Colonial Culture Flashcards
Henry Hudson
An English explorer sponsored by the Dutch East India Company, Hudson sailed up the river that now bears his name in 1609. His explorations gave the Dutch territorial claims to the Hudson Bay region.
New Amsterdam
A company town on Manhattan Island (purchased by the Dutch from the Indians for virtually nothing.)
New Sweden
A colony on the Delaware river which was defeated and taken by the Dutch in 1655.
bread colonies
The nickname of the middle colonies due to their grain production.
indentured servants
English settlers who worked in Virginia in exchange for free passage.
freedom dues
Given to indentured servants in Virginia, consisted of a few barrels of corn, a suit of clothes, and possibly a small piece of land.
Headright system
Encouraged the importation of servants. Whoever paid their passage, received 50 acres of land.
Bacon’s Rebellion
1676- Lead by frustrated freeman Nathaniel Bacon, a mob of former indentured servants took Virginia into civil war after the governor refused to retaliate for Indian attacks. It was squashed after Bacon’s sudden death and colonists now looked to Africa for servitude.
William Berkeley
Governor of Virginia during Bacon’s Rebellion.
Royal African Company
A slave trade company which eventually lost it’s charter leading to many Rhode Islanders cashing in on the slave trade.
slave codes
Beginning in Virginia in 1662, they set up the iron-clad conditions of slavery.
Gullah
A language evolved by slaves which blended English and traditional African languages.
Great Planters
Owned gangs of slaves and vast domains of land; ruled the region’s economy and monopolized political power. Top of the Virginian social pyramid.
Small Farmers
Largest social group; tilled their own modest plots and may have owned one or two slaves. Second of the Virginian social pyramid.
Landless Whites
Former indentured servants, they made up the bottom of the Virginia social pyramid, just one above black slaves.
Rights of women prior to the Revolutionary War:
In New England, women had no property rights and the church inherited everything upon their husbands death. In the Chesapeake, women retained their own property rights and inheritance rights due to the proclivity of men dying young.
Harvard College
Established in Massachusetts in 1636, the first college in the United States.
William and Mary College
The first university established in Virginia, 1693.
jeremiad
Speeches delivered at Puritan pulpits which were very dramatic and overwrought.
Half-Way Covenant
A 1662 decision by Puritan officials to boost membership, it allowed for the baptism, but not full communion, of the children of existing members.
Salem Witch Trial
1629 outbreak of witchcraft accusations in a puritan village marked by an atmosphere of fear, hysteria and stress.
Leisler’s Rebellion
1689-1691, an ill-fated bloody insurgency in New York City took place between landholders and aspiring merchants.
great wagon road
A chain of Scots-Irish settlements in the Appalachians.
March of the Paxton Boys
Lead by Scots-Irish to protest the Quakers’ lenient policy towards the Indians in 1764.
The Regulator movement
A nasty insurrection 1765-1771 in North and South Carolina against corrupt colonial officials.
Molasses Act
1764- Passed by Parliament to crush North American trade with the French West Indies, bypassed by smuggling.
The Great Awakening
A spiritual reawakening in the 1730s and 1740s. It created many new churches and undermined the old clergy.
Jonathan Edwards
A Massachusetts preacher who began the Great Awakening with his alive style of preaching. He said that through faith in God, not good works, one could achieve eternal salvation.
George Whitefield
An enthusiastic preacher during the Great Awakening.
The old lights
Older clergy skeptical of the new way of preaching which emerged during the Great Awakening.
The new lights
Defended the Great Awakening, claiming it revitalized American religion.
John Peter Zenger
A newspaper editor who was found not guilty in 1734 for printing criticisms of the royal New York governor, paving the way for Freedom of Speech.
Lord Cornbury
Governor of New York and New Jersey, he was a drunkard and a thief.
