How The United States Became America

Chadd Scott, Forbes, July 10, 2026

America 250.

There it is.

The branding exercise doubling as the United States’ semiquincentennial demonstrates clearly how the nation no longer sees itself as it did from the outset–as the United States–but rather, something more expansive. Hemispheric if not global: America.

Historian Daniel Immerwahr brought this change to wide attention in his 2019 book, “How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States.”

The change took place abruptly in 1898. That was the year the United States went to war with Spain in Cuba alongside Cuban and Puerto Rican rebels and in the Philippines. The Spanish American war. The affair was a lopsided route booting the Spanish out of Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, and Guam. The U.S. took over.