In the 250 years since the US declared its independence from Great Britain, the nation has grown from a sparsely populated collection of settlements scattered along the Atlantic coast into a global power spread over the breadth of a continent and beyond.
Starting from the original 13 colonies that covered 430,000 sq miles (1.1m sq km), its geographic footprint has increased eightfold, to approximately 3.7m sq miles.
America’s population has undergone a similarly dramatic expansion. In 1790, the year of the first US Census, there were approximately four million Americans, including slaves. By 2025, the US population had grown to 343 million – an 8,475% increase.
Even though the US today may be all but unrecognisable to the nation’s founders 250 years ago, the cultural and political influences in the country would likely be familiar.
In hindsight, one can trace many of President Donald Trump’s key political promises – limiting immigration, and expanding American power and territory – to the country’s earliest distinctions and divisions.
