I’m in Australia watching documentary about rivers on Binge, they say the Mississippi is fed from 32 states in this episode.
It makes me wonder if the United States should have been divided into fewer states? Why was it divided into 50(or 52) states?(Google is confusing & i don’t care enough to get specific)
Googling it is just getting me various Quora questions or Wikipedia telling me that congress has the authority to admit new states and that the number of states has expanded from the original 13 and that each state has been admitted on an equal footing with the existing states…
So my question is why so many states?
21 comments
As we expanded west, new territory was added, settlers in those territories would generally rather create a new state than submit to and be absorbed by those they left behind.
The country was never “divided” into states; the states joined the country one by one over time. A better question might be, “why didn’t the US stop at 13 states,” with several good answers like “Manifest Destiny,” “strength in numbers,” etc.
The US was settled over a very long period, and each territory became a state at a different time. Many portions of state borders are also drawn around natural landmarks.
We added them over time, it wasn’t a plan to get to 50. The circumstances under which each was admitted varies.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_date_of_admission_to_the_Union
Why not?
If you go buy population rate, Australia has more states for the number of people.
How many states and territories make up Aus? Like 6 or 7? For just 25 million people?
Smaller areas were also easier to govern as expansion occurred.
Why the f☆☆k does my title look like I’m drinking? It was supposed to say ” Why did the US decide on so many states?” Obviously.
The US isn’t “divided” into states. We have a model where the states are sovereign entities and bound together under a federal government, instead of the top-down model of Australia
Your question has been answered, but I think it’s worth adding some snippets of a comment I made on a [similar thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskAnAmerican/comments/10izcnv/why_are_there_so_many_states/) a few weeks ago:
> Australia has a total area of 7.6km^2, so not far off from us (we’re about 1.6x bigger). But it’s population is only 26 million and its density 3.4 people per km^2. That would rank it as the third most populated state if it were part of the US, but it would rank 43rd in population density.
[..]
> it looks like 11 cities in [Western Australia] have a population over 12,000 while Texas [alone] has [..] 216 [..]. And the thing with Texas is that those cities are spread all over the place, with many of them 50-100 miles from the nearest “big” city and next-to-nothing except prairie or desert between them. Looking at [Western Australia], that doesn’t really seem to be the case.
[..]
> Australia has a reputation for being nearly empty except some cities on the coasts. It’s not difficult to see why big states make sense for you; it wouldn’t make sense for you to have [..]50 states when most of them would have few people to administer. But even with our current state sizes, states end up having to manage hundreds of cities with relatively large populations compared to Australia
Why is it that some people think we have 52 states? Like are they counting DC and Puerto Rico but not the other territories?
Besides the actual historical reasons already mentioned, can you imagine if the entire US was still only 13, even 20, states? We already have states larger than some countries, but these states would be enormous. It would be hard for them to really be effective as regional governments. Either county governments would become more important, or there would be another layer of government between states and counties.
There are only 50 states, which include Alaska and Hawaii. There wasn’t a master plan with the states. As we went west and discovered more land, people settled on that land and once the population got big enough, it would ask to be admitted into the Union.
As to the why and how they got their shapes, check out this show [How the Shapes Got Their Shape](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2coMDzloezU&list=PL6UqwaGdknQ-3TH_uV_bT5sJZLMUw7B9P).
Why does Australia have so few?
States east of the Mississippi River tend to be fairly similar in size. They were drawn to be ~50,000 sq. miles, the exact size varies based on local geography such as rivers, mountains, etc. States on the east coast tend to be smaller as they were they were established as British colonies. States west of the Mississippi are larger as the climate is more arid and terrain is more mountainous thus provided less settleable land and thus smaller population densities.
Based on the size , the climate, and the population density the US was able to support a larger number of states. The nice round number of 50 is just a coincidence.
Why doesn’t Australia have more states?
The US, unlike Canada and Australia, defaults to bottom up governance as opposed to top down governance. So in the US, any power not explicitly given to higher levels of government are assumed to be held by the local governments and or the people.
Given this set up, it makes sense for sub-national provinces so to be speak be smaller so that local governance is more efficient.
Early on there was a decision that new states would be added to the country instead of expanding the old ones because the states that were landlocked would be at a disadvantage.
Also those states are huge. Texas is larger than most countries.
The country is formed by the states as their own entities, not the other way around. The power not expressly granted to congress is reserved to the states.
During westward expansion, I think one requirement for statehood was a population of at least 60,000. Of course, they probably weren’t counting the indigenous people, whom we stole the land from.
Georgia originally stretched from the Atlantic coast to the Mississippi River. Same for North Carolina and Virginia.
That’s an awful lot of land for a single government to administer once you’ve kicked out all the people you stole it from.
Why did Australia decide on so few when y’all have about the same amount of land?
The US wasn’t divided into states. It was built out of states. The states are the bricks that make up the US, it isn’t divisions imposed on it.