Americans

Americans 

(1) The self-designation of the inhabitants of the USA; the nation (natsiia; nation in the historical sense) representing the major proportion of the population of the USA. Americans also live in US possessions and dependencies. There are approximately 200,000,000 Americans (1967), of whom 22 million are Negroes and mulattoes who are subjected to discrimination and segregation. Since the beginning of the 17th century the main body of the nation has been composed of English, Scots, Irish, and a smaller number of Dutch, Danes, French, Spanish, and others who emigrated

Table 1. Basic financial and economic data on AT&T and Western Electric for 1966 (in millions of dollars)
	Assets	Intrinsic capital	Turnover	Gross profit*	Ratio of gross profit (in %)		Net profit	Number of employees (in thousands)
					to Intrinsic capital	to turnover
* Gross profit and its ratio to intrinsic capital and turnover based on 1965 data
AT&T ...............	35,218	20,776	12,138	4,391	22.2	39.7	1,979	650
Western Electric . . . .	2,498	1,585	3,623	350	23.3	10.4	173	168

from Europe to the English colony of North America. Indians and Africans also took part in the formation of the American nation. The Africans were brought to the North American colonies as slaves beginning in the 17th century. The American nation was basically formed before and during the War of Independence in North America of 1775–83. But subsequently the representatives of various ethnic groups emigrating to the USA continued to merge into the American nation. In assimilating, they influenced the formation of the physical aspects, language, and culture of the Americans. In the middle of the 19th century, before the American Civil War (1861–65), substantial groups of Irish and Germans settled in the country. In addition to immigrants from Western Europe the flow of settlers from Eastern and Southern Europe as well as from Asia increased, at the end of the 19th century, leading to a still greater ethnic variety, although assimilation of these immigrants was impeded more powerfully than before by racist prejudices. During World War I (1914–18) the number of immigrants from Mexico and other Latin American countries grew. The flow of immigrants from Europe, very high at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries, sharply decreased after World War I as a result of legislative restrictions and numbered about 300,000 people a year in the mid-1960’s. All immigrants, to a degree, were and still are subjected to discrimination in various spheres of life.

The Americans are a comparatively young nation, and its processes of ethnic consolidation are not yet complete. Many national groups (Poles, Italians, and others) retain, although in modified form and to varying degrees, cultural elements of their countries of origin.

Americans speak English, the official language of the USA. American English, however, has certain distinctive peculiarities. In the USA there are approximately 260 Christian denominations, religious doctrines, and sects. The most widespread are the Protestant churches (Baptists, Methodists, Lutherans, Presbyterians), which account for approximately 55 percent of the believers. About 37 percent of the people are Catholics, the descendants of Irish, Italian, and Polish immigrants, and there are more than 5.5 million Jews.

(2) The peoples of all the countries of the American continent are sometimes called Americans.

REFERENCES

Narody Ameriki, vol. I. Moscow, 1959 (bibliography).

M. IA. BERZINA