union.^[2] The rebellious states defeated Great Britain in the American Revolutionary War, the first successful colonial war of independence. A federal convention adopted the current United States Constitution on September 17, 1787; its ratification the following year made the states part of a single republic with a strong central government. The Bill of Rights, comprising ten constitutional amendments guaranteeing many fundamental civil rights and freedoms, was ratified in 1791.

In the 19th century, the United States acquired land from France, Spain, the United Kingdom, Mexico, and Russia, and annexed the Republic of Texas and the Republic of Hawaii. Disputes between the agrarian South and industrial North over states' rights and the expansion of the institution of slavery provoked the American Civil War of the 1860s. The North's victory prevented a permanent split of the country and led to the end of legal slavery in the United States. By the 1870s, the national economy was the world's largest. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the country's status as a military power. In 1945, the United States emerged from World War II as the first country with nuclear weapons, a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, and a founding member of NATO. The end of the Cold War left the United States as the sole superpower. The country accounts for approximately 50% of global military spending and is a leading economic, political, and cultural force in the world.