United States

Author: Zhou Min
Publisher:
Publishing Date: 2003-04-01
Features: World maps by country. The full name of the United States is the United States of America, with a total area of 9.3 million square kilometers, ranking fourth in the world, after Russia, Canada, and China. The population of the United States is approximately 250 million, of which 84% are whites, 12% are blacks, and the rest are Latin American immigrants, Chinese, Native Americans, and others. 57% of the residents in the United States believe in Protestantism, 28% in Catholicism, and there are also Jewish, Buddhist, and other religions. The official language of the United States is English, the currency is the U.S. dollar, the national flower is the rose, the national bird is the bald eagle (golden eagle), and the national anthem is "The Star-Spangled Banner." The capital of the United States is Washington, D.C., located on the east coast, and other major cities include New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Atlanta, Houston, Detroit, and Seattle. The United States is a highly developed country in the world today, with enormous production scale, a complete economic structure, and a long-standing GDP ranking among the world's top. It has a developed industry, with major sectors including power, steel, metallurgy, machinery, atomic, chemical, textile, armaments, and construction. Its agriculture is advanced, having achieved specialization, mechanization, and commercialization. The production of wheat, corn, soybeans, cotton, meat, dairy products, tobacco, and potatoes holds an important position in the world. It has a vast transportation network of railways, highways, aviation, inland rivers, and pipelines. Excluding commercial shipping, rail, road, aviation, and pipeline transportation industries rank first in the world. The highway is 6,300,000 kilometers long, and the railway is over 318,000 kilometers long.
Geography: The United States is located in the central-southern part of North America (with Alaska in the northwest corner of North America and Hawaii in the central Pacific). It borders Canada to the north and Mexico to the southwest, with a land boundary of approximately 9,080 kilometers. To the east, it borders the Atlantic Ocean, to the west, the Pacific Ocean, and to the southeast, the Gulf of Mexico, with a coastline of about 22,680 kilometers.
Climate: The coastal areas of northeastern United States and the northern Great Lakes region have a temperate humid continental climate, with cold winters and mild, rainy summers. The southeastern part has a subtropical humid climate, with warm winters and hot, rainy summers. The central part has a continental semi-humid, semi-arid, and arid climate. Most of the western part has a semi-arid and arid climate. The northern part of the Pacific coast has a temperate marine climate, while the southern part has a Mediterranean climate. Alaska has a subarctic continental climate, with low temperatures year-round and little precipitation. Hawaii has a tropical marine climate, with warm and humid weather all year round.
History: The original inhabitants of North America were Native Americans and Inuit people. To trace the history of the United States, we must go back to the 15th century. In 1492, Christopher Columbus's "geographical discovery" opened up new opportunities for the emerging bourgeoisie. After that, European countries continuously immigrated to America. Between the early 17th and 18th centuries, Britain established 13 British colonies along the Atlantic coast (which later became the main components of the United States upon independence). In the mid-18th century, tensions grew between Britain and the American colonies. On April 1775, the first shot of the American Revolutionary War was fired in Lexington, north of Boston. On July 4, 1776, the Declaration of Independence was adopted in Philadelphia, declaring the establishment of the United States of America. In 1783, the Treaty of Paris was signed between Britain and the United States, ending the Revolutionary War. The American people overthrew British colonial rule and established an independent and sovereign bourgeois republic. In 1789, the U.S. federal government was officially established. From 1861 to 1865, the United States experienced the Civil War, abolishing slavery. After that, the U.S. economy developed rapidly: by the late 19th century, U.S. industrial production had become the largest in the world; since the 20th century, science and technology, cultural education, and production scale have consistently led the world, making the United States a world superpower. Between 1803 and 1959, U.S. territory expanded continuously, growing from 13 states at independence to the current 50 states. Currently, the overseas territories of the United States include: Guam and the Eastern Samoan Islands in the Pacific; the Puerto Rico Islands in the Caribbean; the U.S. Virgin Islands, etc.