American Colonies to 1763 (Part 1)

Question 1

The Wealth of Nations

Answer 1

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.

Question 2

Tenochtitlán

Answer 2

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.

Question 3

Aztec

Answer 3

Mesoamerican people who were conquered by the Spanish under Hernan Cortes, 1519–1528.

Question 4

Great League of Peace

Answer 4

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.

Question 5

caravel

Answer 5

A fifteenth-century European ship capable of long-distance travel.

Question 6

reconquista

Answer 6

The “reconquest” of Spain from the Moors completed by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella in 1492.

Question 7

conquistadores

Answer 7

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.

Question 8

Columbian Exchange

Answer 8

The transatlantic flow of goods and people that began with Columbus’s voyages in 1492.

Question 9

creoles

Answer 9

Persons born in the New World of European ancestry.

Question 10

hacienda

Answer 10

Large-scale farm in the Spanish New World empire worked by Indian laborers.

Question 11

mestizos

Answer 11

Spanish word for persons of mixed Native American and European ancestry.

Question 12

Ninety-Five Theses

Answer 12

The list of moral grievances against the Catholic Church by Martin Luther, a German priest, in 1517.

Question 13

Bartolomé de Las Casas

Answer 13

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.

Question 14

repartimiento system

Answer 14

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.

Question 15

Black Legend

Answer 15

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

Question 16

Pueblo Revolt

Answer 16

Uprising in 1680 in which Pueblo Indians temporarily drove Spanish colonists out of modern-day New Mexico

Question 17

indentured servants

Answer 17

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.

Question 18

métis

Answer 18

Children of marriages between Indian women and French traders and officials

Question 19

borderland

Answer 19

A place between or near recognized borders where no group of people has complete political control or cultural dominance.

Question 20

Virginia Company

Answer 20

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.

Question 21

Anglican Church

Answer 21

The established state church of England, formed by Henry VII after the pope refused to annul his marriage to Catherine of Aragon.

Question 22

Roanoke colony

Answer 22

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.

Question 23

enclosure movement

Answer 23

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.

Question 24

John Smith

Answer 24

A swashbuckling soldier of fortune with rare powers of leadership and self-promotion who was appointed to the resident council to manage Jamestown.

Question 25

headright system

Answer 25

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.

Question 26

House of Burgesses

Answer 26

The first elected assembly in colonial America, established in 1619 in Virginia. Only wealthy landowners could vote in its elections.

Question 27

Uprising of 1622

Answer 27

Unsuccessful uprising of Virginia Native Americans that wiped out one-quarter of the settler population, but ultimately led to the settlers gaining supremacy.

Question 28

dower rights

Answer 28

In colonial America, the right of a widowed woman to inherit one-third of her deceased husband’s property.

Question 29

Puritans

Answer 29

English religious group that sought to purify the Church of England; founded the Massachusetts Bay Colony under John Winthrop in 1630.

Question 30

John Winthrop

Answer 30

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.

Question 31

Pilgrims

Answer 31

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.

Question 32

Mayflower Compact

Answer 32

Document signed in 1620 aboard the Mayflower before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth; the document committed the group to majority-rule government.

Question 33

Great Migration (1630s)

Answer 33

The migration of approximately 21,000 English Puritans to the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

Question 34

Dissenters

Answer 34

Protestants who belonged to denominations outside of the established Anglican Church.

Question 35

captivity narratives

Answer 35

Accounts written by colonists after their time in Indian captivity, often stressing the captive’s religious convictions.

Question 36

Pequot War

Answer 36

An armed conflict in 1637 that led to the destruction of one of New England’s most powerful Indian groups.

Question 37

Half-Way Covenant

Answer 37

A 1662 religious compromise that allowed baptism and partial church membership to colonial New Englanders whose parents were not among the Puritan elect.

Question 38

English liberty

Answer 38

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.

Question 39

Maryland Toleration Act

Answer 39

1649 law that granted free exercise of religion to all Christian denominations in colonial Maryland.

Question 40

Metacom

Answer 40

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.

Question 41

King Philip’s War

Answer 41

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.

Question 42

mercantilism

Answer 42

Policy of Great Britain and other imperial powers of regulating the economies of colonies to benefit the mother country.

Question 43

Navigation Act

Answer 43

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.

Question 44

Covenant Chain

Answer 44

Alliance formed in the 1670s between the English and the Iroquois nations.

Question 45

Yamasee uprising

Answer 45

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.

Question 46

Society of Friends (Quakers)

Answer 46

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.

Question 47

plantation

Answer 47

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.

Question 48

Bacon’s Rebellion

Answer 48

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.

Question 49

Glorious Revolution

Answer 49

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.

Question 50

English Bill of Rights

Answer 50

A series of laws enacted in 1689 that inscribed the rights of Englishmen into law and enumerated parliamentary powers such as taxation.

Question 51

Lords of Trade

Answer 51

An English regulatory board established to oversee colonial affairs in 1675.

Question 52

Dominion of New England

Answer 52

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.

Question 53

English Toleration Act of 1690

Answer 53

A 1690 act of Parliament that allowed all English Protestants to worship freely.

Question 54

Salem witch trials

Answer 54

A crisis of trials and executions in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1692 that resulted from anxiety over witchcraft.

Question 55

redemptioners

Answer 55

Indentured families or persons who received passage to the New World in exchange for a promise to work off their debt in America.

Question 56

Walking Purchase of 1737

Answer 56

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.

Question 57

backcountry

Answer 57

In colonial America, the area stretching from central Pennsylvania southward through the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia and into upland North and South Carolina.

Question 58

staple crops

Answer 58

Important cash crops; for example, cotton or tobacco.

Question 59

Atlantic slave trade

Answer 59

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.

Question 60

Middle Passage

Answer 60

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,

Question 61

yeoman farmers

Answer 61

Small landowners (the majority of white families in the Old South) who farmed their own land and usually did not own slaves.

Question 62

Stono Rebellion

Answer 62

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.

Question 63

republicanism

Answer 63

Political theory in eighteenth-century England and America that celebrated active participation in public life by economically independent citizens as central to freedom.

Question 64

liberalism

Answer 64

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.

Question 65

salutary neglect

Answer 65

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.

Question 66

Enlightenment

Answer 66

Revolution in thought in the eighteenth century that emphasized reason and science over the authority of traditional religion

Question 67

Deism

Answer 67

Enlightenment thought applied to religion; emphasized reason, morality, and natural law.

Question 68

Great Awakening

Answer 68

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.

Question 69

Father Junípero Serra

Answer 69

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.

Question 70

middle ground

Answer 70

A borderland between European empires and Indian sovereignty where various native peoples and Europeans lived side by side in relative harmony.

Question 71

Seven Years’ War

Answer 71

The last—and most important—of four colonial wars fought between England and France for control of North America east of the Mississippi River.

Question 72

French and Indian War

Answer 72

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)

Question 73

Pontiac’s Rebellion

Answer 73

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.

Question 74

Neolin

Answer 74

A Native American religious prophet who, by preaching pan-Indian unity and rejection of European technology and commerce, helped inspire Pontiac’s Rebellion.

Question 75

Proclamation of 1763

Answer 75

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.

Question 76

Albany Plan of Union

Answer 76

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.