Culture of the United States

The culture of the United States of America, also referred to as American culture, encompasses various social behaviors, institutions, and norms in the United States, including forms of speech, literature, music, visual arts, performing arts, food, religion, law, technology as well as other customs, beliefs, and forms of knowledge. American culture has been shaped by the history of the United States, its geography, and various internal and external forces and migrations. Its Western foundations derive from European colonization, and it was shaped early on by interactions with various indigenous groups and the forced migration of enslaved Africans. Since the United States was established in 1776, its culture has been influenced by successive waves of immigrants, and the resulting cultural diversity has been a distinguishing feature of society in the United States. The United States is a primarily anglophone country with a legal system derived from English common law. Culture in the United States can vary by factors such as region, race and ethnicity, age, religion, socio-economic status, or population density, among others. Different aspects of American culture can be thought of as low culture or high culture, or belonging to any of a variety of subcultures. The United States exerts major cultural influence on a global scale and is considered a cultural superpower. Cultural history of the United States The European roots of the United States originate with the English and Spanish settlers of colonial North America during British and Spanish rule. The varieties of English people, as opposed to the other peoples on the British Isles, were the overwhelming majority ethnic group in the 17th century (the population of the colonies in 1700 was 250,000) and were 47.9% of percent of the total population of 3.9 million. They constituted 60% of the whites at the first census in 1790 (%: 3.5 Welsh, 8.5 Scotch Irish, 4.3 Scots, 4.7 Irish, 7.2 German, 2.7 Dutch, 1.7 French and 2 Swedish).