History of The United States

The MayflowerThe ship that transported the Pilgrims from England to Plymouth Rock

The beginning date of US history is a matter of debate among historians. The oldest textbooks begin with the arrival of Christopher Columbus on October 12, 1492 or around 1600, with the arrival of the ship Mayflower. However, in recent decades, American schools and universities have gone back in time to include more information about Native Americans.

Pre-Columbian civilizations

The Anasazi

Acantied Palace, anasazi village of Mesa Verde National Park.

The Anasazi were a group of Amerindian tribes from the cultural super-area of Oasisamerica. They occupied, in various groups, the surface of the current states of Colorado, Utah, Arizona and New Mexico. Their civilization has left monumental and liturgical vestiges in different places, two of which have been classified as World Heritage Sites by Unesco. Archaeological remains demonstrate knowledge of pottery, weaving, and irrigation. In addition, they drew symbols that have not been deciphered and observed the solar displacements. Beginning in the 1400s, the Anasazi took refuge in the Rio Grande Valley and central Arizona. Their traces were lost shortly before the arrival of the Spanish. The reasons for this exodus are not known, however there are several hypotheses: climate change that threatened crops, a deteriorated environment that reduced available arable land, overpopulation, political problems, wars. However, given the absence of written documents and the limitation of current knowledge, it is not possible to prove any of these hypotheses.

The Plains Indians

The Plains Indians include all the tribes that inhabited the Great Plains (the land between the Rocky Mountains and the Mississippi River). They were hunter-gatherers for most of their existence, but when Spanish explorers introduced horses to the region in the 17th century, the Indians get them and change their way of life to a nomadic civilization, following the migratory routes of the American bison. When whites invaded and occupied the Great Plains in the 19th century, the Indians engaged in a bitter war of resistance that lasted from 1836 to 1918. The combination of the Indian Wars and the US government's policy of annihilating American bison resulted in a dramatic population collapse in the Plains Indian population. After their defeat, the whites confined the rest of the Indians to reservations, where they remain today.

The Inuit or "Eskimos"

The Inuit are an indigenous people who have traditionally inhabited the circumpolar region of eastern Siberia (Russia), through Alaska (United States), Canada, and Greenland. The oldest culture was the fully developed pre-Dorset, dating back 5,000 years. They seem to have evolved in Alaska from people using archaic small technology tools, who probably had migrated to Alaska from Siberia at least 2,000 to 3,000 years ago, although they could have been in Alaska as early as 10,000 to 12 000 years or more. There are similar artifacts found in Siberia, dating back perhaps 18,000 years.

The Indians of the Woods

The overpopulated Woodland Indians inhabited the forests between the Atlantic Ocean and the Mississippi River. These tribes were generally communal and lived in villages with wooden huts and lanes. The reception of the English invaders was mixed with events resulting in war and extermination, while others were peaceful. Finally, the relationship between the English and the Indians of the Woods was one of permanent hostility, so much so that the French, who controlled the valley of the Mississippi River, used it for their benefit. The French maintained a policy of trade and peace with the Forest Indians and eventually formed a military alliance with them.

The Iroquois Confederacy

The most advanced of the pre-Columbian civilizations in the territory that is now the United States was the Iroquois Confederacy. The Iroquois Confederacy, or the Five Nations, was a league or confederation of a democratic nature, with both participatory and representative characteristics (combined with some hereditary ones). It was made up of Iroquois-speaking Amerindian tribes, who inhabited the northeastern United States and southeastern Canada in the Great Lakes area. The Confederacy originally consisted of five tribes (Seneca, Cayuga, Oneida, Onondaga, and Mohawk) who confederated in the mid-12th century, and to which tuscarora was added in 1720.

The democratic regime of the Confederation was regulated by a constitution of 117 articles known as the Great Law of Peace and governed by a Parliament or Council of representatives of the population, considered the third oldest in the world after the Althing of Iceland and the Cortes de León (1188). The Great Law of Peace established a kind of Rule of Law with strict limits and restrictions on the power of rulers. It also established a division of power between men and women, establishing that no man could preside over a clan and no woman be a military chief or sachem. The heads of the clans were responsible for choosing the military chiefs. Thus the Confederacy had a direct influence on both democracy and constitutionalism, as well as on the idea of equality of women and men in modern society. Especially Benjamin Franklin, who had direct contact with the Haudenosaunee in 1753, stood out in his works that the degree of individual autonomy enjoyed by the leaguers was unknown in Europe, and he published the Indian Treatises, considered one of his most important works. For thinkers or historians of radical movements such as Howard Zinn, the Confederation of the Six Nations constitutes a sample of the application of radical democracy through assembly decisions.

First contacts with Europeans

Juan Ponce de León (Santervás de Campos, Valladolid, Spain) was one of the first Europeans to reach the current EE. As he was the Florida discoverer, to whom he gave his current name.

It is known that around the year 1000, a group of Vikings based in Greenland sailed to the eastern coast of North America under the command of Leif Eriksson, arriving at a place they called Vinland. In the Canadian province of Newfoundland, irrefutable vestiges of a Viking colony have been found, in L'Anse aux Meadows. Vikings probably also visited Nova Scotia and New England; however, they failed to found permanent colonies and soon lost contact with the new continent.

Five centuries later, the need to increase trade and a navigation error led to a new encounter with the American continent. At the end of the 15th century there was a great demand in Europe for spices, silks and dyes from Asia. Christopher Columbus mistakenly believed that he could reach the Far East by sailing 4,000 miles west from Europe. In 1492 he persuaded the kings of Spain to finance his trip. Columbus sailed west but did not reach Asia, but the island of Guanahani in the Caribbean. The Spanish colonization of America begins, including territories in the current United States.

Juan Ponce de León gave La Florida its name in 1513, when he took it in the name of the crown of Spain. Until 1563 the Spanish sent several expeditions to explore it, but without actually building any stable fortifications. However, the presence in 1564 of a large contingent of French Huguenots, who built a fort at the mouth of the San Juan River, posed a serious threat that led Spain to decide to establish a permanent military presence in the area. On August 28, 1565, Pedro Menéndez de Avilés founded the city of San Agustín. It is the oldest occupied European settlement in the US today. Only San Juan (Puerto Rico) surpasses it as the oldest city in "the United States".

The Conquest of the Colorado, oil of Augusto Ferrer-Dalmau depicting the expedition of Francisco Vázquez de Coronado.

In the year 1540 the southern region of the current United States was explored by the expedition of Francisco Vázquez de Coronado, visiting the Grand Canyon. The first European who contemplated the Grand Canyon of the Colorado was García López de Cárdenas, who under the command of a handful of men set out from the indigenous population that the Spanish called Quivira, a town inhabited by the Zuñi Indians and supposedly one of the seven cities of gold from the kingdom of Cíbola, a town whose location is currently unknown since historians differ on it; some place Quivira in New Mexico, while others think it was in Kansas. It should not be confused with a town located in New Mexico that Spanish expeditionaries called, around the year 1600, Pueblo de las Humanas and was later known as Gran Quivira.

In Quivira there was part of the expedition commanded by Vázquez de Coronado with thirty men, and García López de Cárdenas was commissioned along with a handful of men to find a river that the Hopi Indians had told them about, for which he was given 80 days to go and come back.

After 20 days of exploratory travel they found the Grand Canyon of Colorado; however, they could not go down to the river to get their water supply, and after several attempts to descend they began to have problems with drinking water, for which they decided to return.

Days later, Fernando de Alarcón (who participated in the exploration trip but by sea) would be the first European to touch and navigate the waters of the Colorado River, but hundreds of kilometers from the Grand Canyon. The person who discovered the Colorado River was Francisco de Ulloa on September 28, 1539, taking possession of the mouth of the river (he named it Ancón de San Andrés), for the benefit of the Spanish Crown, without navigating upstream as Fernando de Alarcón did..

British colonization in North America

The United States arose from the British colonization of the Americas, led by waves of British immigrants between the 17th centuries and The XVIII founded the Thirteen Colonies on the Atlantic coast of the North American subcontinent, east of the Appalachian Mountains.

In 1583, Queen Elizabeth I of England granted authorization to the pirate Walter Raleigh to found a colony in northern Florida, which he would call Virginia and which would later include present-day South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia and W.V. The possibility of exploiting the area with tobacco crops was quickly seen, for which reason the Virginia Company was created in 1606 as a limited company, which financed the first English establishment.

A group of English settlers founded a small village in Jamestown, Virginia in 1607. Bearing a charter from King James I of England, they founded a permanent colony within seven months of their arrival. The colony grew over time and thrived on the cultivation of tobacco, the first shipment to England being in 1614.

In New England, the northeastern part of the present-day United States, English Puritans established several colonies. They came to America thinking that the Church of England had adopted too many practices from Catholicism. They intended to found a colony based on their own religious ideals. A group of Puritans, known as the Pilgrims, crossed the Atlantic on a ship called the Mayflower and settled in Plymouth in 1620. A much larger Puritan colony was established in the Boston area in 1630. By 1635 some settlers were already migrating to nearby Connecticut.

Non-British Colonization and the French and Indian War

New Amsterdam in 1664.

Over time, the British North American colonies were also occupied by many groups of non-British origin: German farmers settled in Pennsylvania; the Swedes founded the Delaware colony; and the first African slaves arrived in Virginia in 1619. In 1626, Dutch settlers bought the island of Manhattan from the region's indigenous chiefs and built the city of New Amsterdam; in 1664, this colony was taken over by the English and renamed the Province of New York.

However, the two most important colonial powers were Spain and France. The former not only controlled Florida and other regions of the southern United States, but had also proceeded to colonize Las Californias. At the beginning, colonization was the exclusive task of the Society of Jesus, concentrated exclusively in Baja California. The first mission in Baja California was the short-lived Mission San Bruno. Los Angeles was founded in 1769 and the city of San Francisco in 1776.

France, for its part, controlled Louisiana, which together with Quebec was part of the viceroyalty of New France. The territory stretched from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico and from the Appalachian Mountains to the Rockies. However, the vast majority of the territory was either uninhabited or inhabited by Native Americans and not by French settlers. Louisiana was divided into two regions, known as Upper Louisiana, which began north of the Arkansas River, and Lower Louisiana.

The United Kingdom and France, historical enemies, began to compete for territorial expansion in the new continent. This resulted in the outbreak of the French-Indian War in 1754, itself part of the Seven Years' War. The French had the support of Bourbon Spain and various Indian tribes such as the Algonquins., the ottawas or the ferrets. The United Kingdom had the support of the Iroquois Confederacy

The Seven Years' War ended in 1763. On February 10, the Treaty of Paris ended the French colonial empire in North America and consolidated the United Kingdom as the hegemonic power. The British crown takes control of Quebec and Spanish Florida. Spain happens to control Louisiana.

Independence

Population density of British colonies in the current United States, 1775.

Causes

The help given to the British by the American colonists was not rewarded by the government in London. Taxes on the Thirteen colonies increased, as is the case with the controversial Stamp Act of 1765 by which all documents printed in the American territory had to be published on stamped paper produced in London, stamped with a raised fiscal stamp. Like previous taxes, the stamp duty had to be paid in valid British currency, not colonial paper money. The colonists refused to pay this new tax as they had no representation in the British Parliament. Thus, the concept of No taxation without representation was born. In addition, these new laws were illegal according to the Bill of Rights of 1689 that the English Parliament imposed on Prince William of Orange to succeed King James II.

Going back to the 18th century, parliament rejected colonial protests and asserted its authority by passing new taxes, such as the In the case of the Tea Act, which taxed the importation of different products from the metropolis, including tea, in order to benefit the British East India Company, which had begun its expansion throughout Asia, whom the colonists boycotted buying tea from the Netherlands. In 1773, the Tea Party took place in Boston when a group of colonists disguised as Indians threw the cargo of tea from three British ships into the sea.

War

George Washington.

Tensions between the metropolis and the colony were growing. Inspired by the ideals of the Enlightenment, American intellectuals began to entertain the idea of an independent America. In 1774 the First Continental Congress took place, the first meeting of colonists against the British crown and in favor of an independent homeland. Colonist militias for independence begin to form.

In Concord, a group of rebels took control of an arms depot, which is why on April 19, 1775, British soldiers left Boston for Concord. In the town of Lexington, defended by militiamen, the fighting began. In May 1775, a Second Continental Congress met in Philadelphia and began to assume the functions of the national government. He appointed fourteen generals, authorized the invasion of Canada, and organized a field army under the command of George Washington, a Virginian planter and veteran of the French and Indian War. On June 17 of that same year, the Battle of Bunker Hill took place, which ended with a British Pyrrhic victory. On July 4, 1776, the United States Declaration of Independence was signed. The 4th of July will end up becoming the national day of the United States.

Picture of John Trumbull known as Declaration of Independence in which Commissioners present the preparatory work to the United States Congress.

The initial development was clearly under English rule, but its course would change when, after the Battle of Saratoga in 1777, the first great American victory. France, under the command of the Marquis de La Fayette, and later Spain, under the command of Bernardo de Gálvez, entered the war supporting the American independentists. Consequently, fighting also took place in Gibraltar, the Balearic Islands and the Indian subcontinent, where the French and British competed for colonial control. The American rebels went from being a disorganized group to becoming a full-fledged army, the Continental Army.

In 1781 the British suffered a crushing defeat at the Battle of Yorktown. In 1783, by the Peace of Versailles, Great Britain was forced to recognize the independence of the thirteen British colonies, just as they had written in the Declaration of Independence of 1776.

Once independence was achieved, it was very difficult to get all the former colonies to agree on whether to continue as independent states, or to join a single nation. After several years of negotiations, in 1787, fifty-five representatives of the former colonies met at the Philadelphia Congress in order to draft a constitution. Thus, a single federal government was created, with a President of the Republic and two Legislative Chambers (Chamber and Senate) as an intermediate solution. The Constitution of 1787 was also written, and elections were called from which George Washington was elected the first President of the United States under the new constitution.

This constitution was inspired by the principles of equality and freedom defended by the Enlightenment and was configured as the first magna carta that included the principles of political liberalism, establishing a republican and democratic regime. American independence and democracy had a notable impact on opinion and politics in Europe and Latin America.

George Washington ruled in a federalist style. When Pennsylvania farmers refused to pay a federal tax on liquor, Washington mobilized an army of fifteen thousand men to put down the Whisky Rebellion. With Alexander Hamilton at the head of the Ministry of Finance, the federal government took over the debts of each state and created a national bank. These fiscal measures were designed to encourage investment and persuade private initiative to support the new government.

United States (1789-1861)

GDP per capita in the early years of the U.S. republic.

In 1797, George Washington was succeeded by another Federalist, John Adams, who became involved in an undeclared naval war against Napoleon's France, the Quasi-War. In an atmosphere of war hysteria, the Federalist-controlled Congress passed the Alien and Sedition Acts in 1798. These measures allowed for the deportation or arrest of "dangerous" aliens and prescribed fines or imprisonment for publishing "false, outrageous and malicious" attacks on the government. Ten Republican publishers were convicted under the Sedition Act, which was strongly denounced by Virginia lawyer and principal author of the Declaration of Independence Thomas Jefferson.

In 1803, the young nation made the Louisiana Purchase from France, which had recovered the territory after the War of Independence.

Anglo-American War of 1812

The USS Constitution defeats the HMS Guerriere during the 1812 War.

In 1807, Great Britain introduced a series of trade restrictions to prevent American trade with France, in response to American support for Napoleon Bonaparte, with whom Britain was at war. The United States challenged these restrictions as an illegal blockade. The forced conscription of American citizens into the Royal Navy and Britain's military support of Native Americans, who opposed the expansion of the American frontier in the north-west, further aggravated tension between the two countries. Thus began the War of 1812.

The United States, under the command of James Madison, proceeded to invade the British colony of Canada. To the surprise of the Americans, the British and Canadian settlers not only resisted, but also drove the invaders out of the country. The United States responded with a second offensive in eastern Canada, but this invasion was also defeated. The British Governor of Canada, George Provost, ordered a counter-offensive. The British sacked the city of Detroit and took control of the entire state of Maine.

Great Britain implemented a five-point policy which were:

• The United States Atlantic Coast Block
• The invasion of the Chesapeake Bay region
• The Take of Washington
• The take of New Orleans
• The invasion of the Mississippi River Valley

This strategy was based on the enormous superiority of the British Navy. The British successfully blockaded the Atlantic coast and invaded the Chesapeake region. The US Army attacked the British at the Battle of Bladensburg but were defeated, thus leaving a path of least resistance between the Chesapeake Bay and Washington. On August 24, 1814, the British army entered the capital. President Madison had ordered the city to be evacuated, so once again the British encountered no armed resistance. The British general, George Cockburn, ordered the razing of the city. The White House, the United States Capitol, Army headquarters, the Library of Congress, and the United States Treasury were burned.

Defeat and a return to colonialism seemed inevitable for the Americans, but suddenly the tide of war began to turn. Two weeks after the sack of Washington, the American army repulsed the British army at the Battle of North Point, forcing it to retreat towards the Atlantic Ocean. The British launched a second offensive against the port city of Baltimore, but the Americans successfully repulsed the invasion.

Madison called for peace. In December 1814, officials from the two countries met in Ghent, Belgium and agreed to sign a peace treaty that resulted in the recognition of the status quo ante bellum. Ghent did not arrive in the United States until several months later. Meanwhile, the British launched their final assault on the port cities of New Orleans and Mobile. American general and future president Andrew Jackson led the Americans to victory at the Battle of New Orleans, but the British successfully captured Mobile. News of the peace treaty finally reached the United States on March 23, 1815, and the British withdrew all troops and ended the naval blockade.

Today, the war continues to be the subject of heated debate between the Americans, British and Canadians, with each of the three peoples claiming victory.

The Early Years of an Independent United States

The Conquest of Florida

Since before the War of 1812, there were strong tensions on the border between Spanish Florida and the state of Georgia, due to the fact that American slave hunters persecuted black Seminoles from the Spanish colony north. These tensions increased when the British aided the Seminoles against the Americans in the War of 1812. In 1814, the Americans invaded Spanish North Florida, beginning the Seminole Wars. Spain protested against this invasion but could do little or nothing to stop it since the vast majority of the Spanish army, fresh from its own war of independence, was in Latin America fighting against the independentistas. A peaceful solution to the conflict was sought, the Adams-Onís treaty of 1819 by which he promised to cede Spanish Florida to the United States in 1821.

The westward expansion

Crossing the Mississippi on the ice (‘the crossing of the Mississippi on the Ice’), C. C. A. Christensen.

After this second war, the United States enjoyed a period of rapid economic expansion, especially from colonization and expansion to the West. By the end of the XVIII century, the unstoppable advance of the colonists had begun, either from the thirteen original states (the former thirteen colonies that are represented in the thirteen bars of the American flag) or directly from the European continent. In general, these were Anglo-Saxon (Irish, Scottish, English and Welsh) emigrants and other Central and Western European (mainly German) emigrants.

The caravans of settlers were the true engines of the progressive occupation of the continent to the west. However, it was not about the occupation of unoccupied areas, since a large part of the territory was previously occupied by native peoples, French settlers from French Canada, as well as all the cities founded by the Spanish before in the territories of Arizona, Texas, Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, Nevada and California. So cities like Detroit, Dubuque, St. Louis, New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Des Moines, Louisville, and many others, had already been founded by the French many years before that kind of stampede to the west, and the same could be said of the cities founded by the Spanish who came from Mexico, such as Socorro, San Antonio, Albuquerque, Santa Fe, El Paso, San Diego, San Bernardino, Los Angeles, San Francisco, etc. which had been founded during the 16th and XVII.

All this expansion towards the Far West (Far West) was boosted by two very important events: the discovery of gold in California (1848) and the completion of the railway network with the first line transcontinental in 1869 (the first steam railway had opened in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1830). A national network of highways and canals crisscrossed the country, steamships plyed the rivers, and the Industrial Revolution had come to America: New England with textile mills and Pennsylvania with iron foundries. However, the south of the country continued to be a little industrialized region whose economy was based on slave agriculture.

War against Mexico

Between the 1820s and 1830s, after the proclamation of the Monroe Doctrine of territorial expansion toward the Pacific, thousands of American settlers settled in the Anglo-Saxon communities of Texas (then Mexican territory). At the time, the Mexican government was in dire economic straits at the end of a decade-long war of independence with Spain, and it welcomed the colonists. The Mexican government obtained funds by selling land to these settlers who preferred to move to Mexican territory rather than pay high prices in Louisiana and other southern states. These colonists also hoped that the United States would buy Texas to provide more land for its new citizens.

Dark Blue: U.S. States that were part of Mexico
Clear blue: U.S. states that only a part of them was part of Mexico.

In 1820 a Missouri businessman, Moses Austin, had negotiated with Spain to be allowed to bring three hundred colonists to Texas. Stephen Austin, the son (known as the father of the Republic of Texas), followed these plans with the new Mexican government, choosing settlers who were good workers and who could be loyal to the Mexican government. The Mexican government, which had abolished slavery, allowed settlers to bring their slaves to work the land and sell them to other settlers but they were listed as "indentured servants." Problems with the new government of President Antonio López de Santa Anna caused the colonists to rise up in arms and fight, with support from the United States, for independence, since by then Anglo-Saxon settlers outnumbered Mexican settlers. Despite the crushing defeat at the Battle of the Alamo, Texas managed to become independent in 1836 through the Treaty of Velasco, to finally be incorporated into the United States.

Texas was not the only Mexican territory where there was a considerably large population of Americans. This, added to the annexation of Texas, the Thornton Incident and the Monroe Doctrine, led to the outbreak of the US Intervention in Mexico in 1846. The Americans landed in Veracruz and conquered the capital, after which the Mexicans were forced to sign the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848, by which the United States annexed the current states of California, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, and part of Wyoming. Hispanic residents received full citizenship, and Mexican Indians became American Indians.

The abolition of slavery

Abraham Lincoln.

Since its birth, the United States became the most important buyer of slaves to satisfy the demand for labor in heavy agricultural work. As it was well said before, slavery extended among the southern states whose economy was practically agricultural.

Gorea Island, located a few kilometers off the coast of Senegal, in the Atlantic Ocean, was the place from where the slave trade to the United States of America was organized, which for centuries XVII, XVIII and up to The abolition of slavery, in the 19th century, displaced more than twenty million people from Africa.

In the 1860 presidential election, the newly created Republican Party, led by Abraham Lincoln, supported a ban on slavery in all US territories. The southern states saw this as a violation of their constitutional rights and as the first step in a grand Republican plan to finally abolish slavery. The three pro-Union candidates received an overwhelming majority of 82% of the vote nationally: Republican Lincoln's votes were centered in the North, Democrat Stephen A. Douglas's votes were spread nationally, and Constitutional Congressman John Bell focused on Tennessee, Kentucky, and Virginia."

The American Civil War (1861-1865)

Of the thirty-four states of the United States in February 1861, seven southern slave states individually declared their secession from the United States to form the Confederate States of America, or the South. The Confederacy grew to include eleven slave states. The Confederacy was never diplomatically recognized by the United States Government, nor was it recognized by any foreign country.

War broke out in April 1861, when Confederate States forces led by Jefferson Davis attacked Fort Sumter in South Carolina, shortly after President Abraham Lincoln took office. Union nationalists proclaimed allegiance to the Constitution of the United States. They faced secessionists from the Confederate States, who defended the rights of states to expand slavery.

The Union, the name given to the Lincoln government, launched Plan Anaconda, a naval and river blockade across the Atlantic Ocean, the Mississippi River, and the Tennessee River. The South did not have ships so it could not stop the blockade. An army had to be improvised with artillery merchant ships and warships captured from the North. On March 8, 1862, the ironclad CSS Virginia attacked blockading ships off the coast of Virginia. Victory initially fell to his side, but the next day the new Union warship, the modern battleship USS Monitor, arrived at the Battle of Hampton Roads. The battle ended in a draw, a strategic victory. for the Union, since the blockade was maintained.

In July 1863, at the Battle of Gettysburg, the Union defeated the Confederates in what was probably the most important battle of the war.

American History (1865-1918)

Troops of the American cavalry during the Battle of Prairie Dog Creek in 1867, in the context of the Indian Wars.

Chinese workers building the First Transcontinental Railway of the United States.

The reconstruction

Between 1865 and 1877, the Reconstruction period took place, which was characterized by the attempts of the government in Washington to heal the wounds of war. The constitution was changed to give freedom and rights to blacks: the Thirteenth Amendment prohibited slavery, the Fourteenth Amendment extended federal legal protections to all citizens regardless of race, and the Fifteenth Amendment abolished racial restrictions on voting.

Reconstruction was not an easy task. Southern politicians implemented Jim Crow Laws under the principle of Separate but Equal. Consequently, racial segregation was established in all public facilities. These laws affected nearly all public facilities and transportation, including interstate bus and train cars. Facilities for African Americans and Native Americans were consistently inferior and underfunded compared to facilities for white Americans; sometimes, there were no facilities for blacks.

In 1865 the Ku Klux Klan was founded, a white supremacist terrorist organization that carried out violent attacks against the black community, politicians in favor of reconstruction and Carpetbaggers, the immigrants who arrived in the south from the northern states. Although the first Ku Klux Klan was disbanded by Ulysses S. Grant, through the Civil Rights Act of 1871, the Klan reappeared at the turn of the century XX. The main causes that explain the rebirth of the organization were the increasing immigration, being the Klan an anti-Semitic and anti-Catholic organization, the premiere in 1915 of the film The Birth of a Nation by D. W. Griffith, which idealized the first Ku Klux Klan, and the case of Leo Frank, a Jew lynched in 1915 in Georgia after being accused of rape and murder. Frank's murder sparked a wave of anti-Semitism across the country.

Immigration and economic and territorial growth

The second half of the 19th century in the United States was characterized by the Industrial Revolution, immigration from the East to the new territories in the west and by the arrival in the country of a large number of European immigrants, especially Irish and Germans. A considerable number of Jews also arrived in the New World who arrived in America fleeing from the pogroms they suffered in Europe, especially in the Russian Empire. However, Asian immigrants also arrived in the United States, especially Japanese and Chinese, the latter being used as semi-slave labor in the construction of the railroad. At the end of the 19th century, and especially at the beginning of the XX, the main immigrant group will be Italian.

With the exception of the purchase of Alaska from Russia in 1867, the territorial expansion of the United States had stopped in 1848. However, many areas that de jure belonged to the United States government were still controlled by Indian tribes. It is worth noting the Navajo Wars, the Apache Wars and especially the Black Hills War against the Lakotas led by Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse. It was during this war that the Battle of the Little Bighorn took place in which the United States Army 7th Cavalry Regiment, led by George Armstrong Custer, suffered a humiliating defeat by Sitting Bull's men.

American Colonialism

European immigrants on Ellis Island, 1902

Around the 1890s, at the same time that many European nations were expanding their colonial empires, a new spirit animated American foreign policy, which largely followed the pattern of northern Europe. The beginning of American colonialism is usually located in the coup carried out by Americans in the Kingdom of Hawaii in 1893. Queen Liliuokalani is forced to abdicate and a republic, a puppet state of the United States, is established, until in 1898 Hawaii is definitively incorporated into the United States

Meanwhile, in the Caribbean, Cuba was revolting against Spanish colonialism. The government of William McKinley saw in the rebellion the perfect opportunity to establish a colonial empire in Latin America. In 1898, after the accidental explosion of the USS Maine in Havana Bay, of which the Spanish are accused, the Spanish-American War broke out. The Americans will not only attack Cuba, they will also send the Navy to the Philippines. In the Battle of Cavite, in Manila Bay, the Spanish fleet is easily defeated by the North American. A short time later, American troops landed in Puerto Rico and Cuba. After just over three months of war, the Spanish surrender to the Americans. Peace will be signed through the Treaty of Paris. Cuba becomes independent from Spain and the United States takes control of Puerto Rico, the Philippines and the island of Guam in the Pacific Ocean.

However, shortly after the Spanish surrender, a new war broke out in the Philippines, pitting the Americans against the Filipino independentistas, who had helped them against the Spanish in the previous war. Thus began the Philippine-American War, which devastated the Asian archipelago.

In the 1910s the Mexican Revolution broke out. Concerned about the situation in the country, President Woodrow Wilson ordered the occupation of Veracruz in 1914, in an action that sought to provide support for Venustiano Carranza, a revolutionary who was close to the United States. In addition, moments were experienced on the southern border of the United States. tensile. The so-called Border War begins, pitting US troops against the different revolutionary factions in Mexico, especially the Madero, Carrancistas and, above all, the Villistas. The latter would directly attack the United States in 1916 in the so-called Battle of Columbus. This action by Villa provoked the Punitive Expedition headed by General John J. Pershing, which would officially start on March 14, 1916 and end on February 17, 1917. The purpose of the intervention of the North Americans in Mexico was to capture to Villa to execute him in the United States. The expedition failed.

It is also important to explain the interference by the German Empire in Mexico and other places in Latin America. German interest in Haiti led to the United States invading the country in 1915, with Germany already involved in World War I. The following year they invade the Dominican Republic. The Dominican Republic will remain occupied until 1924 and Haiti until 1934.

World War I

American soldiers in World War I.

When the First World War broke out in 1914, the majority of American citizens were against the United States intervening in it. In addition, since the main migratory groups were German and British (both English and Irish, since at that time Ireland had not yet gained independence from the United Kingdom) public opinion was strongly divided. Over time, especially after reports of atrocities in Belgium in 1914 and after the sinking of the passenger ship RMS Lusitania in 1915, the American people came to increasingly see Germany as the aggressor.

In 1917, Germany decided to resume unrestricted submarine warfare against any ship approaching British waters, including American vessels. Germany also contacted the Carranza government in Mexico through the Zimmermann Telegram, intercepted by British intelligence. In this document, Germany promised, in exchange for Mexico attacking the United States, to provide financial and weapons assistance for this country to recover the territories of Texas, New Mexico and Arizona.

As a consequence of this, on April 6, 1917, President Woodrow Wilson declared war on the Central Powers. Back then, the US Army was small and poorly equipped compared to European armies. Millions of men had to be recruited, trained, equipped, and shipped to Europe across a submarine-infested ocean. By the beginning of 1918 there were already close to a million soldiers of the American Expeditionary Force in France. Commanding this unit was John J. Pershing. US forces were prominent during the Spring Offensive and the Hundred Days Offensive. Wilson also sent troops to Soviet Russia as part of the Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War, the so-called Polar Bear Expedition, which remained in Russian territory from September 1918 to July 1919.

US soldiers brought the virus to Europe that caused the devastating 1918 Flu Pandemic, usually traced to Fort Riley, Kansas as its origin. Nearly half a million Americans died from the flu.

American History (1918-1945)

In 1919, Wilson traveled to Europe to participate in the Paris Peace Conference, which would result in the Treaty of Versailles and the establishment of the League of Nations, an idea proposed by Wilson himself. However, many Americans feared that this world organization would drag the United States into another foreign war, which is why the United States never ratified the Treaty of Versailles or became part of the League.

Social instability and Prohibition

Police and soldiers in Chicago during the 1919 Red Summer.

The postwar period in the United States was turbulent. To the devastating flu epidemic we must add a wave of anarchist terrorism and strong worker mobilizations as a consequence of the Russian Revolution. The period known as the First Red Scare began, whose points of maximum tension were the anarchist attacks by Luigi Galleani and the trial of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti. The summer of 1919 was nicknamed Red Summer due to the constant protests and riots. However, most of the tensions experienced that summer were race riots and not labor riots. It was the time of the Great Black Migration when nearly two million African Americans moved from the country to the city. Blacks had to compete with European and Asian immigrants for work, which led to strong protests.

On January 17, 1920, the Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution came into force, which prohibited the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors within the United States and all territories subject to its control. jurisdiction, as well as its importation to them. The Prohibition Law began. This law failed to reduce alcohol consumption in the United States, a gigantic black market flourishing in the hands of gangsters like Al Capone or Lucky Luciano.

The Roaring Twenties and the Great Depression

The Chrysler Building opened in 1930 is considered a symbol of the happy twenty years.

Migrant motherDorothea Lange photograph, a symbol of the Great Depression.

The 1920s were called the Roaring Twenties because of the economic prosperity the country was experiencing. The United States displaced Great Britain from world economic leadership. In Hollywood, California the film industry generates millions of dollars. It is the golden age of aviation, the era of aviators like Charles Lindbergh, Amelia Earhart or Wiley Post. The optimism and economic boom also shared the stock market, which experienced a prolonged increase in prices, which allowed the formation of a speculative bubble, financed by credit. A whole speculative bubble was forming.

The bubble finally burst in the so-called Crash of the 29th. The New York Stock Exchange experienced a brutal fall on the so-called Black Thursday (October 24, 1929), followed by the catastrophic Black Monday and Black Tuesday (28 and October 29, 1929). Once started, the collapse in the prices of stocks and other securities could not be stopped. By 1932, thousands of banks and over a hundred thousand corporations had failed. Industrial production was cut in half, farm income fell by more than 50%, wages fell 60%, new investment fell 90%, and one in four workers was unemployed. The Great Depression was beginning. The agricultural areas of the country, such as the states of Texas, Nebraska or Oklahoma, were the most affected, since the devastating effects of the crisis had to be added the Dust Bowl, a devastating drought. Thousands of people had to emigrate in the direction of more prosperous areas such as California. On the outskirts of big cities Hoovervilles form, shantytowns named for then-President Herbert Hoover.

In 1933, the Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt assumed the presidency, who launched the New Deal policy with the aim of getting the country out of the crisis. This policy, accused of being socialist by the opposition, establishes unemployment benefits, the Social Security Law, the Securities and Exchange Commission and greater control over banks. In addition, public works are carried out throughout the country with the aim of generating employment and providing the country with infrastructure such as the Hoover Dam. Likewise, in 1933 Roosevelt put an end to the dry law through the Twenty-first Amendment. The definitive end of the Great Depression came in 1941 with the entry of the United States into World War II and a consequent increase in industrial production.

World War II

When Germany invaded Poland in 1939, beginning World War II, American public opinion was divided, just as it was during World War I. In the same way that some sectors of the population were against Nazism, there were also defenders of this ideology, including Charles Lindbergh, a staunch defender of the Third Reich and isolationism. There were also Germanophile associations, as is the case from the German American Bund. At an institutional level, during the 1930s Congress had passed various Neutrality Acts that sought to prevent war. More hostile was the attitude towards the Japanese Empire. The enmity between the two powers dates back to the 1922 Washington Naval Treaty, which restricted the number of warships Japan could have. After the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931 and the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937, in which events such as the Japanese attack on the American ship USS Panay or the Nanking massacre (in which more than twenty thousand Chinese were killed) took place, increased anti-Japanese sentiment in the United States.

Japanese crimes in China as well as the 1940 invasion of French Indochina caused the Roosevelt government to impose an oil export embargo on Japan. This caused an increase in tensions between the two countries and although figures such as Prime Minister Fumimaro Konoe sought to solve the problem peacefully, Emperor Hirohito ended up opting for the warmongering theses of Hideki Tōjō, who sought to invade the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia) rich in oil. However, there was a serious impediment when carrying out this action: The Pacific Fleet of the United States. Consequently, on December 7, 1941, the Imperial Japanese Navy attacked the US base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. On the 7th and 8th the Japanese made landings in the US possessions of the Philippines, Guam and Wake while advancing towards the Netherlands East Indies via British Malaya. On December 8, the United States declares war on Japan.

Germany declared war on the United States on December 11. The US government mobilizes the navy in the Pacific and increases the shipment of supplies to the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union. The FBI begins hunting down Nazi sympathizers. Associations like the German American Bund are outlawed. Japanese and Japanese Americans are being detained and interned. In the Philippines, General Douglas MacArthur's troops resisted until June 1942. On May 8 of that same year, the Japanese threat against Australia was stopped in the Battle of the Coral Sea. In June the main Japanese fleet, sailing for Hawaii, was repulsed at the Battle of Midway, one of the most important battles of the war. The US military also aids the ROC in its fight against Japan.

In Europe, the United States Army Air Forces begin bombing Germany, its allies, and the occupied territories. In November 1942, Operation Torch took place, the Allied landing in the French Protectorate of Morocco and French Algeria, in the hands of the pro-Nazi government of Vichy France. In May 1943, the French Protectorate of Tunisia, the last Axis territory in Africa, is conquered by American, British and Free French troops. At the Casablanca Conference it is agreed to invade the Kingdom of Italy through Sicily, the so-called Operation Husky. Although Sicily is quickly conquered, the Italian Campaign is slow and bloody, so it is decided to carry out a new landing, this time in Normandy.

Lifting the flag in Iwo JimaJoe Rosenthal's photograph.

In the Pacific Ocean, the Americans are fighting both in the central region (Gilbert and Marshall Islands Campaign) and in the vicinity of New Guinea (Solomon Islands Campaign). On this last front, the bloody Guadalcanal Campaign took place between August 1942 and February 1943. After conquering the Gilbert and Marshall Islands, the Americans attacked the Marianas and Palau Islands in June 1944. The Americans recaptured Guam and conquered Saipan and Peleliu. With the conquest of the Mariana Islands, the Americans launch a tough bombing campaign on the Japanese archipelago.

In France, the Allies advance into Germany. Important was the American intervention in the Battle of the Bulge and in the Battle of the Hürtgen Forest. Meanwhile, Douglas MacArthur's troops return to the Philippines in October 1944. The Japanese island of Iwo Jima in the central Pacific fell to the United States in March 1945 and the island of Okinawa was conquered in June 1945. Franklin Roosevelt died on April 12 from a brain hemorrhage, being succeeded by Harry S. Truman. In Europe, the war ended on May 9 when the Soviets took control of Berlin.

The invasion of Japan would be long and bloody so, hoping to bring the war to a quick end, President Truman ordered the use of the newly created atomic bomb against the cities of Hiroshima (August 6) and Nagasaki (August 9). On the 8th the Soviets begin Operation August Storm, the invasion of Manchukuo and the north of the Korean Peninsula, controlled by Japan. The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki added to the imminent Soviet advance, caused Emperor Hirohito to decide to surrender to the Americans, much less tough than the Soviets, on September 2, 1945 aboard the battleship USS Missouri. Thus ended the Second World War.

During the Cold War (1945-1989)

From 1945 to 1964

Foreign Policy

Tripling an American M-24 tank near the Nakdong River during the Korean War.

In 1946 the Philippines gained independence from the United States. Negotiations for the creation of an independent state had begun with the Tydings-McDuffie Act of 1934.

During the final stages of World War II, when the Axis was all but defeated, the US government seemed more concerned with the Soviet Union, a power that was taking over more and more territory. Despite the fact that both states collaborated during the war, the truth is that both nations were rivals if not enemies due to their totally antagonistic economic and political systems (Capitalism in the United States, Communism in the USSR). The enmity between the two powers dates back to the Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War. Once the Third Reich and the Empire of Japan were defeated, the rivalry resurfaced. Thus began the Cold War

The first places where the rivalry between powers was appreciated were the Republic of China and Korea. In the first, once Japan had been defeated, the civil war resumed between the Kuomintang, with capitalist ideology and supported by the United States, and the Chinese Communist Party, supported by Stalin's government. Despite the support of the United States, in 1949 the communists, led by Mao Zedong won the war. In Korea, after Operation August Storm, the Americans launch Operation Blacklist Forty, the invasion of the south. Consequently, Korea is divided in two. The Soviet occupation of the north ended in 1948, thus creating North Korea, ruled by Kim Il-sung. The US occupation of the South ends that same year. Syngman Rhee seizes power in South Korea. Both dictators wish to unify Korea under his command. In 1950 the communist north attacks the south. Thus began the Korean War.

The UN authorizes the dispatch of an international force to South Korea, a coalition led by Douglas MacArthur, governor of American-occupied Japan. US troops land in Incheon, liberate Seoul, and invade North Korea to the Chinese border at the Yalu River. Mao Zedong reacts by sending in the People's Liberation Army, which defeats the Americans in the Battle of Chosin Reservoir and sends UN troops back to the southern border where fighting would last until the Korean Armistice Agreement in 1953. The war led to the downfall of Harry Truman and the rise to power of World War II hero General Dwight D. Eisenhower. Douglas MacArthur for his part was ousted when he proposed using atomic weapons against North Korea and China. The Occupation of Japan ended in 1952 with the signing of the Treaty of San Francisco. Japan would become, along with South Korea, the Philippines and Thailand, the main ally of the United States in Asia.

In post-war Europe the situation was equally tense. The territories liberated by the Soviet Union had become communist dictatorships while those liberated by the Western Allies were now capitalist democracies. Germany it had been divided into four sectors: the French, the British, the Soviet and the American. Berlin, although it was within the Soviet sector, had been equally divided. The United States launches the Marshall Plan that seeks to help the reconstruction of Europe through economic aid worth about 14,000 million dollars at the time. This is seen as a threat by the Stalin government, which considers the Marshall Plan as a bribe for European countries to side with the US. In response, he orders the Blockade of Berlin in July 1948. The blockade of the western part of the city, controlled by the Western Allies, was a failure due to the airlift carried out by the British and Americans.

In 1947 the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was founded, the main intelligence agency of the US government. During the Cold War, he would carry out covert missions against communist movements around the world. During the Italian General Elections of 1948, he helped the Christian Democrats win over the Italian Communist Party through an intense propaganda campaign. He also supported the French in their fight against the Viet Minh during the Indochina War and was with the United Fruit Company behind the 1954 Guatemalan Coup. The Eisenhower government intervened in the 1958 Lebanon Crisis, the first US military intervention in the Middle East.

On January 1, 1959 in Cuba, an ally of the United States practically since its independence, the pro-American dictator Fulgencio Batista is overthrown by the communists of the July 26 Movement, led by Fidel Castro. It supposes a very hard blow for the United States due to the short distance between Cuba and Florida. In April 1961, a group of Cuban dissidents carried out the Bay of Pigs Invasion with the help of the CIA, a desperate attempt to overthrow Castro that ended in failure. That same year, a new crisis took place in Berlin when the government of the German Democratic Republic (a socialist state created by the Soviets in its sector) erects the Berlin Wall to prevent the flight of citizens towards the capitalist part of the city, belonging to the Federal Republic of Germany, created from the sectors British, American and French.

American soldiers during U.S. intervention in the Dominican Republic.

A new crisis took place in Cuba in October 1962 when US Lockheed U-2 spy planes discovered Soviet-made R-12 Dvina ballistic missiles on the island. The Cuban Missile Crisis was beginning, one of the most acute crisis periods of the entire Cold War. The United States and the Soviet Union were on the brink of nuclear war. Eventually, John Fitzgerald Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev reached an agreement. The USSR would withdraw its missiles from Cuba if the United States agreed not to invade the island and removed its missiles from Turkey, which was the United States' main ally in the Middle East along with Israel and the Kingdom of Iran.

During Kennedy's presidency, an increasing number of military advisers had been sent to South Vietnam, a capitalist country that was at war with North Vietnam, communist in ideology and allied with the USSR and China. Whether the US government was involved in the arrest and assassination of Ngô Đình Diệm, the unpopular dictator who ruled South Vietnam, in 1963 is still being debated to this day. A few days after Diêm's death, Kennedy is assassinated. His successor, Lyndon B. Johnson, will increase the US presence in Vietnam following the Gulf of Tonkin Incident, a CIA-orchestrated false flag operation that faked an attack on the US destroyer USS Maddox. Thus began the Vietnam War. Johnson also ordered the invasion of the Dominican Republic, a country that was going through a strong political crisis and that the Americans feared would become a Second Cuba

Domestic policy and economic situation

Senator Joseph McCarthy, promoter of Macedonianism.

Domestically, the Cold War manifested itself in the form of strong anti-communism, the second red fear. Between 1950 and 1956, Senator Joseph McCarthy unleashed an extensive process of declarations, unfounded accusations, denunciations, interrogations, irregular processes and blacklists against people suspected of being communists: McCarthyism. Hollywood actors such as Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall or Gregory Peck, scientists such as Robert Oppenheimer, the creator of the atomic bomb, and figures from the US government and army were investigated. One of the most famous cases of this period was the of the Hollywood Ten, ten writers and directors who refused to testify before the Committee on Un-American Activities, a US congressional body founded in 1938 that had nothing to do with Joseph McCarthy, who was a senator. Along with McCarthy and the Committee on Un-American Activities, J. Edgar Hoover's FBI was primarily responsible for the anti-communist campaigns that characterized the 1950s in the United States.

The 1950s were also the era of the Baby Boom, a significant population increase as a result of the economic prosperity that the United States experienced after World War II. To prevent the boom period from ending up triggering a new economic depression in 1944, the Bretton Woods Agreements were approved through which a New International Economic Order was established, the gold standard was replaced by the dollar standard, which made the US economy the largest in the world. Daily life underwent great changes thanks to technological advances such as television. In the mid-1950s, the musical style known as rock and roll was born, led by American musicians such as Elvis Presley, Little Richard and Chuck Berry. It was a gigantic social change that would evolve over the next decade and would become one of the greatest exponents of American popular culture.

The situation of economic and social improvement, however, left African-Americans and other ethnic minorities to one side. In the mid-1950s, the Black Civil Rights Movement was born, which sought to end the inequalities resulting from the Jim Crow Laws. The birth of the movement is usually traced to the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott when a black woman named Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a bus to a white man. The case went all the way to the United States Supreme Court which he ended up declaring the law that required segregation on buses unconstitutional.

In 1957, the Little Rock Nine crisis took place in Little Rock, Arkansas, when nine black students tried to gain access to a white high school. Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus called in the Arkansas National Guard on September 4 to prevent students from entering the institute. Eisenhower responded by sending the 101st Airborne Division to escort the students. The Civil Rights Movement gained strength, appearing leaders like the Protestant pastor Martin Luther King or the Muslim Malcolm X, more aggressive than King.

On August 28, 1963, Martin Luther King delivered his famous I Have a Dream speech in Washington DC. Jim Crow Laws are gradually being phased out with laws such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 or the Voting Rights Act of 1965, both signed into law by Lyndon B. Johnson. The fight for civil rights was not easy, as it was accompanied by a resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan. The most publicized case took place on June 20, 1964 when activists Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman and James Chaney were murdered in Mississippi. Likewise, in the southern states, the governor of Alabama George Wallace was gaining popularity, who was running for the 1968 United States presidential election for the American Independent Party under the slogan of Segregation now and forever.

John Kennedy moments before he was killed in 1963.

On November 22, 1963, Kennedy was assassinated while visiting Dallas, Texas. Although official investigations found Lee Harvey Oswald guilty, who was assassinated two days later by a mob member named Jack Ruby, Kennedy's death remains one of the most controversial events in American history to this day..

From 1964 to 1989

While the fight for civil rights continued on American soil, in Vietnam the Americans failed to make significant progress. They had to face an invisible enemy, the Viet Cong, the communist guerrilla that operated in South Vietnam with support from the north, ruled by Hồ Chí Minh. The land invasion of North Vietnam was dangerous as it could lead to the entry of China and the USSR into the war. Therefore it was decided to carry out an aggressive air campaign, Operation Rolling Thunder. Despite having promoted laws that sought to end racial segregation and health insurance for the elderly (Medicare) and for the poor (Medicaid), the Vietnam War damaged Johnson's image, which is why he decided not to run for re-election..

Everything seemed to indicate that Robert F. Kennedy, brother of the late John Fitzerald Kennedy, would be Johnson's successor. However, Robert was assassinated on June 6, 1968 by a Palestinian immigrant, Sirhan Sirhan. The motives for his murder remain a mystery. In general terms, 1968 was a black year for the United States. To Robert's death we must add that of Martin Luther King. Furthermore, in Vietnam the troops of the North Vietnamese Army and the Viet Cong carry out a powerful attack against the south, the Tet Offensive. The war has divided American public opinion, especially when war crimes perpetrated by American soldiers were discovered, such as the My Lai Massacre in which between three and five hundred Vietnamese civilians were killed. The second half of The 1960s was the time of the counterculture and the hippie movement. Anti-war protests spread throughout the country at the same time as tense race riots such as those experienced in Watts in 1965 or Detroit in 1967. The use of drugs such as heroin or LSD became popular.

Meanwhile, the Space Race continues. On July 20, 1969, the United States space program achieves a great technical and propaganda success by managing to send astronauts back safely to Earth. Crewmen Neil A. Armstrong, Edwin Aldrin and Michael Collins are greeted as heroes.

American soldiers and helicopters Bell UH-1 Iroquois during the Vietnam War

In Vietnam the situation is critical. Although President Richard Nixon had promised to withdraw the troops, in 1970 he ordered the invasion of Cambodia, an invasion accompanied by a coup that caused the fall of King Norodom Sihanouk and the rise to power of the right-wing dictator Lon Nol. Similarly, since 1969 the United States Air Force has been bombing Cambodia under top secrecy. The bloody bombings cause a large part of the Cambodian population to join the Maoist guerilla of the Khmer Rouge, led by the bloody Pol Pot. Likewise, in 1971 he supported South Vietnam in its attempt to invade Laos. Nixon will also order Operation Linebacker and Operation Linebacker II in 1972, bombing campaigns over North Vietnam which took place while the Paris Peace Accords were being negotiated for peace. In 1973 the defeated United States withdrew from Vietnam.

Richard Nixon meets Mao Zedong in 1972

National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger also carried out a diplomatic rapprochement with the People's Republic of China, a rapprochement that was consolidated with the visit carried out by Nixon in 1972. The United States officially accepted the postulate of One China than the Beijing government, cutting diplomatic relations with nationalist China, ruled by Chiang Kai-shek. The rapprochement with China has its origins in the enmity that arose between the governments of Beijing and Moscow after the death of Stalin, the Sino-Soviet split. The enmity between the two nations reached its limit in 1969 with the Sino-Soviet border conflict, which resulted in several dozen deaths. Since Vietnam was a communist state close to Moscow, China supported Democratic Kampuchea. When the Khmer Rouge government fell in 1978, China and the United States collaborated with Maoist guerrillas on the Thai border. The Khmer Rouge used American-made antipersonnel mines in their fight against Vietnam.

In Latin America, the Nixon administration supports different coups, the most famous being the one that took place in Chile in 1973, which overthrew Salvador Allende and brought the military officer Augusto Pinochet to power. The CIA will provide assistance to different dictatorships in Latin America through Operation Condor. The main pro-American dictatorships were those of Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, Bolivia.

U.S. support for Israel during the Yom Kippur War causes the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries to cut off oil supplies to the United States and its allies. The 1973 Oil Crisis begins. The United States, with a weak economy as a result of the Vietnam War, is hard hit. Cities like New York are on the brink of bankruptcy. To make matters worse, the Nixon government is going through a serious scandal, the Watergate Case, named after the Watergate Complex, headquarters of the National Committee of the Democratic Party of the United States. The investigations of the journalists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein of the Washington Post discovered the intervention of the Nixon Administration in a case of spying on political rivals. The United States Congress launched an investigation, but the resistance of the Richard Nixon administration to collaborate in it led to an institutional crisis. The scandal exposed multiple abuses of power by the Nixon administration, which resulted in its resignation. from this as President of the United States in August 1974. The scandal affected a total of 69 people, of whom 48 were found guilty and imprisoned; many of them had been senior officials in the Nixon administration. Nixon was succeeded by Gerald Ford, who granted him a presidential pardon.

In 1979 a new oil crisis took place, the result of the Iranian revolution that overthrew Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, an ally of the United States who was forced to flee Iran. The cleric Ruhollah Khomeini becomes the new leader of the country. In November 1979, Islamic students stormed the American embassy, thus beginning a serious diplomatic crisis. Jimmy Carter's government tried to rescue the hostages in the so-called Operation Eagle Claw in 1980, which resulted in a humiliating failure. The hostages will finally be released in 1981. That same year Ronald Reagan assumes the presidency. Sixty-nine days after assuming the presidency, Reagan suffers an assassination attempt.

1979 is also the year in which the Soviet Union entered the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan, a communist country from 1978 and plunged into a civil war against the Mujahideen, Islamic fundamentalists opposed to communism. During the presidencies of Carter, and especially Reagan's, the CIA will finance the mujahideen. Among the guerrilla leaders is a millionaire named Osama Bin Laden. Afghanistan was not the only place where the Reagan administration funded anti-communist movements. In Nicaragua, support, illegal since Congress had prohibited it, was provided to the Contras, which sought to overthrow the Sandinista National Liberation Front. In addition to resorting to drug trafficking, the CIA obtained money through arms sales to Iran, at war with neighboring Iraq. In 1986 the illegal sale of weapons was discovered, thus starting the Iran-Contra scandal.

Jimmy Carter and Leonid Brézhnev signing the agreement SALT II.

American paratroopers during the Invasion of Granada.

During the Reagan administration, the tensions of the Cold War resurfaced. The Nixon and Carter governments had signed the SALT Agreements with the Soviet Union, agreements to limit the number of anti-ballistic missile (ABM) systems in an attempt to reduce the climate of tension between the two nations. Reagan, on the other hand, increased tensions with the Strategic Defense Initiative, nicknamed Star Wars, a research and technology program for the establishment of a defensive shield against a Soviet attack with strategic ballistic weapons. The original idea was to establish a missile defense from space that would detect the trajectory of ballistic missiles and could destroy them at various points in their trajectory. The program was controversial not only because of its high cost, but also because it was the first step towards the militarization of space. The Reagan administration also resorted to direct military action. The United States was part, along with France, the United Kingdom and Italy, of a multinational force that intervened in the Lebanese Civil War in 1982. This caused the Islamist party Hezbollah to attack the American embassy and American and French headquarters in 1983, which provoked the withdrawal of the International Force from Lebanon. In an attempt to raise morale, Reagan orders an invasion of the island of Grenada, which was ruled by a communist government sympathetic to Cuba.

In the economic field under the Reagan government the economic situation improved considerably, despite ups and downs such as Black Monday in 1987. The US economy is considerably stronger than the Soviet one, in crisis due to the Soviet-Afghan war and to the Chernobyl accident. The USSR cannot compete against the United States in the new arms race. In 1987 the Reykjavik Summit took place in an attempt to stop the arms race. The talks broke down at the last minute, but the progress made finally materialized in 1987 in the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. The Soviet government of Mikhail Gorbachev implements the Sinatra Doctrine, a policy that consisted of allowing the countries of the Warsaw Pact to resolve their internal affairs and set their political evolution. The economic problems of the USSR had repercussions throughout the Eastern Bloc, especially in Poland and the German Democratic Republic. The so-called Revolutions of 1989 begin, which end the communist regimes of Eastern Europe. On November 9, 1989, the Fall of the Berlin Wall took place. Thus ends the Cold War.

After the Cold War (1990-present)

The 1990s

On August 2, 1990, Iraq invaded Kuwait, an ally of the United States. An international coalition supported by the UN and led by the United States is formed, which is transferred to Saudi Arabia. The war to drive Iraqi troops out of Kuwait began with an aerial and naval bombardment on January 17, 1991, which continued for five weeks, Operation Desert Storm. This was followed by a ground assault on February 24. This was a decisive victory for the coalition forces, which liberated Kuwait and advanced into Iraqi territory. The coalition ceased its advance and declared a ceasefire one hundred hours after the ground campaign began.

Two National Guard soldiers patrolling during the 1992 Los Angeles riots.

On April 29, 1992, one of the most controversial verdicts in United States history took place in Los Angeles, when an almost entirely white jury acquitted the four police officers who appeared on recordings taken by video amateur George Holliday while beating up black taxi driver Rodney King for breaking speed limits. Thus began the 1992 Los Angeles riots, the most violent in United States history since the 1960s. It was a three-way conflict between African-American protesters, including members of gangs such as the Bloods and the Crips; the Los Angeles Police Department and city employees, mostly of Korean origin, who sought to save their businesses from looting and who did not hesitate to use firearms. The situation of violence was such that the National Guard had to intervene, like other military units such as the 1st Marine Division. The riots resulted in fifty-four deaths.

In 1995, the Oklahoma City bombing took place, in which a car bomb killed one hundred and sixty-eight people in a federal government building. The terrorists, Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, were two extreme rightists who wanted to avenge the 1993 Waco Siege.

War on Terror (2001-2008)

The morning of the September 11 attacks.

On the morning of September 11, 2001, two of the four planes hijacked by Al-Qaeda hit the two towers of the World Trade Center in New York, the third hit the Pentagon and the fourth targeted the United States Capitol, crashed near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Osama bin Laden's motives were US military support for Israel, the presence of US troops in Saudi Arabia, and US interventionism in conflicts such as the Somali civil war. The attack killed more than 3,000 people, making it the worst terrorist attack in American history. After the attacks, President George W. Bush launched an invasion of Afghanistan with the purpose of overthrowing the Taliban regime and its terrorist connections, achieving it in less than a month into the conflict. Nonetheless, the Taliban insurgency continues to this day. Likewise, the public liberties of the United States were curtailed and controversial laws such as the USA PATRIOT Act were approved.

On March 20, 2003, the Iraq War began, the US invasion of this country. The main justification for this operation offered by US President George W. Bush and his coalition allies was the claim that Iraq possessed and was developing weapons of mass destruction (WMD), in violation of a 1991 convention. United States officials maintained that Iraq posed an imminent, urgent, and immediate threat to the United States, its people, and its allies, as well as their interests. Intelligence services, and inspectors, were widely criticized. Those designated for this purpose found no evidence that the alleged weapons of mass destruction existed. After the invasion, the Iraq Research Group concluded that Iraq had terminated its programs to develop such weapons in 1991 and there were none at the time of the invasion, but that they intended to resume production as long as when the sanctions were lifted. The non-existence of these weapons did not prevent the removal of Saddam Hussein and his subsequent execution. Finally, in the war, the US-led side achieved a few things: winning the invasion, occupying the country, overthrowing the government, and implanting a new regime with supposedly democratic elections. What the faction headed by the United States failed to achieve was to stabilize the country, which plunged into a socio-political crisis and an internal civil war with the presence of terrorist groups such as Al Qaeda. It cannot be said that any side was victorious or defeated, but the truth is that the US troops had to return in 2014 due to the threat of the Islamic State that won the terrain of an Iraq consumed by the rebel insurgency against the pro-American government and civil wars. Adding to the threat of the Islamic State at the request of the Iraqi government, the US decided to once again intervene in the so-called war against the Islamic State. In addition to Iraq, the Islamic State also occupied part of the neighboring country Syria

Global Financial Crisis (2008)

Since 2004, Senator Barack Obama's career has been meteoric. His promises of change and his famous motto & # 34;Yes, we can & # 34; They gave him worldwide fame and would take him to the White House, after winning the 2008 elections with a considerable advantage, becoming one of the presidents of the United States who achieved the most strength at the polls. The Democratic candidate Obama had to face the financial crisis of 2008, the tension with Iran, the resolution of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the problems of the environment. Also, Barack Obama had among the objectives that he relatively achieved the improvement of foreign policy with Europe and the dialogue with all the governments of the world.