United States of America

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International Organizations

The United States is a member of the UN and has a permanent seat on the UN Security Council. It also belongs to many UN agencies such as the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the International Labour Organization, and the International Monetary Fund. In addition, the United States plays a major role in numerous other international organizations, such as the Organization of American States and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

VI

History

In addition to cross-references contained in the following account of US history, the reader is referred to the history sections of articles on the individual states and to separate articles on US presidents.

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Colonial Developments

The United States did not emerge as a nation-state until near the end of the 18th century, but national history is properly introduced with a brief survey of the chief events leading to the formation of the Union. The voyages in the last years of the 15th century of Christopher Columbus and John Cabot were the decisive initial developments. On the strength of Columbus’s explorations and those of later Spanish navigators, Spain staked out a vast domain in North, Central, and South America. Cabot, sailing in the service of King Henry VII of England, reached the North American mainland in 1497. On the basis of this voyage, England later claimed the entire continent. Among other early voyagers to North America were Giovanni da Verrazzano of Italy and Jacques Cartier of France. Sailing under the flag of France, they initiated a protracted period of French colonial activity.

The lands these navigators “discovered” had been inhabited for at least 20,000 years before Columbus’s arrival. In 1492 the indigenous population of the continent numbered more than 90 million, of whom about 10 million lived north of present-day Mexico. Contact with Europeans precipitated a demographic disaster for these varied Native Americans. Because they lacked natural immunity to European diseases, influenza, typhus, measles, and smallpox reduced native populations in the more densely settled regions of Central and South America by up to 95 per cent within the first 150 years after contact. In North America, where the indigenous cultures tended to be semi-nomadic and populations less dense, the population collapse was more protracted, but no less devastating. Once European colonists established permanent settlements in North America, they introduced not only diseases but also cattle and horses that displaced game animals and invaded Native American agricultural lands, altering the environment so drastically that indigenous populations declined to a fraction of pre-contact levels. Even in the absence of warfare, European colonization signalled the wholesale destruction of indigenous cultures. (For a detailed discussion of the original inhabitants of the United States, see Native Americans and articles on individual peoples.)

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1

The First Settlements

The founding of St Augustine (in what is now Florida) by the Spanish in 1565 marked the beginning of European colonization within the present boundaries of the United States. At the time of this settlement, England and Spain were engaged in naval warfare, which in 1588 culminated in the virtual annihilation of the Spanish Armada. After this defeat, Spain no longer figured as a serious rival to England for possession of the Atlantic seaboard of North America. Before that time, however, these same military pressures helped inhibit English efforts at colonization.

In 1585 an expedition sponsored by Sir Walter Raleigh settled on Roanoke Island off the coast of present-day North Carolina. The colony soon failed, in part because the settlers were more concerned with hunting for gold than with learning how to sustain their colony by agriculture. In 1587 Raleigh dispatched a larger group—led by John White—to the region, which he had named Virginia to honour Elizabeth I, known as the Virgin Queen. White soon sailed back to England for additional supplies. The war with Spain prevented his returning to Roanoke until 1590, by which time the settlers had disappeared. The mystery of what happened to Raleigh’s Lost Colony has never been solved.

The first permanent English settlement in North America was Jamestown. Established in 1607, Jamestown was a project of the Virginia Company of London, a joint-stock corporation chartered in 1606 by James I of England for the purpose of trading in and colonizing North America. After a series of catastrophic misadventures, in which thousands of immigrants died as a result of disease, starvation, and a war in 1622 with Native Americans, the Crown revoked the company’s charter in 1624 and took control of the colony as a royal province.

After the colonial government removed controls on the production of tobacco, there was a major expansion in the economy and in the English population of the Chesapeake Bay region. The incessant demand for labour to grow tobacco created a harsh system of indentured servitude. In the last quarter of the 17th century, when it became prohibitively expensive to import English labourers, English colonists began importing Africans kidnapped from their native countries. These African slaves emerged as the predominant agricultural labour force in the southern mainland.

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2

French and Dutch Activities

During the decade following the settlement of Jamestown, France and the Netherlands entered the contest for territory in North America. The French quickly recognized the importance of controlling the St Lawrence River, the best available route to the interior. In 1608, as the first step in their strategic design, they founded Quebec. The achievements of such explorers as Jacques Marquette, Louis Jolliet, and René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle brought vast areas of the interior, including the entire Mississippi valley, under nominal French ownership during the next 75 years. Their inability to consolidate this enormous American dominion stemmed especially from the French desire to trade with Native Americans for furs and skins, rather than to try to force them off their lands, as the English did. In addition, French colonial policies discouraged large-scale immigration and the settlement of enduring communities. As a consequence, French colonial populations remained small throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, enabling them to cultivate military alliances with Native Americans, who rightly saw them as less threatening than the English settlers.

The Dutch based their claims to North American territory on the explorations of Henry Hudson, an English mariner in the employ of the Dutch East India Company. In 1609 Hudson had entered present-day New York Bay and explored the river that now bears his name. During the next few years the Dutch dispatched several trading vessels to the region, which they named New Netherland. Trading posts were founded on Manhattan Island and near the site of modern Albany in 1613 and 1614. Because of the profitable fur trade, the Dutch made no immediate attempt to colonize New Netherland. Permanent colonists began to arrive in 1624, and New Amsterdam (now New York) was founded the following year. However, constant friction or warfare with the Native Americans, administrative incompetence, and internal unrest were characteristic, and the colony never attained the stability and vigour of Virginia or of the later English colonies.