American Colonies to 1763 (Part 1) Flashcards
The Wealth of Nations
The 1776 work by economist Adam Smith that argued that the “invisible hand” of the free market directed economic life more effectively and fairly than governmental intervention.
Tenochtitlán
The capital city of the Aztec Empire. The city was built on marshy islands on the western side of Lake Tetzcoco, which is the site of present-day Mexico City.
Aztec
Mesoamerican people who were conquered by the Spanish under Hernan Cortes, 1519–1528.
Great League of Peace
An alliance of the Iroquois tribes, originally formed sometime between 1450 and 1600, that used their combined strength to pressure Europeans to work with them in the fur trade and to wage war across what is today eastern North America.
caravel
A fifteenth-century European ship capable of long-distance travel.
reconquista
The “reconquest” of Spain from the Moors completed by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella in 1492.
conquistadores
Spanish term for “conquerors,” applied to Spanish and Portuguese soldiers who conquered lands held by indigenous peoples in central and southern America as well as the current states of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California.
Columbian Exchange
The transatlantic flow of goods and people that began with Columbus’s voyages in 1492.
creoles
Persons born in the New World of European ancestry.
hacienda
Large-scale farm in the Spanish New World empire worked by Indian laborers.
mestizos
Spanish word for persons of mixed Native American and European ancestry.
Ninety-Five Theses
The list of moral grievances against the Catholic Church by Martin Luther, a German priest, in 1517.
Bartolomé de Las Casas
A Catholic missionary who renounced the Spanish practice of coercively converting Indians and advocated their better treatment. In 1552, he wrote A Brief Relation of the Destruction of the Indies, which described the Spanish’s cruel treatment of the Indians.
repartimiento system
Spanish labor system under which Indians were legally free and able to earn wages but were also required to perform a fixed amount of labor yearly. Replaced the encomienda system.
Black Legend
Idea that the Spanish New World empire was more oppressive toward the Indians than other European empires; was used as a justification for English imperial expansion
Pueblo Revolt
Uprising in 1680 in which Pueblo Indians temporarily drove Spanish colonists out of modern-day New Mexico
indentured servants
Settlers who signed on for a temporary period of servitude to a master in exchange for passage to the New World; Virginia and Pennsylvania were largely peopled in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries by English and German indentured servants.
métis
Children of marriages between Indian women and French traders and officials
borderland
A place between or near recognized borders where no group of people has complete political control or cultural dominance.
Virginia Company
A joint-stock enterprise that King James I chartered in 1606. The company was to spread Christianity in the New World as well as find ways to make a profit in it.
Anglican Church
The established state church of England, formed by Henry VII after the pope refused to annul his marriage to Catherine of Aragon.
Roanoke colony
English expedition of 117 settlers, including Virginia Dare, the first English child born in the New World; the colony disappeared from Roanoke Island in the Outer Banks sometime between 1587 and 1590.
enclosure movement
A legal process that divided large farm fields in England that were previously collectively owned by groups of peasants into smaller, individually owned plots. The enclosure movement took place over several centuries, and resulted in eviction for many peasants.
John Smith
A swashbuckling soldier of fortune with rare powers of leadership and self-promotion who was appointed to the resident council to manage Jamestown.
headright system
A land-grant policy that promised fifty acres to any colonist who could afford passage to Virginia, as well as fifty more for any accompanying servants. The headright policy was eventually expanded to include any colonists—and was also adopted in other colonies.
House of Burgesses
The first elected assembly in colonial America, established in 1619 in Virginia. Only wealthy landowners could vote in its elections.
Uprising of 1622
Unsuccessful uprising of Virginia Native Americans that wiped out one-quarter of the settler population, but ultimately led to the settlers gaining supremacy.
dower rights
In colonial America, the right of a widowed woman to inherit one-third of her deceased husband’s property.
Puritans
English religious group that sought to purify the Church of England; founded the Massachusetts Bay Colony under John Winthrop in 1630.
John Winthrop
Puritan leader and governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony who resolved to use the colony as a refuge for persecuted Puritans and as an instrument of building a “wilderness Zion” in America.
Pilgrims
Puritan separatists who broke completely with the Church of England and sailed to the New World aboard the Mayflower, founding Plymouth Colony on Cape Cod in 1620.
Mayflower Compact
Document signed in 1620 aboard the Mayflower before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth; the document committed the group to majority-rule government.
Great Migration (1630s)
The migration of approximately 21,000 English Puritans to the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
Dissenters
Protestants who belonged to denominations outside of the established Anglican Church.
captivity narratives
Accounts written by colonists after their time in Indian captivity, often stressing the captive’s religious convictions.
Pequot War
An armed conflict in 1637 that led to the destruction of one of New England’s most powerful Indian groups.
Half-Way Covenant
A 1662 religious compromise that allowed baptism and partial church membership to colonial New Englanders whose parents were not among the Puritan elect.
English liberty
The idea that English people were entitled to certain liberties, including trial by jury, habeas corpus, and the right to face one’s accuser in court. These rights meant that even the English king was subject to the rule of law.
Maryland Toleration Act
1649 law that granted free exercise of religion to all Christian denominations in colonial Maryland.
Metacom
The chief of the Wampanoags, whom the colonists called King Philip. He resented English efforts to convert Indians to Christianity and waged a war against the English colonists, one in which he was killed.
King Philip’s War
A multiyear conflict that began in 1675 with an Indian uprising against white colonists. Its end result was broadened freedoms for white New Englanders and the dispossession of the region’s Indians.
mercantilism
Policy of Great Britain and other imperial powers of regulating the economies of colonies to benefit the mother country.
Navigation Act
Law passed by the English Parliament to control colonial trade and bolster the mercantile system, 1650–1775; enforcement of the act led to growing resentment by colonists.
Covenant Chain
Alliance formed in the 1670s between the English and the Iroquois nations.
Yamasee uprising
Revolt of Yamasee and Creek Indians, aggravated by rising debts and slave traders’ raids, against Carolina settlers. Resulted in the expulsion of many Indians to Florida.
Society of Friends (Quakers)
Religious group in England and America whose members believed all persons possessed the “inner light” or spirit of God; they were early proponents of abolition of slavery and equal rights for women.
plantation
An early word for a colony, a settlement “planted” from abroad among an alien population in Ireland or the New World. Later, a large agricultural enterprise that used unfree labor to produce a crop for the world market.
Bacon’s Rebellion
Unsuccessful 1676 revolt led by planter Nathaniel Bacon against Virginia governor William Berkeley’s administration because of governmental corruption and because Berkeley had failed to protect settlers from Indian raids and did not allow them to occupy Indian lands.
Glorious Revolution
A coup in 1688 engineered by a small group of aristocrats that led to William of Orange taking the British throne in place of James II.
English Bill of Rights
A series of laws enacted in 1689 that inscribed the rights of Englishmen into law and enumerated parliamentary powers such as taxation.
Lords of Trade
An English regulatory board established to oversee colonial affairs in 1675.
Dominion of New England
Consolidation into a single colony of the New England colonies—and later New York and New Jersey—by royal governor Edmund Andros in 1686; dominion reverted to individual colonial governments three years later.
English Toleration Act of 1690
A 1690 act of Parliament that allowed all English Protestants to worship freely.
Salem witch trials
A crisis of trials and executions in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1692 that resulted from anxiety over witchcraft.
redemptioners
Indentured families or persons who received passage to the New World in exchange for a promise to work off their debt in America.
Walking Purchase of 1737
An infamous 1737 purchase of Indian land in which Pennsylvanian colonists tricked the Lenni Lanape Indians. The Lanape agreed to cede land equivalent to the distance a man could walk in thirty-six hours, but the colonists marked out an area using a team of runners.
backcountry
In colonial America, the area stretching from central Pennsylvania southward through the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia and into upland North and South Carolina.
staple crops
Important cash crops; for example, cotton or tobacco.
Atlantic slave trade
The systematic importation of African slaves from their native continent across the Atlantic Ocean to the New World, largely fueled by rising demand for sugar, rice, coffee, and tobacco.
Middle Passage
The hellish and often deadly middle leg of the transatlantic “Triangular Trade” in which European ships carried manufactured goods to Africa, then transported enslaved Africans to the Americas and the Caribbean,
yeoman farmers
Small landowners (the majority of white families in the Old South) who farmed their own land and usually did not own slaves.
Stono Rebellion
A slave uprising in 1739 in South Carolina that led to a severe tightening of the slave code and the temporary imposition of a prohibitive tax on imported slaves.
republicanism
Political theory in eighteenth-century England and America that celebrated active participation in public life by economically independent citizens as central to freedom.
liberalism
Originally, political philosophy that emphasized the protection of liberty by limiting the power of government to interfere with the natural rights of citizens; in the twentieth century, belief in an activist government promoting greater social and economic equality.
salutary neglect
Informal British policy during the first half of the eighteenth century that allowed the American colonies considerable freedom to pursue their economic and political interests in exchange for colonial obedience.
Enlightenment
Revolution in thought in the eighteenth century that emphasized reason and science over the authority of traditional religion
Deism
Enlightenment thought applied to religion; emphasized reason, morality, and natural law.
Great Awakening
Fervent religious revival movement in the 1720s through the 1740s that was spread throughout the colonies by ministers like New England Congregationalist Jonathan Edwards and English revivalist George Whitefield.
Father Junípero Serra
Missionary who began and directed the California mission system in the 1770s and 1780s. Serra presided over the conversion of many Indians to Christianity, but also engaged them in forced labor.
middle ground
A borderland between European empires and Indian sovereignty where various native peoples and Europeans lived side by side in relative harmony.
Seven Years’ War
The last—and most important—of four colonial wars fought between England and France for control of North America east of the Mississippi River.
French and Indian War
The last—and most important—of four colonial wars fought between England and France for control of North America east of the Mississippi River. (known in the colonies as the French and Indian War)
Pontiac’s Rebellion
An Indian attack on British forts and settlements after France ceded to the British its territory east of the Mississippi River, as part of the Treaty of Paris in 1763, without consulting France’s Indian allies.
Neolin
A Native American religious prophet who, by preaching pan-Indian unity and rejection of European technology and commerce, helped inspire Pontiac’s Rebellion.
Proclamation of 1763
Royal directive issued after the French and Indian War prohibiting settlement, surveys, and land grants west of the Appalachian Mountains; caused considerable resentment among colonists hoping to move west.
Albany Plan of Union
A failed 1754 proposal by the seven northern colonies in anticipation of the French and Indian War, urging the unification of the colonies under one crown-appointed president. Drafted by Benjamin Franklin.
