Key Concepts Flashcards
Coureurs de Bois
An independent entrepreneurial French-Canadian woodsman who traveled in New France and the interior of North America. They ventured into the woods usually to trade various European items and learned the trades and practices of the Native people.
Mayflower Compact
- the first governing document of Plymouth Colony written by the Pilgrim Fathers
- signed aboard ship on November 11, 1620
The Mayflower was originally bound for the Colony of Virginia, financed by the Company of Merchant Adventurers of London. Storms forced them to anchor at the hook of Cape Cod in what is now Massachusetts. This inspired some of the Strangers to proclaim that since the settlement would not be made in the agreed upon Virginia territory, they “would use their own liberty; for none had power to command them….”
To prevent this, the Pilgrims chose to establish a government. The Mayflower Compact was based simultaneously upon a majoritarian model (taking into account that women could not vote) and the settlers’ allegiance to the king. It was in essence a social contract in which the settlers consented to follow the compact’s rules and regulations for the sake of order and survival.
Protestant Work Ethic (Weber Thesis)
The Protestant work ethic is a concept which emphasizes hard work, frugality and diligence as a constant display of a person’s salvation in the Christian faith, in contrast to the focus upon religious attendance, confession, and ceremonial sacrament in the Catholic tradition. The phrase was initially coined in 1904 by Max Weber in his book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.
Mercantilism
Mercantilism was an economic theory and practice, dominant in Europe from the 16th to the 18th century, that promoted governmental regulation of a nation’s economy for the purpose of augmenting state power at the expense of rival national powers.
accumulating monetary reserves through a positive balance of trade, especially of finished goods.
- Building overseas colonies
- Forbidding colonies to trade with other nations
- Monopolizing markets with staple ports
- Banning the export of gold and silver, even for payments
- Forbidding trade to be carried in foreign ships
- Maximizing the use of domestic resources
Articles of Confederation
The Articles of Confederation was a document signed amongst the 13 original colonies that established the United States of America as a confederation of sovereign states and served as its first constitution. Its drafting by a committee appointed by the Second Continental Congress began on July 12, 1776. The formal ratification by all 13 states was completed in early 1781. Even when not yet ratified, the Articles provided domestic and international legitimacy for the Continental Congress to direct the American Revolutionary War, conduct diplomacy with Europe and deal with territorial issues and Native American relations. Nevertheless, the weakness of the government created by the Articles became a matter of concern for key nationalists. On March 4, 1789, general government under the Articles was replaced with the federal government under the U.S. Constitution. The new Constitution provided for a much stronger federal government with a chief executive (the president), courts, and taxing powers.
Northwest Ordinance
The Northwest Ordinance was an act of the Congress of the Confederation of the United States and passed July 13, 1787. The ordinance created the Northwest Territory, the first organized territory of the United States, from lands beyond the Appalachian Mountains, between British Canada and the Great Lakes to the north and the Ohio River to the south. The upper Mississippi River formed the Territory’s western boundary. It established the precedent by which the Federal government would be sovereign and expand westward across North America with the admission of new states, rather than with the expansion of existing states and their established sovereignty under the Articles of Confederation.
Bill of Rights
The Bill of Rights is the collective name for the first ten amendments to the United States Constitution. Proposed to calm the fears of Anti-Federalists who had opposed Constitutional ratification, these amendments guarantee a number of personal freedoms, limit the government’s power in judicial and other proceedings, and reserve some powers to the states and the public. Created 1789, ratified 1791.
Tecumseh
Chief of the Indian tribe Shawnee
William Henry Harrison, governor of the Indiana territory, eager to turn his territory into a recognized state, purchased land from Indians to attract settlers. Although Washington instructed to negotiate only with Indians who had claims to the land, Harrison payed “random” Indians two cents an acre.
This treaty outraged the tribes who had actually claims to the land and especially Tecumseh. He built a coalition of several tribes and insisted that Indian land belonged collectively to all tribes and therefore could not be bought from individuals.
—> Battle of Tippecanoe btw. Harrison and Tenskwatawa (—> Harrison as a national hero)
Tecumseh rose to a position of recognized leadership among the western tribes —> alliance with the British to stop the spread of American settlement.
Toussaint l’Ouverture
(1743-1803)
Former slave and leader of the Haitian Revolution, who took over the government after a bloody slave revolution in Saint Domingue (then: French colony; modern Haiti and the Dominican Republic) in 1800.
Haitian Revolution
1791–1804
The Haitian Revolution (1791–1804) was a slave revolt in the French colony of Saint-Domingue, which culminated in the elimination of slavery there and the founding of the Republic of Haiti. The Haitian Revolution, inspired by the French Revolution, was the only slave revolt which led to the founding of a state. The revolt began with a rebellion of black African slaves in April of 1791. It ended in November of 1803 with the French defeat at the Battle of Vertières. Haiti became an independent country on January 1, 1804, with Jean-Jacques Dessalines being chosen by a council of generals to assume the office of governor-general. He ordered the 1804 Haiti Massacre of the white Haitian minority, resulting in the deaths of between 3,000 and 5,000 people, between February and April 1804.
Louisiana Purchase
The Louisiana Purchase ($15 million) doubled the area of the United States
—> In 1800, a weakened Spain returned Louisiana to France which, under Napoleon Bonaparte, was fast emerging as Europe’s longest military power (—> creating a French New World empire). Bonaparte sent an army to reassert French control and reestablish slavery, but failed. Then focused his attention on Europe.
—> New Orleans was the only port for the produce of the farmers along the Ohio and the Mississippi river.
Panic of 1837
After Andrew Jackson left office and Martin Van Buren was in charge a severe depression, called the Panic of 1837, struck. 7year recession. 1835/36 speculative boom: banks doubled, value of bank notes in circulation tripled, commodity and land prizes went up May 1837: prices tumbled, paper money (soft currency) could no longer be exchanged for hard coin, wages dropped —> despair William Miller (end-of-world religious leader): followers ascend into heaven October 22, 1843
Philadelphia Convention
The Constitutional Convention, which was supposed to improve the Articles of Confederation of 1781, but the delegates decided to write an entirely new constitution
—> therefore the event is the origin of the constitution of the U.S.
Federalist Papers
- a collection of 85 articles and essays written by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay promoting the ratification of the United States Constitution. Seventy-seven were published serially in The Independent Journal and The New York Packet between October of 1787 and August 1788
Checks and Balances
A system to prevent one branch from becoming supreme, protect the “opulent minority” from the majority, and to induce the branches to cooperate, government systems that employ a separation of powers need a way to balance each of the branches.
- allow for a system-based regulation that allows one branch to limit another, such as the power of Congress to alter the composition and jurisdiction of the federal courts
- governmental systems apply the principles of the separation of powers to allow for the branches represented by the separate powers to hold each other reciprocally responsible to the assertion of powers as apportioned by law
