A fifty-state republic has led the world economy since about 1890
The United States is a federal republic of fifty states plus Washington, D.C., with forty-eight contiguous states between Canada and Mexico. Paleo-Indian peoples arrived from North Asia at least 15,000 years ago; British colonisation of the Thirteen Colonies began in 1607.
Enlightenment ideas of republican government and clashes with the British Empire led the colonies to independence, after which the country pushed west through purchase, settlement and conquest. Disputes over slavery eventually drove eleven Southern states to secede as the Confederacy, setting off civil war with the Union.
The Constitution divides power among legislative, executive and judicial branches. A president holds executive authority, while Congress has two chambers: a House of Representatives apportioned by population and a Senate giving each state equal weight. Federalism leaves the fifty states substantial autonomy, and the capital district of Washington is not itself a state.
The earliest written use of the full name comes from 2 January 1776, when Stephen Moylan, an aide to George Washington, asked in a letter to go to Spain with full powers from the United States of America to seek help for the war. An anonymous essay in The Virginia Gazette used it publicly on 6 April that year, and Thomas Jefferson wrote it into his draft of the Declaration of Independence, adopted on 4 July 1776. America itself honours the explorer Amerigo Vespucci; the German mapmakers Martin Waldseemüller and Matthias Ringmann first put it on a map in 1507, after Vespucci argued that Columbus’s lands were a new continent rather than the edge of Asia.
Federal usage standardises United States and U.S., abroad people say the States, and stateside is the matching adjective. The economy has been the largest in the world since roughly 1890 and produces more than a quarter of global output at market exchange rates, with high marks for competitiveness, innovation and universities.
Source: United States
