The history of the lands that constitute the United States and that of the country itself are quite different. Though the popular understanding and teaching of U.S. history routinely point toward English settlements along the Atlantic Coast of North America as the start of the narrative, the reality is much more complex. This is but a skeletal sketch of that history, though the story is fleshed out on the subsequent pages.

About 13,500 years before the arrival of any European settlers, Siberian nomadic hunters crossed the Bering Strait on a temporary land bridge to enter Alaska. These early settlers fanned out and over several millennia formed the various indigenous groups of the Americas, including among many others the Pueblo and Hopi of the southwest; the Inuit, Ottawa, and Huron of the north; the Algonquin and Iroquois of the northeast; the Aztec and Maya of Central America; and the Inca and other peoples of South America. None of the North American groups created urbanized civilizations along the lines of the Central and South American peoples, and as a result their civilizations yielded less archaeological heritage, leading to the generally unjustified attachment of lesser historical significance to these North American indigenous societies, many of which still exist today on U.S.-assigned reservations.

Around 1000 CE, the Vikings sailed to the northeast coast of North America, building a string of small settlements from Newfoundland as far south as Maine. Shortly after Columbus stumbled upon the Caribbean isles for Spain in the late 15th Century, the European conquest of the Americas began full force. The English, the French, and the Dutch joined the Spanish and Portuguese in the exploration and colonization of the Americas. While the Portuguese focused on Brasil, the Spanish conquered most of South and Central America, the Caribbean, and Mexico. From there, the Spanish pushed northward claiming lands as far flung as Florida, Texas, and California by the early 17th Century.

The English, French, and Dutch made claims in the Caribbean and the vast lands of North America beginning in the late 16th and early 17th Centuries. The English settled the mid-Atlantic coast and New England, the Dutch explored the Hudson River Valley, and the French took land in Canada, the Mississippi River Valley (vaguely defined as Louisiana), and areas like Michigan and Alabama. All of these lands were already held by indigenous groups, some of whom tried to repel the colonizers and others of whom sought varying degrees of co-existence with the Europeans. The French, in particular, formed military alliances with the Ottawa and Huron peoples against the Iroquois Confederacy, a grouping of five indigenous nations in upstate New York. The Dutch colonies fell to the English in short order, and from 1689 a series of wars for colonial supremacy in North America broke out between the English, the French, and their respective indigenous allies. For the indigenous groups these were disappointing partnerships, as they were frequently used as pawns by the European powers that had trouble supplying colonies too far from their orbits for effective control. The spread of smallpox, brought by colonizers, decimated the North American indigenous groups that came into contact with the Europeans.

The French and Indian Wars ended in 1763, with the British assuming control of Canada and the French ceding their vast Louisiana territory to the Spanish. Another important outcome of the conflict was a newfound solidarity among the people of the 13 British colonies on the Atlantic coast. Having fought over 70 years to expand British holdings in North America, a growing number of colonists began to feel they had more in common with each other than with the British. As Britain sought to strengthen its grasp on the colonies through stricter tax regimes and more direct control of economic activities, the colonists became increasingly agitated, arguing that they should not be taxed by a government in which they had no representation. Agitation turned to sabotage, boycotts, and rebellion against British rule, though many remained loyal to the Crown. When fighting broke out in 1775, colonist elites convened to discuss the way forward, culminating in the 1776 Declaration of Independence. The revolutionary army under George Washington suffered losses at first before struggling to something of a stalemate. The tides turned once the French began assisting the colonist forces, particularly by harassing British supply lines in the Atlantic. The British surrendered in 1781 and the colonies' independence was formally recognized in 1783.

The newly independent United States sought vengeance on the Iroquois, who had sided with the British; this was the beginning of the country's westward expansion. Aided by disease and modern weaponry, U.S. pioneers routed the indigenous residents of the interior and added ever more territory to the United States. In 1803, the French sold their cumbersome Louisiana territory to the United States and Spain ceded Florida in 1819. Following war with Mexico in 1848, lands from Texas to California became U.S. territories. In 1846, the British granted the Northwest Territories by treaty to the United States, and Alaska became a U.S. possession after Russia sold it in 1867. Though control remained patchy in many areas, the United States now stretched from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

From the earliest days there was tension about the nature of the states' union: Should it be a loose, confederal arrangement where individual states reserved the bulk of lawmaking capacity, or a system with a strong central government and limited autonomy for its federated states? Never resolved, this tension has frequently disrupted U.S. politics, especially as the number of states grew. The federal-confederal struggle came to a head in the 1860-1865 Civil War, which (broadly speaking) saw the confederal South, dependent on African slavery for its agricultural economy, secede from the federal union, defended by the North's tepidly-abolitionist, nascent industrial states. The North prevailed—and in the process abolished slavery—at great cost to both sides, and the re-United States passed into a long period of reconstruction.

The United States coalesced as a country in the late 19th Century as railroads shrunk transport times and allowed natural resources to be processed and traded in industrial and financial centers like New York, Chicago, and San Francisco. Mass immigration flooded cities with fodder for the industrial workforce and contributed to the cultural mosaic of the country. Meanwhile, the United States began to build its own empire, asserting a sphere of influence over the newly independent states of the Americas in the 1823 Monroe Doctrine and later interceding in the Cuban Independence War to occupy the island after helping defeat Spain (and garnering the Philippines as a colony in the process). The Pacific island kingdom of Hawaii was overrun and annexed in 1898. Such imperialism ran contrary to U.S. isolationism in European affairs, which kept the country out of World War I until 1917 and out of the postwar League of Nations altogether (even though the League was the pet project of U.S. President Woodrow Wilson). The interwar years can be characterized by continued immigration; the explosion of jazz and Hollywood; and the absurdity of the 1920s stock boom and crash; and the resulting Great Depression of the 1930s. Under the steady hand of President Franklin Roosevelt, the country resurrected itself by moderating its wild capitalism with a mixed economy that included many state-run work projects.

The United States stayed on the sidelines of World War II until it was attacked by Japan in 1941. Once involved, the United States proved a solid ally, bolstering the Western front in Europe and crushing Japanese dominance of the Pacific. The U.S. decision to drop atomic bombs on two Japanese cities remains controversial, but ended the war in the East. In the postwar period, the United States' falling-out with the Soviet Union, its wartime ally, led it to reinforce its Western European allies with massive loans and the NATO military alliance. The United States also advocated for and facilitated the creation of the United Nations, an organization that proved somewhat successful at preventing the U.S. and Soviet nuclear arsenals from obliterating the planet during the Cold War, but was unable to limit the outbreak of superpower proxy wars around the globe. Vehemently anti-Communist, the U.S. government deployed covert and overt operations to topple (often elected) governments in many developing countries, particularly in Latin America, that it regarded as "stepping stones" for Soviet expansion. New justifications for intervention in the post-Cold War period include fighting drugs and terrorism. At home, the United States slowly ended legal racial segregation in the South and witnessed an upsurge of Christian fundamentalist politics in response to other attempts at liberalized social policies.

With the passing of the Soviet Union, the United States has an unrivaled claim on being the most powerful country on the planet. Economically, Wall Street and the Washington-based International Monetary Fund are the dual pillars of capitalism while U.S. corporations are global leaders in almost every sector. Culturally, the near-stranglehold of U.S. firms on the infotainment sector (media, movies, and news) is noteworthy for its ability to propagate the "American lifestyle" to almost every corner of the globe. Militarily, the United States remains a potent force, while politically the U.S. government spends billions on programs trying to instill (or install) its politico-economic system around the world. Its ongoing occupation of Iraq shows that Washington has not lost its interventionist streak, while maintaining its traditional isolationism in other areas (by opposing climate change protocols, international legal organizations, and other multilateral initiatives). A complicated country, the United States has risen to a position of global preeminence despite its young age. It is the 2nd Century Rome or 19th Century Britain of our times, and what the United States does with that power has the potential to affect all areas of the world.

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