Unit 1 vocab Flashcards
Claimed islands in the Caribbean for Spain 1492-1504. He established the Spanish empire as he sought a western passage to the Indies. A poor administrator, he died disgraced in 1506.
Christopher Columbus
Dominican priest who in the early 1500s criticized the cruelty of Spanish policy toward Indians; denounced Spanish actions for their brutality and insensitivity. His criticism helped end the encomienda system.
Bartolomé de las Casas
transfer, beginning with Columbus’s first voyage, of plants, animals, and diseases between the Western Hemisphere and the Eastern Hemisphere. This included squash, potatoes, and corn (maize) from the New World and cattle, horses, and smallpox from Europe.
Columbian Exchange
Widespread occurrence of an infectious disease, such as smallpox, in a community at a particular time.
Epidemic
Early Spanish colonial system where officials provided protection to Indian populations in return for their labor and production; really a form of slavery that lasted until the mid 1500s; stopped because of exploitation and inefficiency.
Encomienda system
Conquered Aztecs in Mexico. He captured the capital of Tenochititlán, with its leader Montezuma in 1521; pillaged and destroyed the Aztec civilization.
Hernándo Cortés
Mythical water route to Asia. The search for the western path to India and China propelled the encounters and exploration of the Western Hemisphere in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
Northwest Passage
Indian uprising in New Mexico in 1680 against Spain and the Catholic Church. Rebels killed 400 colonists, destroyed mission around Santa Fe; held off the Spanish for 14 years.
Pueblo Revolt
Northernmost British colonies inclusive of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and New Hampshire. The Massachusetts Bay Colony was founded primarily as a refuge for Pilgrims and Puritans seeking religious freedom for themselves.
New England Colonies
British colonies between the New England and Chesapeake Colonies inclusive of Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, and Delaware. The Middle Colonies were primarily characterized by their religious and social diversity.
Middle Colonies
British colonies inclusive of Virginia and Maryland. Further south, these colonies were characterized by an economic dependence on cash crops like tobacco.
Chesapeake Colonies
Inclusive of South Carolina, North Carolina, and Georgia. South Carolina in particular became increasingly reliant on slavery because of an economy dependent on labor-intensive crops like rice and indigo.
Southern Colonies
An act passed in Maryland in 1649 that granted freedom of worship to all Christians; although it was enacted to protect the Catholic minority in Maryland, it was a benchmark of religious freedom in all the colonies. It did not extend to non-Christians, however.
Maryland Toleration Act
Charismatic colonist in Massachusetts Bay who questioned whether one could achieve salvation solely by good works; she led the Antinomian controversy by challenging the clergy and the laws of the colony. She was banished from Massachusetts in 1638 and was killed by Indians in 1643.
Anne Hutchinson
Church of England started by King Henry VIII in 1533; the monarch was head of the church, which was strongest in North America in the Southern Colonies. By 1776, it was the second-largest church in America behind the Congregationalists.
Anglican Church
Believed the Anglican Church retained too many Catholic ideas and sought to purify the Church of England; the Puritans believed in predestination (man saved or damned at birth) and also held that God was watchful and granted salvation only to those who adhered to His goodness as interpreted by the church. The Puritans were strong in New England and very intolerant of other religious groups.
Congregationalist (Puritans)
Puritan response to the dilemma of what to do with the children born to nonchurch members as fewer and fewer Puritans sought full membership (visible sainthood) in the church; leaders allowed such children to be baptized, but they could not take communion, nor could nonchurch males vote in government/church affairs.
Halfway Covenant
Means of attracting settlers to colonial America; the system gave land to a family head and to anyone he sponsored coming to the colony, including indentured servants. The amount of land varied from fifty to two-hundred acres per person.
Headright system
First popularly-elected legislative assembly in America; it met in Jamestown in 1619.
House of Burgesses
Mainstay of the labor needs in many colonies, especially in the Chesapeake regions in the seventeenth century; indentured servants were “rented slaves” who served four to seven years and then were freed to make their way in the world. Most of the servants were from the ranks of the poor, political dissenters, and criminals in England.
Indentured servants
Saved Jamestown through firm leadership in 1607 and 1608; he imposed work and order in the settlement and later published several books promoting colonization of North America.
John Smith
Leader of the Puritans who settled in Massachusetts Bay in the 1630s; he called for Puritans to create “a city upon a hill” and guided the colony through many crises, including the banishments of Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson.
John Winthrop
Written agreement in 1620 to create a body politic among the male settlers in Plymouth; it was the forerunner to charters and constitutions that were eventually adopted in all the colonies.
Mayflower Compact
Economic doctrine that called for the mother country to dominate and regulate its colonies, the system fixed trade patterns, maintained high tariffs, and discouraged manufacturing in the colonies.
Mercantilism
