Period 2 Terms Flashcards
Dutch East India Company
The vehicle for the commercial ambitions of the Netherlands in the New World, especially with regards to the fur trade. Led to the founding of New Netherlands and New Amsterdam.
Mestizos
A term for people of mixed Spanish and American Indian heritage.
Pueblo Revolt
A 1680 revolt against Spanish settlers in the modern-day American Southwest. Led by a Pueblo man named Popé, it forced the Spanish to abandon Santa Fe. A rare, decisive American Indian victory against European colonization.
Indentured servants
People who offered up five to seven years of their freedom in exchange for passage to the New World. Limited rights while servants, but considered free members of society upon release. During the seventeenth century, nearly two-thirds of English immigrants were indentured servants. Declined in favor of slavery, which was more profitable to planters.
Bacon’s Rebellion
A failed 1676 rebellion in Jamestown. Led by Nathaniel Bacon, indentured servants and slaves revolted against the Virginia Colony’s aristocracy. It led to a strengthening of racially coded laws, such as the Virginia Slave Codes of 1705, in order to divide impoverished white and black slaves, thus safeguarding the planter aristocracy from future rebellions.
Sir William Berkeley
Virginia governor during Bacon’s Rebellion (1676). Ruled the colony based on the interests of the wealthy tobacco planters. In addition, Berkeley advocated for good relations with the American Indians in order to safeguard the beaver fur trade.
House of Burgesses
The first elected legislative assembly in the New World. Established in 1619. It served as a political model for subsequent English colonies. Initially, only landowners could vote, and only the Virginia Company and the governor could rescind laws.
Jamestown
Founded in Virginia in 1607, it was the first permanent English settlement in the New World. After the statehouse was burned on four separate occasions, the capital was moved to what became modern-day Williamsburg. See: John Smith, Roanoke.
Triangular Trade
A transatlantic trade network. New World colonies exported raw materials such as sugar and cotton to England. There, these materials were transformed into rum and textiles. Europeans sold these manufactured goods, including at African ports, in exchange for slaves, who would then be sold in the colonies as farm workers, thus completing the triangle.
Middle Passage
The leg of Triangular Trade which transported Africans across the Atlantic Ocean to the New World. Approximately 20 percent of enslaved Africans died before reaching the New World due to poor conditions, dehydration, and disease.
Stono Rebellion
A 1739 slave uprising in Stono, South Carolina. Led to the deaths of more than four dozen colonists and as many as 200 African slaves. Prompted South Carolina’s proprietors to create a stricter slave code.
Virginia Company
Chartered in 1606 by King James I in order to settle the North American eastern coastline. Established a headright system (1618) and the House of Burgesses (1619). By 1624, a lack of profit forced the company to concede its charter to the crown, who appointed a royal governor.
Pequot War
A war in New England in 1636–1638. Fought between the Pequot tribe and the English colonists with their American Indian allies. A catastrophic defeat for the Pequot tribe. Famous for the Mystic massacre, where over 500 Pequot were slaughtered in a blaze.
King Philip’s War
Also known as Metacom’s War, King Philip’s War (1675–1678) was an ongoing battle between English colonists and the American Indian inhabitants of New England. The English victory expanded their access to land that was previously inhabited by the natives.
Headright system
A policy where a colonial government grants a set amount of land to any settler who paid for their own—or someone else’s—passage to the New World.
Proprietary colony
A colony in which the crown allotted land and governmental command to one person. Maryland under Lord Baltimore is an example of it.
Lord Baltimore
The noble title for Cecilius Calvert. He founded Maryland in 1632 as a haven for his fellow Catholics, and advocated for peaceful coexistence between Catholics and Protestants. Overthrown during the Glorious Revolution by Protestant rebels
Pilgrims
The first Puritans to colonize the New World. Settled at Plymouth. Members of a minority group of Puritans known as separatists.
Separatists
A minority Puritan faction that wished to abandon the Church of England and form their own independent church cleansed of any lingering Catholicism. After a failed 1607–1608 effort in the Netherlands, that failed due to fears over the local culture corrupting their children, they boarded the Mayflower and founded Plymouth colony.
Plymouth
A colony in modern-day Cape Cod, founded by the Pilgrims in 1620. By 1691, it was merged with the Massachusetts Bay Colony to form the crown colony of the Province of Massachusetts Bay.
Mayflower Compact
The first written form of government in the modern-day United States. Drafted by the Pilgrims, it was an agreement to establish a secular body that would administer the leadership of the Plymouth colony.
Massachusetts Bay Company
Founded in 1629 by a collective of London financiers, who advocated for the Puritan cause and wanted to profit from American Indian trade.
Anne Hutchinson
A Puritan colonist in Massachusetts. Tried and convicted of heresy in the 1630s. She asserted that local ministers were erroneous in believing that good deeds and church attendance saved one’s soul. She believed that faith alone merited salvation.
William Penn
Founded Pennsylvania in 1683. A Quaker, Penn believed in equality between people. He owned all the colony’s land and sold it to settlers at low costs, instead of developing a headright system. The religious tolerance, excellent climate, and low cost of land appealed to immigrants from across Western Europe.
Quakers
Formally known as the “Society of Friends.” A Protestant church that advocated that everyone was equal, including women, Africans, and American Indians.
James Oglethorpe
A wealthy reformer who founded Georgia in 1733 as a haven for those who had been imprisoned in England as debtors. He initially banned slavery and alcohol from the colony, which led to many disputes among settlers. In 1751, however, the colony was surrendered to the crown, which repealed both bans.
Mercantilism
The theory that a government should control economic pursuits to further a nation’s national power, especially in the acquisition of silver and gold. Prominent in Europe from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries. Replaced by free trade.
Navigation Acts
Laws passed in 1651 as measure to supersede Dutch control of international trade. Colonial commodities such as tobacco and sugar had to be exported to England in English ships and sold in English ports before they could be re-exported to other nations’ markets. Spurred colonial resentment in the long-term.
Great Awakening
A Protestant religious movement that took place across the Thirteen Colonies during the 1730s and 1740s. It indirectly helped spur religious tolerance and led to the founding of many universities. See: Second Great Awakening.
Jonathan Edwards
A preacher credited for sparking the (First) Great Awakening. His sermons encouraged parishioners to repent of their sins and obey God’s word in order to earn mercy. He delivered his most famous sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” in 1741.
George Whitefield
A traveling New Light preacher during the Great Awakening. Known for his sermons on the “fire and brimstone” eternity that all sinners would face if they did not publicly confess their sins. Undermined the power and prestige of Old Light ministers by proclaiming that ordinary people could understand Christian doctrine without the clergy’s guidance.
