USA

The territory of the United States about 30 thousand years ago, before all American countries, saw the first man. Until the arrival of Europeans on these lands, the social system of the indigenous population — the Indians, Eskimos and Aleuts remained at the stage of the primitive communal level, which had an extremely detrimental effect on the ability to wage defensive wars against the invaders. The colonization of the country by the white race began in the 16th-17th centuries from three sides at once: from the south by the Spaniards and French, from the east by the British and Dutch, from the west by Russians. In 1587, the first English colony was founded in the future Virginia. In the course of colonization, the indigenous population was forced out and exterminated.

By the middle of the 18th century, France had the most significant colonies in the United States, after its defeat in 1763 in the struggle with Great Britain for colonial and commercial superiority, Spain took the lead. In 1775, 13 North American colonies who rebelled against British rule managed to achieve freedom. During the War of Independence (1775-1783), an independent state was formed — the United States (1776). In 1787, the US constitution was adopted, which came into force in 1789.

The new state initially tried to expand by buying colonies from the warring European powers. So, in 1803, the United States purchased from France the huge colony of Louisiana, stretching from New Orleans to Canada, in 1819 forced Spain to cede Florida to them. The industrial growth that began in the 19th century in the United States sharply distinguished them from the rest of the American lands. Clear economic superiority allowed the Washington government to move on to open military seizures of neighboring areas, culminating in the annexation of Texas, the Pacific coast in 1853 and the purchase of Alaska and the adjacent Aleutian Islands from Russia in 1867.

The pronounced social heterogeneity of North American society, split into the industrial north and the slave-owning south, led to the bloody Civil War of 1861–1865, which ended in the defeat of the southern states and the abolition of slavery, which undoubtedly accelerated the industrial development of the United States and at the end of the 19th century brought out a country that had already their own colonies, into the top three of the world’s leading powers.

Two world wars allowed American capital participating in anti-German coalitions to grow stronger, and by the 1950s the United States managed to concentrate about half of the world’s gold reserves in its hands, as well as establish economic and political control over 1/3 of the planet.