History Final Flashcards
prep for exam
Reconquista
The “reconquest” of Spain from the Moors was completed by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella in 1492.
Columbian exchange
The transatlantic flow of goods and people began with Columbus’s voyages in 1492.
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.
Panic of 1837
Beginning of major economic depression lasting about six years; touched off by a British financial crisis and made worse by falling cotton prices, credit and currency problems, and speculation in land, canals, and railroads.
John Smith
An English soldier and explorer who became one of the leaders of the Jamestown colony and helped to establish relations with the Powhatans. His narratives describe the early history of Jamestown as well as his explorations of what became New England.
Proslavery argument
The series of arguments defending the institution of slavery in the South as a positive good, not a necessary evil. The arguments included the racist belief that Black people were inherently inferior to white people, as well as the belief that slavery, in creating a permanent underclass of laborers, made freedom possible for whites. Other elements of the argument included biblical citations.
Manifest destiny
Phrase first used in 1845 to urge annexation of Texas; used thereafter to encourage U.S. settlement of European colonial and Native lands in the Great Plains and the West and, more generally, as a justification for American empire.
Indian Removal Act
An 1830 law signed by President Andrew Jackson that permitted the negotiation of treaties to obtain Native Americans’ lands in exchange for their deportation to what would become Oklahoma.
Tenochtitlan
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.
Roanoke Colony
Failed English attempt to establish a colony on Roanoke Island in the Outer Banks; the colony disappeared sometime between 1587 and 1590.
Pequot War
An armed conflict in 1637 was fought between the Pequot Indians and an alliance of Narragansett, Mohegan, and English. The Pequot loss led to most of them being killed, enslaved, or incorporated into other Native nations.
Plantation
An early word for a colony, a settlement “planted” from abroad among an alien population in Ireland or the Americas; later, a large agricultural enterprise that used unfree labor to produce a crop for the world market.
Puritans
English religious group that sought to purify the Church of England; founded the Massachusetts Bay Colony under John Winthrop in 1630.
King Philip’s War (Metacom’s War)
A multiyear conflict that began in 1675 between the English and a Native alliance led by Wampanoags Metacom (King Philip) and Weetamoo. Its result was broadened freedoms for white New Englanders and the dispossession of the Wampanoags and other Indians.
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
Natchez War
War begun in 1729 by the Natchez Indians against the French who were building plantations on Natchez land. With help from Native allies, the French won the war and drove the Natchez from their homeland.
Walking Purchase
An infamous 1737 purchase of Native American land in which Pennsylvanian colonists tricked the Delaware Indians, who had 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
Atlantic Slave Trade
The systematic importation of African people from their native continent across the Atlantic Ocean to the Americas, fueled largely by rising demand for sugar, rice, coffee, and tobacco
Middle Passage
he 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, and finally conveyed American agricultural products back to Europe; from the late sixteenth to the early nineteenth centuries, some 12 million Africans were transported via the Middle Passage, unknown millions more dying en route.
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
An uprising by enslaved men 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.
