Culture of the United States

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The culture of the United States is primarily a Western culture, but is also influenced by Native American, African, Asian, Polynesian, and Latin American cultures. American culture started its formation over 10,000 years ago with the migration of Paleo-Indians from Asia into the region that is today the continental United States. It has its own unique social and cultural characteristics such as dialect, music, arts, social habits, cuisine, and folklore. The United States of America is an ethnically and racially diverse country as a result of large-scale immigration from many different countries throughout its history. Its chief early European influences came from English, Scottish, Welsh and Irish settlers of colonial America during British rule. British culture, due to colonial ties with Britain that spread the English language, legal system and other cultural inheritances, had a formative influence. Other important influences came from other parts of western Europe, especially Germany, France, and Italy. Original elements also play a strong role, such as the invention of Jeffersonian democracy. Thomas Jefferson's Notes on the State of Virginia was perhaps the first influential domestic cultural critique by an American and a reactionary piece to the prevailing European consensus that America's domestic originality was degenerate. Prevalent ideas and ideals that evolved domestically, such as national holidays, uniquely American sports, military tradition, and innovations in the arts and entertainment give a strong sense of national pride among the population as a whole. American culture includes both conservative and liberal elements, scientific and religious

competitiveness, political structures, risk taking and free expression, materialist and moral elements. Despite certain consistent ideological principles (e.g. individualism, egalitarianism, and faith in freedom and democracy), American culture has a variety of expressions due to its geographical scale and demographic diversity. The flexibility of U.S. culture and its highly symbolic nature lead some researchers to categorize American culture as a mythic identity; others see it as American

exceptionalism. It also includes elements that evolved from Indigenous Americans, and other ethnic culturesmost prominently the culture of African Americans, cultures from Latin America, and Asian American cultures. Many American cultural elements, especially from popular culture, have spread across the globe through modern mass media. The United States has often been thought of as a melting pot, but beginning in the late 1990s and early 2000s, it trends towards cultural diversity, pluralism and the image of a salad bowl instead. Due to the extent of American culture, there are many integrated but unique social subcultures within the United

States. The cultural affiliations an individual in the United States may have commonly depend on social class, political orientation and a multitude of demographic characteristics such as religious background, occupation and ethnic group membership.

History of the United States

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"American history" redirects here. For the history of the continents, see History of the Americas. The history of the United States as covered in American schools and universities typically begins with either Christopher Columbus's 1492 voyage to the Americas or with the prehistory of the Native peoples, with the latter approach having become increasingly common in recent decades. Indigenous populations lived in what is now the United States before European colonists began to arrive, mostly from England, after 1600. By the 1770s, thirteen British colonies contained two and a half million people. They were prosperous and growing rapidly, and had developed their own autonomous political and legal systems. The British Parliament asserted its authority over these colonies by imposing new taxes, which the Americans insisted were unconstitutional because they were not represented in Parliament. Growing conflicts turned into full-fledged war beginning in April 1775. On July 4, 1776, the colonies declared independence from the Kingdom of Great Britain and became the United States of America. With major military and financial support from France and military leadership by General George Washington, the Patriots won the Revolutionary Warand peace came in 1783. During and after the war, the 13 states were united under a weak federal government established by the Articles of Confederation. When these proved unworkable, a new Constitution was adopted in 1789; it remains the basis of the United States federal government, and later included a Bill of Rights. With Washington as the nation's first president and Alexander Hamilton his chief advisor, a strong national government was created. When Thomas Jefferson became president he purchased the Louisiana Territory from France, expanding American territorial holdings. A second and last war with Britain was fought in 1812. The main result of that war was the end of European support for Indian attacks on western settlers. U.S. territory expanded westward across the continent, bringing conflict with Native Americans and Mexico, and rejecting the advice of Whigs who wanted to deepen the economy rather than expand the geography. Slavery of Africans was abolished in all the Northern states at the turn of the 19th century, but it flourished in the Southern states because of heavy European demand for cotton. After 1820, a series of compromises postponed a showdown on the issue of slavery, but in the late 1850s, the new Republican power took political control of the North and promised to stop the expansion of slavery,

which implied its eventual death. The 1860 presidential election of Republican Abraham Lincoln triggered a crisis as eleven slave states seceded to found the Confederacy in 1861. The bloody American Civil War (186165) redefined the nation and remains the central iconic event. The South was eventually crushed and, in the Reconstruction era (1863-77), the United States ended slavery and extended legal and voting rights to the Freedmen (African Americans who had been slaves). The national government was much stronger, and because of the Fourteenth Amendment it now had the explicit duty to protect individual rights. Reconstruction ended in 1877 and from the 1890s to the 1960s the system of Jim Crow(segregation) kept blacks in political, social and economic inferiority. The entire South remained poor until the late 20th century, while the North and West grew rapidly and prospered. The United States became the leading industrial power at the turn of the 20th century due to an outburst of entrepreneurship in the North and the arrival of millions of immigrant workers and farmers from Europe. The national railroad network was completed, and large scale mining and factories industrialized the Northeast and Midwest. Dissatisfaction with corruption and traditional politics stimulated the Progressive movement from the 1890s to 1920s, which pushed for reforms and allowed for women's suffrage and the prohibition of alcohol (the latter repealed in 1933). Initially neutral in World War I, the U.S. declared war on Germany in 1917, and funded the Allied victory the following year. After a prosperous decade in the 1920s, the Wall Street Crash of 1929 marked the onset of the decade-long world-wide Great Depression. Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt became president and implemented his New Deal programs for relief, recovery, and reform, defining modern American liberalism. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harboron December 7, 1941, the United States entered World War II alongside the Allies and helped defeat Nazi Germany in Europe and, with the detonation of newlyinvented atomic bombs, Japan in the Far East. The United States and the Soviet Union emerged as opposing superpowers after World War II and began the Cold War, confronting one another indirectly in the arms race and Space Race. U.S. foreign policy during the Cold War was built around the containment of Communism, and the country participated in the wars in Korea and Vietnam to achieve this goal. Liberalism won numerous victories in the days of the New Deal and again in the mid-1960s, especially in the success of the civil rights movement, but conservatism made its comeback in the 1980s under Ronald Reagan. The Cold War ended when the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991, leaving the United States the only superpower. As the 21st century began, international conflict centered around the Middle East and heightened significantly following the September 11 attacks and the controversial War on Terrorism that was subsequently declared. The United States experienced its worst economic recession since World War II in the late 2000s, which has been followed by slower than usual rates of economic growth during the 2010s.