The name United States of America was proposed by Thomas Paine [2] and was used officially for the first time in the Declaration of Independence, adopted on July 4, 1776. It is usually said in abbreviated form United States. Sometimes it is incorrectly called the United States of North America, resulting in a confusion in its name.
In Spanish, the use of North America as an abbreviated form of the name of this country is not acceptable, since there are other nations that share the North American subcontinent. Similarly, America should not be used to refer exclusively to the United States, even though it is a very widespread custom among English speakers to use the name of the continent as an abbreviated form of the name of the nation. When writing, the abbreviation USA is usually used (obligatorily with intermediate space and points as it is an abbreviation and not an acronym) and, to a lesser extent, the acronym USA. In Spanish it is totally incorrect, although frequent, the use of the English acronym USA. United States Geography and Culture can be found on simplyyellowpages.
At a time when Spain was a colonial power, was called American to anyone who had been born in some part of their dominions in America [3] , in the UK, an after century of discovery, called americans settlers who they lived in the portions of North America that this other kingdom was occupying, and that included the annexed territory called Nova Francia.
The influence of the United States in Europe and in the world has practically contributed to monopolizing the name for itself. The use of “American” (in American Spanish) is now very widespread in English-speaking countries and in other languages due to its influence, although in the Spanish language the most common name continues to be that of Americans.
It should be taken into account that the term ” American ” is not exclusive to people who live in the United States, American is anyone who lives in America, taking into account that America is a continent.
History
Pre-Columbian civilizations
Anasazi in Colorado
The Anasazi were a group of Amerindian tribes from the cultural super-area of Oasisamerica. They occupied, in various groups, the surface of the present states of Colorado, Utah, Arizona and New Mexico. Your civilization is interesting for several reasons. It has left several monumental and liturgical vestiges in different places, of which two have been classified as World Heritage by UNESCO. The remains found by archaeologists demonstrate a knowledge of pottery, weaving, and irrigation.
In addition, they drew symbols that have not been deciphered and observed solar displacements. Beginning in the 1300s, the Anasazi took refuge in the Rio Grande Valley and central Arizona. Their tracks are lost shortly before the arrival of the Spanish. The reasons for this exodus are not known. There are several hypotheses: a climate change that threatened crops, a deteriorating environment that reduced the available arable land, overpopulation, political problems, perhaps wars. However, given the absence of written documents and the limitation of current knowledge, it is not possible to test any of these hypotheses.
Plains Indians
Main article: Plains Indians.
The Plains Indians included all the tribes that inhabited the Great Plains (all of the land between the Rocky Mountains and the Mississippi River). For most of its existence, it remained a hunter-gatherer civilization until the 17th century when Spanish explorers introduced horses to the region. The Indians quickly adapted and transformed into a nomadic civilization that followed the migratory routes of the American bison that hunted for food. When the whites invaded and occupied the Great Plains in the 19th century, the Indians engaged in a bitter war of resistance that lasted from 1836 to 1918.. The combination of the Indian Wars and the policy of the United States government to annihilate the American bison resulted in a dramatic demographic collapse in the population of the Plains Indians. After their defeat, the rest of the Indians were confined to reservations, where they remain today.
Eskimo
The Eskimos are an indigenous people who have traditionally inhabited the circumpolar region of eastern Siberia (Russia), through Alaska (United States), Canada and Greenland. The oldest known Eskimo cultures were pre-Dorset, which appear to have been a fully developed Eskimo culture dating back 5,000 years. They appear to have evolved in Alaska from people using archaic little tech tools, who had likely migrated to Alaska from Siberia at least 2,000 to 3,000 years ago, although they could have been in Alaska as early as 10,000 to 12,000 years ago. or more. There are similar artifacts found in Siberia, dating back perhaps 18,000 years ago.
Forest Indians
The Forest Indians inhabited the forests between the Atlantic Ocean and the Mississippi River. These tribes were generally communal and lived in villages with wooden huts and lanes. The reception of the English explorers was mixed with some resulting in war and extermination, while others were peaceful, such as the first Thanksgiving or the life of Pocahontas. Finally, the relationship between the English and the Forest Indians was one of permanent hostility, so much so that the French, who controlled the valley of the Mississippi River, used it to their advantage. The French maintained a policy of trade and peace with the Forest Indians and eventually formed a military alliance with them.
Iroquois confederation
The most advanced of the pre-Columbian civilizations in the territory that is now the United States was the Iroquois Confederation. The Iroquois Confederation, or the Five Nations, was a democratic Iroquois league or confederation, with both participatory and representative characteristics (combined with some hereditary). It was made up of Amerindian tribes with the Iroquois language, who lived in the northeastern United States and southeastern Canada in the Great Lakes area.. The Confederation was originally made up of five tribes (Seneca, Cayuga, Oneida, Onondaga, and Mohawk) that confederated in the mid-12th century, and were joined by Tuscarora in 1720. The democratic regime of the Confederacy was regulated by a constitution of 117 articles known as the Great Law of Peace and governed by a Parliament or Council of representatives of the population, considered the second oldest in the world after the Althing of Iceland.
The Great Law of Peace established a kind of rule of law with strict limits and restrictions on the power of the rulers. It also established a division of power between men and women, establishing that no man could preside over a clan and no woman be a military chief or sachem. It was up to the heads of the clans to choose the military chiefs. Thus the Confederation had a direct influence both on democracy and constitutionalism, as well as on the idea of the equality of women and men in modern society. Especially Benjamin Franklin, who had direct contact with Haudenosaunee in 1753, emphasized in his works that the degree of individual autonomy enjoyed by the residents of the league was unknown in Europe and published the Indian treatises, considered one of his most important works. For thinkers or historians of radical movements such as Howard Zinn, the Confederation of the Six Nations is an example of the application of radical democracy through assembly decisions.
British colonization
The United States emerged from the British colonization of America, led by waves of British immigrants who, between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, founded Thirteen Colonies on the Atlantic coast of the North American subcontinent, east of the Appalachians. These colonies turned their backs on the French possessions of Québec and Louisiana.
After a rather peaceful development of the settlers, the wars against the French to the north forced the creation of colonial army corps, one of the first expressions of national identity. Later came uprisings such as the Boston Harbor Tea Party(1773). The repressive measures of the English government provoked the beginning of the War of Independence. [4] The colonists formed an army of militiamen that were placed under the command of George Washington, who had problems equipping his men with weapons and ammunition, in addition to not having a fleet to fight that of the British Empire, so asked for help from France, which to retaliate from the Seven Years’ War agreed to help the colonies.
The initial development was clearly under English rule, but its course would change when after the Battle of Saratoga, the first great American victory, [4] France and later Spain entered the war supporting the North American independentistas.
In 1783 by the Peace of Versailles, England is forced to recognize the independence of the Thirteen British Colonies, as they had written in the famous Declaration of Independence of the United States of 1776. [5]
Independence and expansion
The official date of the founding of the United States is the 4 of July of 1776, [6] when the Second Continental Congress, representing the Thirteen Colonies British secessionists, signed the Declaration of Independence. However, the structure of government underwent a great change in 1788 when the Articles of Confederation were replaced by the Constitution of the United States. The date each state adopted the Constitution tends to be taken as the date the Union itself was founded.
The city of New York was the federal capital for a year before the government moved to Philadelphia. In 1791, the states ratified the Bill of Rights, ten amendments to the federal Constitution that in theory prohibit the restriction of personal liberties and guarantee a series of legal protections. The Northern states abolished slavery between 1780 and 1804, leaving the slaveholders in the Southern states as defenders of the ” peculiar institution.” In 1800, the federal government moved to the newly founded Washington DC
In its quest to expand its territory westward, the state began a cycle of Indian wars that lasted until the late 19th century, stripping Native Americans of their lands. The purchase of Louisiana to France nearly doubled the size of the nation. [7] The 1812 war against Great Britain, which ended in a draw, helped strengthen American nationalism. The concept of Manifest Destiny became popular during this time. [8] The Treaty of Oregon, signed in 1846 with Great Britain, led the United States to take control of present-day Northwest America. The American intervention in Mexico in 1848 resulted in the loss by that country of California and much of present-day Southwest America. Fever of Gold of California from 1848 – 1849 further boosted the western migration. In half a century, up to 40 million buffalo were slaughtered for hides and meat and to facilitate the spread of railways. The loss of these animals, a fundamental economic resource for the Plains Indians, was an existential blow to native cultures.
