United States of America

The United States of America (USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US), is a country located almost entirely in North America. It is made up of 50 states and a federal district: Washington D.C., the capital of the country. With about 309 million inhabitants, it is the third most populous country in the world, although it is quite far from the first two, China and India. It is also the fourth largest country in the world.

Recognized as the empire of this era, it is the most powerful nation of all time. Born as an independent nation in 1776, it has achieved remarkable economic, scientific and military development. It has historically been characterized by forcibly stripping other nations and countries of territories and natural resources to put them at the service of their companies and monopolies. With only 4% of the world's population, it consumes 25% of the energy produced on the planet, and despite its wealth more than a third of its population is not assured of medical care.

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States has been considered the last remaining superpower due to its influential culture, economic prowess, military strength and capability to influence the affairs of any country in the world. It played a key role in the Cold War, funding anti-communist dictators, engaging in myriad war crimes as well as persecuting and suppressing socialists in its own territory.

History

With the advent of the war of 1776 against the British empire and afterwards, the fledgling United States expanded westward with President Thomas Jefferson (the third in a long line of Presidents) referring to the nation as an "empire of liberty." As Nancy Isenberg elucidates in her book White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America: "The Louisiana Territory, as he envisioned it, would encourage agriculture and forestall the growth of manufacturing and urban poverty—that was his formula for liberty. It was not Franklin’s “happy mediocrity” (a compression of classes across an endless stretch of unsettled land), but a nation of farmers large and small. This difference is not nominal: Franklin and Paine used Pennsylvania as their model, while Jefferson saw America’s future—and the contours of its class system—through the prism of Virginia."