The word America did not originate from a place, but from a person, and it was applied to a continent that the name-giver never visited. In 1507, German cartographers Martin Waldseemüller and Matthias Ringmann published a world map that placed the name America on the landmass now known as South America. They chose this name to honor Amerigo Vespucci, an Italian explorer who was the first European to suggest that the lands discovered by Columbus were not part of Asia, but a new continent entirely. Vespucci had explored the coast of South America between 1497 and 1502, and his letters describing these voyages circulated widely among European scholars. Waldseemüller used the Latinized version of Vespucci's name, Americus Vespucius, and applied the feminine form America to match the names of Europa, Asia, and Africa. The continent north of present-day Mexico was then referred to as Parias, and later as Baccalearum, meaning realm of the Cod fish, on a 1553 map by Petrus Apianus. It was not until 1538 that Gerardus Mercator used the term America on his world map of the entire Western Hemisphere, and on his 1569 map, he called North America America or New India. The Spanish Empire called its territories in North and South America Las Indias, and the name given to the state body that oversaw the region was called the Council of the Indies. The name America, once applied to a single landmass, eventually split to define the northern and southern continents, yet the origin story remains a testament to the power of cartography to reshape human understanding of the world.
The First Footsteps On Ice
The first humans to set foot on North America did so during a time when the world was locked in the grip of the Last Glacial Period, and the land bridge connecting Asia and North America was exposed. The traditional theory has been that hunters entered the Bering Land Bridge between eastern Siberia and present-day Alaska from 27,000 to 14,000 years ago, but a growing viewpoint suggests that the first American inhabitants sailed from Beringia some 13,000 years ago. The oldest petroglyphs in North America date from 15,000 to 10,000 years before present, and genetic research indicates additional waves of migration from Asia via the Bering Strait during the Early-Middle Holocene. Prior to the arrival of European explorers and colonists, the natives of North America were divided into many different polities, ranging from small bands of a few families to large empires. They lived in several culture areas, which roughly correspond to geographic and biological zones that defined the representative cultures and lifestyles of the indigenous people who lived there, including the bison hunters of the Great Plains and the farmers of Mesoamerica. The Mayans developed a writing system, built huge pyramids and temples, had a complex calendar, and developed the concept of zero around 400 CE. The first recorded European references to North America are in Norse sagas where it is referred to as Vinland, and the earliest verifiable instance of pre-Columbian trans-oceanic contact by any European culture with the North America mainland has been dated to around 1000 CE. Norse explorer Leif Erikson, who lived between 970 and 1020 CE, is thought to have visited the area, and the site, situated at the northernmost extent of the island named Newfoundland, has provided unmistakable evidence of Norse settlement.
The arrival of Europeans in the New World triggered a demographic catastrophe that reshaped the human landscape of North America more violently than any war. Upon Europeans' arrival, indigenous peoples had a variety of reactions, including curiosity, trading, cooperation, resignation, and resistance, but the indigenous population declined substantially following European arrival, primarily due to the introduction of Eurasian diseases, such as smallpox, to which the indigenous peoples lacked immunity. The Spanish established permanent settlements on the Caribbean islands of Hispaniola and Cuba in the 1490s, building cities, putting the resident indigenous populations to work, raising crops for Spanish settlers and panning gold to enrich the Spaniards. Much of the indigenous population died due to disease and overwork, spurring the Spaniards on to claim new lands and peoples. An expedition under the command of Spanish settler Hernán Cortés sailed westward in 1519 to what turned out to be the mainland in Mexico. With local indigenous allies, the Spanish conquered the Aztec empire in central Mexico in 1521. The Aztecs were conquered in 1521 by Hernán Cortés, and Spain then established permanent cities in Mexico, Central America, and Spanish South America in the sixteenth century. Once Spaniards conquered the high civilization of the Aztecs and Incas, the Caribbean was a backwater of the Spanish empire. Other European powers began to intrude on areas claimed by Spain, including the Caribbean islands. France took the western half of Hispaniola and developed Saint-Domingue as a cane sugar producing colony worked by black slave labor. Britain took Barbados and Jamaica, and the Dutch and Danes took islands previously claimed by Spain. Britain did not begin settling on the North American mainland until a hundred years after the first Spanish settlements, since it sought first to control nearby Ireland.
The Birth Of A Republic
The formation of the United States was not a singular event but a decades-long struggle that began with the first permanent English settlement in Jamestown, Virginia in 1607. The English did not establish settlements north or east of the St. Lawrence Valley in present-day Canada until after the conclusion of the American Revolutionary War. Britain's early settlements in present-day Canada included St. John's, Newfoundland in 1630 and Halifax, Nova Scotia in 1749. The first permanent French settlement was in Quebec City, Quebec, established in 1608. In 1776, after various attempts to reconcile differences with the British, the Thirteen Colonies in British America sent delegates to the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia, who unanimously adopted the Declaration of Independence on the 4th of July 1776, written primarily by Thomas Jefferson, a member of the Committee of Five charged by the Second Continental Congress with authoring it. In the Declaration, the thirteen colonies declared their independence from the British monarchy, then governed by King George III, and detailed the factors that contributed to their decision. With the signing and issuance of the Declaration of Independence, the thirteen colonies formalized and escalated the American Revolutionary War, which had begun the year before at the Battles of Lexington and Concord on the 19th of April 1775. Gathered in Philadelphia following the war's outbreak, delegates from the thirteen colonies established the Continental Army from various patriot militias then engaged in resisting the British, and appointed George Washington as the Continental Army's military commander. As the American Revolutionary War progressed, France and Spain, both then enemies of Britain, began to ultimately see the promise of a potential American victory in the war and began supporting Washington and the American Revolutionary cause. The British Army, in turn, was supported by Hessian military units from present-day Germany. In 1783, after an eight-year attempt to defeat the American rebellion, King George III acknowledged Britain's defeat in the war, leading to the signing of the Treaty of Paris on the 3rd of September 1783, which solidified the sovereign establishment of the United States.
The Land That Was Sold
The geography of North America was not fixed by nature alone but was redrawn by treaties, wars, and the sale of entire regions. By the late 18th century, Russia was established on the Pacific Northwest northern coastline, where it was engaged in maritime fur trade and was supported by various indigenous settlements in the region. As a result, the Spanish were showing more interest in controlling the trade on the Pacific coast and mapped most of its coastline. The first Spanish settlements were attempted in Alta California during that period. Numerous overland explorations associated with voyageurs, fur trade, and U.S. led expeditions, including the Lewis and Clark, Frémont and Wilkes expeditions, reached the Pacific. In 1803, during the presidency of Thomas Jefferson, the third U.S. president, Napoleon Bonaparte sold France's remaining North American territorial claims, which included regions west of the Mississippi River, to the U.S., in the Louisiana Purchase. Spain and the U.S. settled their western boundary dispute in 1819 in the Adams, Onís Treaty. Mexico fought a lengthy war for independence from Spain, winning it for Mexico in 1821. The U.S. sought further westward expansion and fought the Mexican, American War, gaining a vast territory that first Spain and then Mexico claimed but which they did not effectively control. Much of the area was in fact dominated by indigenous peoples, which did not recognize the claims of Spain, France, or the U.S. Russia sold its North American claims, which included the present-day U.S. state of Alaska, to the U.S. in 1867. In 1867, colonial settlers north of the United States, unified as the dominion of Canada. The U.S. sought to dig a canal across the Isthmus of Panama in present-day Panama in Central America, then a part of present-day Colombia. The U.S. aided Panamanians in a war that resulted in its separation from Colombia. The U.S. subsequently carved out the Panama Canal Zone, and claimed sovereignty over it. After decades of work, the Panama Canal was completed, which connected the Atlantic and Pacific oceans in 1913 and greatly facilitated global shipping navigation.
The Plate That Holds The World
Beneath the surface of North America lies a geological history that spans billions of years, from the ancient craton of Laurentia to the violent collisions that created the Rocky Mountains. Laurentia is an ancient craton which forms the geologic core of North America; it formed between 1.5 and 1.0 billion years ago during the Proterozoic eon. The Canadian Shield is the largest exposure of this craton. From the Late Paleozoic to Early Mesozoic eras, North America was joined with the other modern-day continents as part of the supercontinent Pangaea, with Eurasia to its east. One of the results of the formation of Pangaea was the Appalachian Mountains, which formed some 480 million years ago, making it among the oldest mountain ranges in the world. When Pangaea began to rift around 200 million years ago, North America became part of Laurasia, before it separated from Eurasia as its own continent during the mid-Cretaceous period. The Rockies and other western mountain ranges began forming around this time from a period of mountain building called the Laramide orogeny, between 80 and 55 million years ago. The formation of the Isthmus of Panama that connected the continent to South America arguably occurred approximately 12 to 15 million years ago, and the Great Lakes were carved by receding glaciers about 10,000 years ago. North America is the source of much of what humanity knows about geologic time periods. The geographic area that would later become the United States has been the source of more varieties of dinosaurs than any other modern country. According to paleontologist Peter Dodson, this is primarily due to stratigraphy, climate and geography, human resources, and history. Much of the Mesozoic Era is represented by exposed outcrops in the many arid regions of the continent. The most significant Late Jurassic dinosaur-bearing fossil deposit in North America is the Morrison Formation of the western U.S. Canada is geologically one of the oldest regions in the world, with more than half of the region consisting of Precambrian rocks that have been above sea level since the beginning of the Palaeozoic era. Canada's mineral resources are diverse and extensive. Across the Canadian Shield and in the north there are large iron, nickel, zinc, copper, gold, lead, molybdenum, and uranium reserves. Large diamond concentrations have been recently developed in the Arctic, making Canada one of the world's largest producers. Throughout the Shield, there are many mining towns extracting these minerals. The largest, and best known, is Sudbury, Ontario. Sudbury is an exception to the normal process of forming minerals in the Shield since there is significant evidence that the Sudbury Basin is an ancient meteorite impact crater.
The Economy Of Trade And War
The economic history of North America is defined by the transition from colonial extraction to the creation of the world's largest trade bloc. North America's GDP per capita was evaluated in October 2016 by the International Monetary Fund to be $41,830, making it the richest continent in the world, followed by Oceania. Canada, Mexico, and the U.S. have significant and multifaceted economic systems. The U.S. has the largest economy in the world. In 2016, the U.S. had an estimated per capita gross domestic product of $57,466 according to the World Bank, and is the most technologically developed economy of the three. The U.S.'s services sector comprises 77% of the country's GDP, industry comprises 22% and agriculture comprises 1.2%. The U.S. economy is also the fastest-growing economy in North America and the Americas as a whole, with the highest GDP per capita in the Americas as well. Canada shows significant growth in the sectors of services, mining and manufacturing. Canada's per capita GDP was estimated at $44,656 and it had the 11th-largest GDP in 2014. Canada's services sector comprises 78% of its GDP, industry comprises 20% and agriculture comprises 2%. Mexico has a per capita GDP of $16,111 and as of 2014 is the 15th-largest GDP in the world. Being a newly industrialized country, Mexico maintains both modern and outdated industrial and agricultural facilities and operations. Its main sources of income are oil, industrial exports, manufactured goods, electronics, heavy industry, automobiles, construction, food, banking and financial services. The North American economy is well defined and structured in three main economic areas. These areas are those under the North American Free Trade Agreement, the Caribbean Community and Common Market, and the Central American Common Market. Of these trade blocs, the U.S. takes part in two. In addition to the larger trade blocs there is the Canada-Costa Rica Free Trade Agreement among numerous other free-trade relations, often between the larger, more developed countries and Central American and Caribbean countries. NAFTA formed one of the four largest trade blocs in the world. Its implementation in 1994 was designed for economic homogenization with hopes of eliminating barriers of trade and foreign investment between Canada, the U.S. and Mexico. While Canada and the U.S. already conducted the largest bilateral trade relationship, and to present day still do, and Canada, U.S. trade relations already allowed trade without national taxes and tariffs, NAFTA allowed Mexico to experience a similar duty-free trade. The free-trade agreement allowed for the elimination of tariffs that had previously been in place on U.S., Mexico trade. Trade volume has steadily increased annually and in 2010, surface trade between the three NAFTA nations reached an all-time historical increase of 24.3% or US$791 billion. The NAFTA trade bloc GDP is the world's largest with US$17.617 trillion. This is in part attributed to the fact that the economy of the U.S. is the world's largest national economy; the country had a nominal GDP of approximately $14.7 trillion in 2010. The countries of NAFTA are also some of each other's largest trade partners. The U.S. is the largest trade partner of Canada and Mexico, while Canada and Mexico are each other's third-largest trade partners. In 2018, the NAFTA was replaced by the U.S., Mexico, Canada Agreement.
The Cities That Rise And Fall
The demographic landscape of North America is a tapestry woven from the threads of indigenous history, colonial conquest, and modern migration, creating the world's most populous continent after Asia, Africa, and Europe. Its most populous country is the U.S. with 342.9 million persons. The second-largest country is Mexico with a population of 126 million. Canada is the third-most-populous country with 41.5 million. The majority of Caribbean island-nations have national populations under a million, though Cuba, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Puerto Rico, Jamaica, and Trinidad and Tobago each have populations higher than a million. Greenland has a small population of 55,984 for its massive size, and therefore, it has the world's lowest population density at 0.026 people per square kilometer. While the U.S., Canada, and Mexico maintain the largest populations, large city populations are not restricted to those nations. There are also large cities in the Caribbean. The largest cities in North America, by far, are Mexico City and New York City. These cities are the only cities on the continent to exceed eight million, and two of three in the Americas. Next in size are Los Angeles, Toronto, Chicago, Havana, Santo Domingo, and Montreal. Cities in the Sun Belt regions of the U.S., such as those in Southern California and Houston, Phoenix, Miami, Atlanta, and Las Vegas, are experiencing rapid growth. These causes included warm temperatures, retirement of Baby Boomers, large industry, and the influx of immigrants. Cities near the U.S. border, particularly in Mexico, are also experiencing large amounts of growth. Most notable is Tijuana, a city bordering San Diego that receives immigrants from all over Latin America and parts of Europe and Asia. Yet as cities grow in these warmer regions of North America, they are increasingly forced to deal with the major issue of water shortages. Eight of the top ten metropolitan areas are located in the U.S. These metropolitan areas all have a population of above 5.5 million and include the New York City metropolitan area, Los Angeles metropolitan area, Chicago metropolitan area, and the Dallas, Fort Worth metroplex. While the majority of the largest metropolitan areas are within the U.S., Mexico is host to the largest metropolitan area by population in North America: Greater Mexico City. Canada also breaks into the top ten largest metropolitan areas with the Toronto metropolitan area having six million people. The proximity of cities to each other on the Canada, United States border and the Mexico, U.S. border has led to the rise of international metropolitan areas. These urban agglomerations are observed at their largest and most productive in Detroit, Windsor and San Diego, Tijuana and experience large commercial, economic, and cultural activity. The metropolitan areas are responsible for millions of dollars of trade dependent on international freight. In Detroit-Windsor the Border Transportation Partnership study in 2004 concluded US$13 billion was dependent on the Detroit, Windsor international border crossing while in San Diego, Tijuana freight at the Otay Mesa Port of Entry was valued at US$20 billion.