Geography

Geography

The United States is the world's third or fourth largest nation by total area, before or after the People's Republic of China, depending on how two territories disputed by China and India are counted. Including only land area, the U.S. is third in size behind Russia and China, just ahead of Canada.^[9] The continental United States stretches from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and from Canada to Mexico and the Gulf of Mexico. Alaska is the largest state in area. Separated by Canada, it touches the Pacific and Arctic Oceans. Hawaii occupies an archipelago in the Pacific, southwest of North America. The commonwealth of Puerto Rico, the largest and most populous U.S. territory, is in the northeastern Caribbean. Deciduous vegetation and grasslands prevail in the eastern U.S., transitioning to prairies, boreal forests, and the Rocky Mountains in the west, and deserts in the southwest. In the northeast, the coasts of the Great Lakes and Atlantic seaboard host much of the country's population. With a few exceptions such as the territory of Guam and the westernmost portions of Alaska, nearly all of the country lies in the western hemisphere.

United States of America

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states, one federal district, and fourteen territories. The country is situated almost entirely in the western hemisphere: its forty-eight contiguous states and Washington, D.C., the capital district, lie in central North America between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, bordered by Canada to the north and Mexico to the south; the state of Alaska is in the northwest of the continent with Canada to its east, and the state of Hawaii is in the mid-Pacific. U.S. territories, or insular areas, are scattered around the Caribbean and Pacific.

At over 3.7 million square miles (over 9.6 million km²) and with more than 300 million people, the United States is the third or fourth largest country by total area, and third largest by land area and population.^[4] A liberal democracy, the U.S. is one of the world's most ethnically and socially diverse nations, the product of large-scale immigration from almost every corner of the globe.^[5] Its national economy is the world's largest, with a nominal 2005 gross domestic product (GDP) of more than $13 trillion.^[3]

The nation was founded by thirteen colonies of Great Britain located along the Atlantic seaboard. Proclaiming themselves "states," they issued the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. The rebellious states defeated Britain in the American Revolutionary War, the first successful colonial war of independence. A federal convention adopted the current United States Constitution on September 17, 1787; its ratification the following year made the states part of a single republic. Ten constitutional amendments composing the Bill of Rights were ratified in 1791. In the nineteenth century, the United States acquired land from France, Spain, Mexico, and Russia, and annexed the Republic of Texas and the Republic of Hawaii. The American Civil War prevented a permanent split of the country and ended slavery. In the Spanish-American War and World War I, the nation confirmed its status as a great power. In 1945, the U.S. emerged from World War II as the first country with nuclear weapons and a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. The sole remaining superpower in the post–Cold War era, it is the dominant economic, political, military, and cultural force in the world.