The USA as we know today didn’t exist as such a big country (three times that of India!!!). It grew rapidly through an era of conquests and land purchases.
Let’s learn basic history with me InshaAllah.
This was North America Before 1607. The various colours show different regions filled with indigenous American people (what we now call Red Indians). The Spanish colonies started settling in the East at this point.
These were how the original inhabitants of North America looked like, there were 500+ (perhaps a 1000+) recognised tribes living in these regions. Later they were wiped out almost entirely by the Whites (Americans who descended from the British). (Image Source)
By 1750, major world powers already controlled large parts of North America. You can see the areas controlled by Spain, France and Mexico.
The descendants of the British colonialists who settled in North America (let’s call them New Americans or White Americans) rebelled against their fatherland (Great Britain/England) and established the first ’13 United States of America’.
The first map of USA with 13 states. The part today called Canada was still under British control. There are still other areas at this time under French, Spanish and British occupation.
In 1783. The USA more than doubled in size with the Louisiana Purchase. The Louisiana Purchase was the 1803 deal in which the United States bought a huge territory from France for $15 million. It included about 530 million acres and nearly doubled the size of the United States, greatly speeding westward expansion.
The USA further bought and captured territories from its neighbouring lands. Shown in dark red.
After the Louisiana Purchase 1803. (1)Florida was taken from Spain under the Adams-Onís Treaty of 1819, ratified in 1821.
(2)Texas first split from Mexico and became an ‘independent country’ for a short while. It was then captured by USA in 1845.
(3)Oregon was gained by treaty with Great Britain in 1846, which extended the U.S.-Canada boundary along the 49th parallel.
(4) The largest later gain was the Mexican Cession in 1848, when Mexico gave up a vast territory after the Mexican-American War under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.
Together, these additions carried the United States across the continent and reshaped its future.
By 1898, the USA acquired land by the Gadsden Purchase, the Alaskan Purchase and capturing Hawaii.
(1)Gadsden Purchase: In 1854, the United States paid Mexico $10 million for land in present-day southern Arizona and New Mexico, mainly for a southern railroad route.
(2)Alaska Purchase: In 1867, the United States bought Alaska from Russia for $7.2 million; it became the 49th state in 1959.
(3)Hawaii annexation: Hawaii was an Independent Kingdom. The USA first recognised their govt and then captured it. It was annexed by the United States in 1898, ending the independence of the Hawaiian Kingdom, and later became the 50th state in 1959.
Driven by expansionist ambition and ruthless disregard for Hawaiian sovereignty, the United States helped bring down the independent Hawaiian Kingdom. In 1893, a group of pro-annexation American and European businessmen, backed by the U.S. minister and protected by U.S. Marines from the USS Boston, overthrew Queen Liliʻuokalani. Their motives were both economic and strategic: they wanted to protect sugar profits and secure Hawaii as a key Pacific naval base. Native Hawaiians strongly opposed annexation, but U.S. power prevailed. In 1898, the United States formally annexed Hawaii, ending its independence and folding the islands into America’s expanding empire.
The final USA was established with fixed modern day boundaries in 1959. They tried pushing into British Canada but failed. And they couldn’t grab more from Spanish Mexico because of fixed treaties.
Canada was not absorbed because U.S. invasions failed in the War of 1812, and later borders were fixed peacefully with Britain through treaties, especially in 1818 and 1846. Mexico was not captured entirely because, although it lost territory in 1848 and 1854, it remained an independent nation after winning freedom from Spain in 1821. Canada developed into the Dominion of Canada in 1867.
Canada became independent gradually in three stages: in 1867 it was created as a self-governing Dominion (under the British Government), in 1931 the Statute of Westminster gave it legislative autonomy, and in 1982 the Constitution was patriated from Britain, giving Canada full constitutional independence and control over its own amendments.
The United States showed interest in Greenland more than once. After buying Alaska in 1867, Secretary of State William Seward was interested in acquiring Greenland, and in 1946 the Truman administration even considered outright purchase from Denmark. Denmark refused, so the U.S. instead pursued long-term military access for strategic Arctic defense.
Does the USA have an ‘Akhand USA’ theory (Akhand=Greater)? Yes. And it’s called the ‘Manifest Destiny’.
Manifest Destiny was a 19th-century American idea (used first by John L. O’Sullivan, a U.S. journalist and editor, who used it in 1845) that the United States was meant—almost by divine right—to expand across North America. Think of it as an expansionist national doctrine, not just patriotism: it justified taking land through settlement, treaties, purchases, and war, especially westward and against Mexico and Indigenous nations. It helped Americans present conquest as destiny, progress, and even moral duty.
Alongside they also had a political doctrine called the Monroe Doctrine.
Monroe Doctrine (1823): A U.S. policy announced by President James Monroe declaring that Europe should not create new colonies or interfere in the Americas. In practice, it helped the United States justify a special leadership role in the Western Hemisphere and later became a basis for wider U.S. influence in Latin America.
What happened to the Indigenous people of North America (the Red Indians)?
As the USA expanded, Indigenous nations were dispossessed on a vast scale. Official U.S. history sources note that nearly 50,000 eastern Indians were forcibly removed, and on the Cherokee Trail of Tears about 3,000–4,000 of 15,000–16,000 people died—roughly one in four. Beyond removal, disease, war, and land seizure caused catastrophic population collapse after European contact; some scholarly estimates suggest declines exceeded 50%, and in some regions or accounts even 90% of Indigenous populations overall. From being 100% of the population, they’re just 1.3% today.
Who are the Black Americans?
Black Americans are a diverse community,not related to the Indigenous people, that includes descendants of enslaved Africans, as well as later immigrants from Africa and the Caribbean. Enslaved Africans were brought into English North America from the early 1600s, with the first documented arrivals in Virginia in 1619. Slavery legally ended in 1865 with the 13th Amendment. Today, people who identify as Black make up about 14.4% of the U.S. population.
The End.
Saheehus-Seerah 