US History

How was the United States created, and how did it become a world power? Although the US is a relatively young country, it has a complex history characterized by vast periods of transformation. How did American ideals, traditions, and society form? And what does it mean to be a world power anyway?

US history periods timeline

Columbian America

Before Europeans arrived in 1492, numerous Indigenous societies prospered. In Central and South America, the Aztecs controlled most of present-day Mexico and boasted the most populous city, Tenochtitlan.

Fig. 1

Many Indigenous societies inhabited the North American continent, including the arctic experts of the Inuit, the Iroquois and Algonquin in the woodland east, the Cherokee in the southeast, and the Navajo in the southwest, to name a few.

The rediscovery of the “New World” by Christopher Columbus in 1492 changed the Indigenous world and the Old World forever. Motivated by a desire for natural resources such as gold, silver, and copper, Europe developed rapid and competitive colonization. Within a century, Spain and Portugal controlled most of the known New World and reaped the economic benefits.

The Columbian Exchange was the transfer of new flora, fauna, ideas, and technologies between the Old and New World. Not all of these exchanges were positive. European diseases such as smallpox eradicated close to ninety percent of the Indigenous populations of North and South America. Disease paved the way for a conquest of the continents with relative ease.

Colonial America

Following the Spanish and Portuguese example, France and the Netherlands started to explore North America. The French claimed territory around the Great Lakes and the Saint Lawrence River, and the Dutch established New Netherland in present-day New York. Both nations profited from the fur trade with Indigenous Peoples.

Fig. 2 The Lost Colony

The English began their explorations in the 1580s, but their initial attempts failed, such as with the Lost Colony of Roanoke. The first thriving colony was Jamestown, established in 1607 in Virginia. The British eventually ruled over thirteen colonies, which would come to make up the original United States.

• The New England Colonies had significant Puritan influence. The Puritans were radical Protestants persecuted in England for criticizing the monarchy and the church.
• The Middle Colonies of Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, and Delaware offered religious toleration and found economic success in wheat, grain, and mercantile industries. They benefited from the trade network across the Atlantic Ocean, which aided the use and expansion of African slave labor.
• Southern colonies relied on plantation farming to sustain them, and soon African slave labor was used to work these farms.

Fig. 3 British Colonies

US history: summary of the American Revolution

The American Revolution lasted eight years and resulted in independence from the British.

Below is a timeline of the major events.

Fig. 4 Declaration of Independance

The new nation of America

The US Constitution

The Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia gathered to discuss these failures in 1787 and created a new constitution. Some of the key elements included:

• Three Branches of Government:

  • Bi-cameral Legislative Branch - created through the Great Compromise

  • Executive Branch

  • Judicial Branch

• The three-fifths compromise: The clause was created as a compromise over the delegation of population towards representation in the House of Representatives. At the time, all white people would count as one citizen toward the population count; all non-white individuals would count as three-fifths of a person towards the population count. This clause is removed after the passage of the 14th Amendment.

• The Creation of the Amendment system to change the Constitution

• The Ratification of the Bill of Rights - the first ten amendments to the Constitution

Fig. 5 The Constitutional Convention Illustration

The first presidents in US history: facts

Let's look at the influence of the first presidents of America on the country's future.

American expansionism

Through most of the 1800s, expansionism defined America’s ethos. The concept of manifest destiny gripped the young nation.

Critical events in American expansionism included:

These events created a feeling that it was destiny to control the continent. If God did not want the U.S. to expand, Louisiana would not have been purchased so cheaply, and the wars would not have been so victorious.

Fig 6. US History Map of US territorial expansions

Americans were motivated to move west by the possibilities it offered. For instance, the 1849 California Gold Rush and other precious mineral claims attracted hundreds of thousands of Americans. The establishment of the transcontinental railroad also solidified America’s claim to the land in the west. As more Americans moved, American Frontier culture defined itself.

However, this land was not unoccupied, and Americans faced defiant opposition from Indigenous nations. The Indian Wars with the Sioux, Crow, and other nations devastated Indigenous societies.

The federal government sanctioned much of the destruction, such as the Indian Removal Act of 1837. The US Army forced the Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, and Seminole tribes off their ancestral lands.

Expansionism profoundly influenced American economic, domestic, and foreign policy to close the Western frontier in the early 1900s.

The American Civil War

During American expansionism, one of the defining events of US history occurred - the 1861-5 American civil war between the North and South. What caused this war, how did it end, and how did this affect the future of the US?

Fig. 7 Battle of Gettysburg

Causes of the Civil War

The causes of the Civil War are complex and compounded upon each other, reaching a breaking point on 12th April 1861, when the South Carolina Militia opened fire on the Federal-controlled Fort Sumter. The table below shows some of the causes of the Civil War:

Conduct of the Civil War

The southern states fought for their right to retain enslaved persons and self-govern, whilst the northern states fought for the preservation of the Union and the liberation of enslaved labor in the south.

The civil war battles saw the most casualties the U.S. has ever seen in warfare: approximately 360,000 Northern casualties and 260,000 Southern casualties. The Union forces were ultimately victorious on April 9th, 1865.

Effects of the Civil War

• Established the United States as a single sovereign entity

• The emancipation of nearly four million enslaved Americans

• Solidified the power and control of the central government over the states

• Directly influenced the adoption of the following Amendments:

  • 13th Amendment: Ended the practice of slavery in the United States

  • 14th Amendment: All persons born or naturalized in the United States are U.S. Citizens - granted citizenship and protection under the Federal government to all freed enslaved persons

  • 15th Amendment: Protects the right to vote for all U.S. Citizens

• Began the Era of Reconstruction

The Reconstruction era (1865-77)

After the war, the federal government faced the question: how would the confederate states be readmitted to the Union? The era of Reconstruction sought to answer this, with the key issue being the rights of newly freed enslaved persons.

Reconstruction was divided into two phases:

Presidential Reconstruction

• After Abraham Lincoln was assassinated in 1865, Vice President Andrew Johnson took office as President.
• He offered a pardon to all southerners who took an oath of allegiance to the Union, except for high-ranking Confederate officials.
• Johnson required southern states to ratify the 13th Amendment while rejoining the Union.
• The new governments in the South enjoyed quite a lot of freedom, allowing them to subjugate African Americans in other ways. Many Southern states created "black codes."

Fig. 8 Lincoln and Johnsond Union Cartoon

Radical Reconstruction

The need for reform in the south pitted the president against Congress. Political battles over the Freedman’s Bureau, the Civil Rights Act of 1866, and the 14th and 15th Amendments led to the first impeachment of a U.S. President in 1866.

Radical Republicans then passed the Reconstruction Act of 1867, dividing the South into five military districts occupied by US troops. Republicans also demanded African American political participation in the South. Though white Southerners disagreed with Radical Reconstruction, it continued until 1877.

Radical Reconstruction policies allowed African Americans various opportunities, especially in politics, but this changed when Reconstruction ended in 1877.

Why did Reconstruction end?

• National attention turned away from Reconstruction and towards economic recovery after the Depression of 1873.
• White democrats used violence and intimidation tactics to regain political power in the South. The Ku Klux Klan was a large part of this.
• The South introduced Jim Crow laws (legalized segregation) in the 1870s.
• Reconstruction ended with the Presidential election of 1876 when Rutherford B. Hayes took office and withdrew federal troops from the South in 1877.

Post-Reconstruction South

At the end of Reconstruction, anti-African American violence and segregation exploded in the South. The Jim Crow laws threatened newly gained civil rights and legalized segregation.

African Americans were barred from using the same public facilities as white Southerners. The Supreme Court upheld this idea of being separate but equal with the ruling of Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896. The Jim Crow era continued until the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

The American Gilded Age

Laissez-faire capitalism enabled industrialists to increase their wealth quickly; they became known as both "captains of industry" and "robber barons." The Gilded Age was a period of vast wealth inequality, with money concentrated in the hands of the industrialists; workers’ discontent with this and the poor working conditions they faced ultimately led to strikes.

Politics in the Gilded Age

The Gilded Age was defined by materialism and political corruption. Industrial leaders often backed presidential candidates with the expectation of having complete control, leading to a corrupt government.

• Elected presidents gave political positions to their supporters through the patronage system.
• All presidents elected from 1876 to 1892 won with less than fifty percent of the popular vote.
• Due to their ineffectiveness, corruption, and lack of impact, presidents elected during this time became known as the "forgotten presidents."

The Gilded Age saw voter turnout sometimes exceeding 90% and narrow political elections between Republicans and Democrats. Political machines influenced the surge in voter turnout.

The People's Party (aka Populist Party) emerged in 1891 to represent agricultural America and take down the large industrial monopolies. Seeing the appeal of the Populists, the Democrats began adopting the party's ideals, and the People's Party slowly integrated into the Democratic Party.

Fig. 10 Peoples Party at Columbus Nebraska

The Gilded Age ended with the Panic of 1893, which caused an economic depression for the next four years. The ethical and industrial issues of the Gilded Age ushered in the Progressive Era.

The Progressive Era

• the spread of poverty
• terrible living conditions
• lack of labor laws
• domination of industrialist leaders

Progressives wanted to fix all these problems.

Fig. 11 President Roosevelt

The presidents of the Progressive Era who followed this agenda were:

• Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt, Republican (1901-1909)
• William Howard Taft, Republican (1909-1913)
• Woodrow Wilson, Republican (1913-1921)

Progressives also sought to eliminate government corruption that had been so prevalent throughout the Gilded Age. Progressivism aimed to end the monopolies’ grip on the economy and create healthy competition.

The era also saw the passing of the eighteenth and nineteenth amendments:

• The eighteenth amendment banned the sale and transportation of alcohol, known as prohibition.
• The nineteenth gave women the right to vote.

Progressives supported child labor laws, a shorter workday, minimum wages, and urban reform. The movement combatted injustices through the political organization, journalistic publications, and political activism.

American imperialism

When Americans declared independence from Britain in 1776, they sought to avoid the errors of the Old World, such as imperial overextension. However, in 1823, the United States endorsed the Monroe Doctrine, which effectively declared the Americas its exclusive sphere of influence to prevent further European colonization. At the same time, westward expansion under the banner of Manifest Destiny incorporated new territories and expelled their Indigenous inhabitants.

By the end of the 19th century, the United States was using two methods to extend its global influence: commercial companies like the United Fruit Company to dominate parts of Latin America as “banana republics”, and military-political force. The latter included the U.S. acquisition of the Philippines colony (1899-1946) and the protectorate of Cuba (1898).

The U.S. also annexed Hawaii (1898) and established itself as a power in the Pacific. These territorial acquisitions occurred within the context of the Spanish-American War (1898), a key turning point for American imperialism. The subsequent American occupation of Haiti (1915–1934) came shortly afterward.

In the 20th century and beyond, the United States continued its imperialist trajectory through direct or indirect hegemonic means.

Fig. 12 United Fruit Company Steamship Line advertisement 1916.

America in World War I

American involvement in WWI was initially uncertain as the country did not want to be drawn into large-scale military conflicts. President Wilson entered the war in April 1917, three years after it started, and Americans fought on the Western Front.

Public opinion also favored neutrality until the sinking of Britain’s Lusitania—with Americans on board—by a German U-boat. Before its entry, the United States supplied the Allies, such as France and the U.K., with material aid. This war led to the significant expansion of the U.S. Armed Forces and the participation in the Paris Peace Conference (1919) as one of the victors.

Therefore, America’s late entry into the First World War was a critical moment for international relations. Until the mid-to-late 19th century, the United States' foreign policy was generally isolationist. The Founding Fathers wanted to avoid the mistakes of the Old World, such as being entangled in many wars. Its 1823 Monroe Doctrine also sought to avoid war with major European players by preventing their colonization of the Western hemisphere. Yet, the Spanish-American War and American imperialism in Cuba, the Philippines, and Haiti ended the era of relative isolationism. The First World War solidified the American presence as an active participant in global affairs.

The Roaring Twenties

Three American leaders, President Harding (1921-1923), Coolidge (1923-1929), and Hoover (1929-1933) led the United States in the 1920s. All three leaders were Republicans who focused on domestic politics, such as business expansion through deregulation. After the devastation of the First World War in Europe, the United States embraced a relatively isolationist foreign policy and turned inward until World War II.

The “roaring twenties” is a phrase that refers to the relative economic prosperity of that decade as well as the explosion of mass culture, including film, fashionable urban flappers, nightlife, consumer advertising, and jazz music. In an atmosphere of social freedom, many also defied the strict ban on alcohol during Prohibition (1920-1933).

President Harding turned inward to domestic issues in politics as the U.S. recovered from the recession, WWI, and the Spanish flu pandemic. This decade primarily focused on economics, improving relations between labor and business, and lowering the national debt.

Great Depression

The optimism of the roaring twenties ended with the massive international economic downturn of the 1930s, known as the Great Depression. The era began with the stock market crash in the fall of 1929.

Even in reasonably well-off western countries, the dire economic situation translated into broad-scale business closures, deflation due to financial collapse, unemployment, and destitution. At its worst, American GDP dropped by 30% and its industrial output by around 47%, with 20% unemployment.

By the mid-1930s, the United States began showing gradual improvement. President Franklin D. Roosevelt initiated several measures as part of his New Deal and its government programs, such as the Works Progress Administration (WPA), to stabilize the economy.

However, it was not until 1942—during the Second World War—that the American economy reached pre-Depression levels and continued to grow. The shared traumatic experience of living through the Great Depression produced notable works of literature such as John Steinbeck’s award-winning The Grapes of Wrath (1939).

Fig. 14 "World's Highest Standard of Living." Photo by Margaret Bourke-White

Interwar Foreign Policy

Overall, the interwar period was one when the United States faced inward and focused on domestic issues—with some notable exceptions.

• Despite entering the Great War (WWI) in late 1917, the United States was one of the Big Four at the Paris Peace Conference (1919).
• The aftermath of the war left defeated Germany with significant postwar reparations.
• As a result, the United States introduced two consecutive measures, the Dawes Plan (1924) and the Young Plan (1929), to facilitate German recovery. These measures stabilized the German currency and refinanced its payments through loans.
• Another issue related to WWI was the Russian Revolution (1917) which ultimately led to the establishment of the Soviet Union. The United States did not recognize the USSR until 1933, largely because of its communist ideology.
• The rise of Nazi Germany (1933) and Japanese imperial expansion in Asia made international relations more complex and difficult.
• Through initiatives such as the Neutrality Act (1935), the United States sought to avoid entanglements in international politics.

America in World War II

The Second World War (1939-1945) was fought by much of the world on almost every continent. Its casualties measured in the dozens of millions, with the USSR alone losing 27 million lives and massive infrastructural damage in every military theater.

Despite an attempt at neutrality in the 1930s, the Pearl Harbor attack by imperial Japan in December 1941 on the United States led the US to join the Allied side (the Soviet Union, Britain, and others). Before its entry, the U.S. had offered the USSR material support through the Lend-Lease Act after Nazi Germany attacked the USSR in June 1941.

The USSR bore the brunt of the fighting on the Eastern Front and was responsible for 80% of Nazi German losses overall. The United States participated in the European theater, particularly the Normandy landing (1944), and the Pacific theater, such as the Battle of Midway (1942) and the Battle of Iwo Jima (1945).

In one of the darkest moments of the war, President Truman (1945-1953) ordered the nuclear attacks on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (August 1945) despite the imminence of the Japanese surrender. Ultimately, fueled by military victories and the economic boost of wartime industries at home, the United States emerged as a true superpower following this conflict.

Fig. 15 Nagasaki Bomb Cloud

America in the Cold War and beyond

The period from the 1950s onward became known as the American Century because the United States was able to dominate much of the world politically, militarily, economically, socially, and culturally. Post-war Europe slowly reinvented itself with the help of the American-led Marshall Plan (1948-1951), which gave economic and other assistance to rebuild the war-torn nations.

However, its WWII ally and ideological rival, the Soviet Union, rose to superpower status. To counter the USSR's communism, President Truman articulated the Truman Doctrine (1947) as a deterrence strategy all around the globe. Long gone were the days of American isolationism.

The United States engaged in multiple military conflicts during the Cold War to prevent the spread of communism, including the Korean War (1950-1953) and the Vietnam War (1955-1975). The Vietnam War was unpopular with many Americans due to human rights violations, and the US ultimately failed to contain communism in Vietnam.

The world became bipolar—split into two blocs, especially after China (1949) and Cuba (1959) had successful communist revolutions. Each Bloc had a respective military alliance: America’s North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the Soviet Union’s Warsaw Pact.

In the nuclear age, this rivalry came dangerously close to the point of no return - the Cuban Missile Crisis (1962) saw the world on the brink of nuclear war.

The Soviet Union gradually lost power in its Bloc, initiating the fall of the Berlin Wall (1989) and the USSR's collapse (1991). For a time, the United States interpreted this as a victory in the Cold War, becoming the sole global superpower.

After the Cold War

The United States felt emboldened to participate in wars in the Middle East and Central Asia, particularly after the 9/11 terrorist attack on its soil on September 11, 2001. However, its invasions of Iraq (2003-2011) and Afghanistan (2001-2021), which lasted for years, did not succeed, destabilizing and devastating those regions.

Today, the United States is dealing with a rapidly changing world. Domestically, the country is a society of contradictions—from racial tensions to economic inequalities. Internationally, the United States remains one of the most influential powers.

Fig. 4 Declaration of Independence