10 ATLASES
History of the United States of America in maps
The United States of America as it appears in 10 interactive history atlases, from 790 to 1991: Northern North America, the United States, United States, United States of America. Each era below lists who ruled the land and when control changed, linked to the dated map that shows it.
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What was the United States of America before it was United States of America? The sections below follow this land through every era covered by the Maps of History atlases: who ruled it, what it was called, and when control changed. Each line links to the dated map. Modern borders serve as an approximation, as each atlas says on the map itself.
Northern North America (mod. USA) · Norse and Aztecs
| Indigenous peoples of the North — the opening position |
NORSE AND AZTECS: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →
The United States (British colonies to 1776) · Industrial Revolution
In a century and a half the United States grew from British colonies into the world’s largest industrial economy. Before 1861, slave-grown cotton was its leading export. After the Civil War, railways, steel, oil, meat-packing and immigrant labor helped make it an industrial giant. By 1913 it produced about a third of the world’s manufactured goods. Its wealth rested on resources taken from Native American nations and labor drawn from three continents.
| Colony or dependency — the opening position | |
| Agrarian economy | |
| Industrialising | |
| Industrial economy |
INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →
United States (the Thirteen Colonies) · Age of Revolutions
American independence, recognized in 1783, showed that a colony could become a republic. Haiti’s victory helped make the Louisiana purchase possible in 1803, doubling the United States. The republic survived another war with Britain in 1812–15 and declared the hemisphere closed in 1823. Its constitution traveled widely, as did its cotton; yet its half-million enslaved people had become two million by 1848. The promise of liberty stood alongside that evasion.
| Britain & its empire — the opening position | |
| Republics & revolutionary states |
AGE OF REVOLUTIONS: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →
The United States · Haiti and Kenya independence
The United States was the first independent state in the Americas and Haiti’s most important trading partner. It was also a reluctant neighbor: slaveholding interests secured a trade embargo in 1806, and the United States recognized Haiti only in 1862, after the slave states had left Congress. About 10,000 refugees from Saint-Domingue reached New Orleans through Cuba in 1809. Later, from 1915 to 1934, US Marines occupied Haiti and ran its customs.
| Other states and societies — the opening position |
HAITI AND KENYA INDEPENDENCE: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →
The United States · American Civil War
The map shows one country, but within it two sides went to war. The Union could draw on 22 million people, nine-tenths of the industry, and the navy. Opposing it was an 11-state Confederacy founded, in its own documents, to perpetuate slavery. After four years and roughly 750,000 deaths, two questions were settled: the Union was indivisible, and no person in it was property. The content of Black citizenship remained a third question, deferred for a century. On this single map shape, the zones trace the fighting's result: charcoal marks the Confederacy, tan the border belt, and grey-tan Union control spreads along coasts and rivers until nothing else remains. Follow chapters 1–13.
| The Union — the opening position |
AMERICAN CIVIL WAR: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →
United States of America · WWI
The United States profited while remaining neutral, until the U-boat and the Zimmermann telegram made neutrality untenable (Ch. 8, 10). It entered the war in April 1917 “to make the world safe for democracy.” American credit saved the Entente before its two-million-man army decided 1918 (Ch. 12). Wilson designed the architecture of the peace, but the Senate declined to inhabit it. The world’s new strongest power went home.
| The Entente & Allies — the opening position | |
| The Entente & Allies |
United States of America · Stalin’s Soviet Union
| Rivals & the Western bloc — the opening position | |
| Rivals & the Western bloc |
STALIN’S SOVIET UNION: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →
United States of America · Road to WW2
The United States remained outside the League it had helped design. It sought protection in the Neutrality Acts, even while selling scrap iron to Japan. Its position changed by degrees through the quarantine speech, cash-and-carry, destroyers-for-bases, Lend-Lease and the embargo: the spectator became an arsenal. Pearl Harbor, followed four days later by Hitler's unforced declaration, made it a belligerent.
| Democracies & powers fighting them — the opening position |
ROAD TO WW2: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →
United States of America · WW2
The United States began as a neutral arsenal. After Pearl Harbor it became the alliance’s engine, contributing a two-ocean navy, strategic bombing, D-Day, the atomic bomb and 40% of world war production. Its homeland untouched, it emerged as a superpower, helped write the postwar order and has led it since.
| Neutral — the opening position | |
| Western Allies |
United States of America · Cold War
The United States emerged from the war richer than it had entered it, alone among the combatants of 1945. Marshall aid, NATO, Bretton Woods, and the bomb gave it the means to build a Western order. It fought much of the Cold War through proxies, while Americans at home lived through red scares and a broken presidency; 58,000 names on a Washington wall record another cost. By the end, the United States was the last superpower standing. This atlas treats that position as a situation to manage, rather than a final verdict.
| NATO & core Western allies — the opening position |
COLD WAR: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →
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