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We’re the United States.The fact that much of the world and, indeed many Americans themselves consider the United States a single, homogenous state entity attests to how successful a centuries-long political experiment our Federation has been.But as you may have noticed, you can still pick up hints that we’re not quite that united yet.You’ll need some background on this.Early on in American history, the original states thought themselves just that: independent, sovereign states — that just so happened to band together for common interests. We initially did so under the Articles of Confederation in 1777, an arrangement not unlike the European Union. Our states were able to keep their autonomy as sovereign countries with a few benefits, like open borders, shared currency, trade regulation and a unified diplomatic representation abroad.That lasted…a decade, more or less. Since powerful centralized authority still left a bad taste in Americans’ mouths, we specifically designed the Confederation to be weak, impartial and decentralized. Turns out, that just makes for an inefficient and unstable alliance that can’t act quickly in times of crisis. So the states begrudgingly ratified a Constitution took us from a loose Confederation to a closer-knit Federation. But the states still kept their eye on the new authority, wagging their fingers at the infant federal machine, making sure that they’re allowed to do their own thing and only step in when they absolutely need to. And boy, was this an important topic. Even something simple to us now like the building of state-to-state roadways was a huge controversy.“Fine, we’ll give you centralized powers — but we’ve got our eye on you. Don’t you try anything shifty like federal income tax or interstate highways, you tyrant!”Little by little, Presidents of the United States exercised more and more executive power and pushed further the interpretations of their role. And the states would almost always balk but begrudgingly accept, and it would turn out federal actions worked out okay in the end. Since our little nations were so young already, we still had a more or less homogenous (but still different) culture and set of values that made us slightly more accepting of elected officials of other states telling them what to do.But states still considered themselves their own entities. At one point, the state of Ohio actually went to “war” with Michigan Territory and conquered some land.For the longest time when you referred to the United States, it was grammatically thought of as a collective noun. A schoolteacher would instruct you to write “The United States are … “. In this period, the United States are an association of states under a republic. It’s not a single entity. It was the Civil War, of all things, that began the first big sparks of thought about the nature and importance of our Union. After the War, Americans began to think of their republic as an is. “The United States is”.[1][1][1][1]So that does away with state identity, right? Well, no. It only made us admit the importance and benefits of strong federal authority. It actually had very little effect on how we saw our internal culture. Keep in mind there’s no cars yet; many live and die in the same state they were born. City, even. Strong individual cultures and economies develop, often times nearly on their own with minimal assistance from the federal government or even despite of it. While people from most states will associate with them first, it’s usually the ones with the strongest local cultures or economies whose citizens identify with the most. States like Texas, California, Alaska, and some Southern states. In many ways, these really are their own unique countries with night-and-day differences. Answering to a higher political entity doesn’t seem to have affected their views as a cohesive “nation”. In fact, many state economies seem to be nearly self-sufficient and compete with sovereign states in their own right. It’s reasons like those that you sometimes get opinions from Californians and Texans that they’re better off without a Union mooching from them.To take something away from this answer, wondering why an American identifies belonging to their state instead of country can be slightly flawed - they are answering with their country! Oh, did you mean the political alliance they pledge allegiance to? Well, yeah, the United States, but of course you’d know that already right?Except when we’re at war, some foreign types talked shit about the Union, it’s election year or we’re playing football. Then we’re eagle-taming, flag-waving ‘Muricans. And in the case of the latter, we quickly devolve into ritualistic state nationalism as soon as the National Anthem is over. A unite-when-needed philosophy that has its roots way back to the Articles of Confederation.The best analogy, I think, would be the United Kingdom. This, too, is a political body composed of formerly sovereign states — in this case called countries, even — that are now united, if only in law, into a constitutional political body. Usually when I ask a Brit where they’re from, they start with their subnational country and not the UK as a whole. Only a few Englanders have ever started out by telling me they’re British, and a Scot or Norn Ironer will always let you know who they are. To say that they’re “from” such a diverse, expansive region really doesn’t do much to describe them and they’d rather not you get a generalized idea.Footnotes[1] Remembering Civil War Historian Shelby Foote[1] Remembering Civil War Historian Shelby Foote[1] Remembering Civil War Historian Shelby Foote[1] Remembering Civil War Historian Shelby Foote