The United States of America is also commonly referred to as the United States, the States, the U.S. or just America.
The country had been populated with native tribes long before the advent of pioneers, explorers and other immigrants who began  to settle in the "New World" mainly from Europe and expand their influence by encroaching on the natives' territories. Systematic repression caused continual
unrest and many battles fought right to the end of the 20th century. Many treaties were made and broken until the US government finally supressed all aggressive activities of the natives. As such the actual nation was then finally founded by 13 colonies of Great Britain located along the Atlantic coast only in the late 18thcentury.
On 4th July, 1776 these issued the Declaration of Independence, which
proclaimed their independence from Great Britain and their formation of a
co-operative union. The rebellious states defeated the British army in the
American Revolutionary War, the first successful colonial war of independence, which began years earlier with events such as the protest in Boston called the “Boston Tea Party”. The Philadelphia Convention adopted the current United
States Constitution on 17th September, 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.
During 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 already 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 and the dissolution of the Soviet Union left the United States as
the sole superpower.
At 9.83 million sq. km. and with about 307
million people the United States is the third largest by land area and
population. It is one of the world's most ethnically diverse and multicultural
nations, which is a product of large-scale immigration from many countries. The
U.S. economy is certainly one of the largest national economies in the world.
Although the country does not have an official
language English is by far the most prevalent and is taken as the de-facto standard (30 states do, in fact, recognise English as the official language). Never-the-less, due to the high level of citizens with immigrant background
Spanish, for instance, is very common. There are many pockets of other languages
from all over the world in areas within the States including French and German
but also Chinese. Many of the large cities have Quarters (or Ghettos) with a
predominant immigrant population that only speak and use the language (and traditions) of their country of origin. Cities like San Francisco and New York boast large and spectacular Chinatowns.
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