Vocab Units 1 & 2

Question 1

Act of Toleration- Cecil Calvert

Answer 1

Passed in Maryland, it guaranteed toleration to all Christians but decreed the death penalty for those, like Jews and atheists, who denied the divinity of Jesus Christ. Ensured that Maryland would continue to attract a high proportion of Catholic migrants throughout the colonial period. Colonists had to be loyal to Cecil Calvert and the civil government.

Question 2

Anne Hutchinson/antinomianism

Answer 2

Belief that the elect need not obey the law of either God or man; most notably espoused in the colonies by Anne Hutchinson.

Question 3

Asiento System

Answer 3

Contract between the Spanish crown and a private person or other power that gave the contractor the right to supply enslaved Africans to Spanish colonies in the Americas

Question 4

Bacon’s Rebellion

Answer 4

Uprising of Virginia back-country farmers and indentured servants led by planter Nathanial Bacon; initially a response to Governor William Berkeley’s refusal to protect backcountry settlers from Indian attacks, the rebellion eventually grew into a broader conflict between impoverished settlers and the planter elite.

Question 5

Capitalism

Answer 5

Economic system characterized by private property, generally free trade, and open and accessible markets. European colonization of the Americas, and in particular, the discovery of vast bullion deposits, helped bring about Europe’s transition to capitalism.

Question 6

Captain John Smith

Answer 6

Adventurer, soldier, explorer and author. Through the telling of his early life, we can trace the developments of a man who became a dominate force in the eventual success of Jamestown and the establishment of its legacy as the first permanent English settlement in North America.

Question 7

Charter of Liberties- William Penn

Answer 7

Penn envisioned a colony that permitted religious freedom, the consent and participation of the governed, as well as other laws pertaining to property rights.

Question 8

Columbian Exchange

Answer 8

The transfer of goods, crops, and diseases between New and Old World societies after 1492

Question 9

Conquistadores –Cortés/Pizarro

Answer 9

Conquistadores: 16th century Spaniards who fanned out across the Americas, from Colorado to Argentina, eventually conquering the Aztec and Incan empires.

Question 10

Corporate colony

Answer 10

A colony that was granted a royal charter by the English throne and established by a joint-stock company

Question 11

Encomienda System

Answer 11

Spanish government’s policy to “commend” or give, Indians to certain colonists in return for the promise to Christianize them. Part of a broader Spanish effort to subdue Indian tribes in the West Indies and on the North American mainland.

Question 12

Effects of Enlightenment

Answer 12

Brought secular thought to Europe and reshaped the ways people understood issues such as liberty, equality, and individual rights

Question 13

Father Bartolomé de Las Casas

Answer 13

Outspoken critic of the Spanish colonial government in the Americas. Las Casas was especially critical of the system of slavery in the West Indies.

Question 14

Fundamental Orders of Connecticut- Thomas Hooker (1693)

Answer 14

Drafted by settlers in the Connecticut River valley, this document was the first “modern constitution” establishing a democratically controlled government. Key features of the document were borrowed for Connecticut’s colonial charter and, later, its state constitution.

Question 15

Frame of Government-William Penn

Answer 15

An expression of Penn’s religious and political ideas. He sought to create a framework that would frustrate political mischief and prevent a ruler from assuming absolute power to the detriment of the community.

Question 16

Great Awakening - Edwards/Whitefield

Answer 16

Religious revival that swept the colonies. Participating ministers, most notably Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield, placed an emphasis on direct, emotive spiritually.

Question 17

Halfway covenant

Answer 17

Agreement allowing unconverted offspring of church members to baptize their children. It signified a waning of religious zeal among second- and third-generation Puritans.

Question 18

House of Burgesses

Answer 18

Representative parliamentary assembly created to govern Virginia, establishing a precedent for government in the English colonies.

Question 19

Headright system

Answer 19

Employed in the tobacco colonies to encourage the importation of indentured servants, the system allowed an individual to acquire fifty acres of land if he paid for a laborer’s passage to the colony.

Question 20

Iroquois Confederation

Answer 20

Bound together five tribes - the Mohawks, the Oneidas, the Onondagas, the Cayugas, and the Senecas - in the Mohawk Valley of what is now NY.

Question 21

King Philip’s War

Answer 21

Series of assaults by Metacom, King Philip, on English settlements in New England. The attacks slowed the westward migration of New England settlers for several decades.

Question 22

Joint-stock company

Answer 22

Short-term partnership between multiple investors to fund a commercial enterprise; such arrangements were used to fund England’s early colonial ventures.

Question 23

John Rolfe

Answer 23

John Rolfe served as secretary and recorder general of Virginia (1614–1619) and as a member of the governor’s Council (1614–1622). He is best known for having married Pocahontas in 1614 and for being the first to cultivate marketable tobacco in Virginia.

Question 24

John Winthrop

Answer 24

First governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and a prominent figure among the Puritan founders of New England

Question 25

Juan Gines de Sepulveda

Answer 25

Argued that Native Americans were “barbaric” and “savage” by nature and therefore justified their subjugation by the Spanish Empire.

Question 26

John Peter Zenger

Answer 26

New York printer and journalist whose famous acquittal in a libel suit (1735) established the first important victory for freedom of the press in the English colonies of North America.

Question 27

Mayflower Compact

Answer 27

Agreement to form a majoritarian government in Plymouth, signed aboard the Mayflower. Created a foundation for self-government in the colony

Question 28

Mercantilism

Answer 28

Economic theory that closely linked a nation’s political and military power to its bullion reserves. Mercantilists generally favored protectionism and colonial acquisition as means to increase exports.

Question 29

New Laws of 1542

Answer 29

A series of laws and regulations approved by the King of Spain in November of 1542 to regulate the Spaniards who were enslaving Indigenous people in the Americas, particularly in Peru.

Question 30

Navigation Acts

Answer 30

Series of laws passed, beginning in 1651, to regulate colonial shipping; the acts provided that only English ships would be allowed to trade in English and colonial ports and that all goods destined for the colonies would first pass through England.

Question 31

Proprietary colony

Answer 31

Colonies - Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Delaware - under the control of local proprietors, who appointed colonial governors

Question 32

Protestant Reformation (think Catholic expansion)

Answer 32

Movement to reform the Catholic Church launched in Germany by Martin Luther. Reformers questioned the authority of the Pope, sought to eliminate the selling of indulgences, and encouraged the translation of the Bible from Latin, which few at the time could read. The Reformation was launched in England in the 1530s when King Henry VIII broke with the Roman Catholic Church.

Question 33

Royal colony

Answer 33

Colonies where governors were appointed directly by the king. Though often competent administrators, the governors frequently ran into trouble with colonial legislatures, which resented the imposition of control from across the Atlantic.

Question 34

Roger Williams- RI

Answer 34

Separatist leader and the founder of the colony of Providence Plantations, which became Rhode Island. He is best remembered for his advocacy of religious freedom and separation of church and state.

Question 35

Separatists/Pilgrims

Answer 35

Small group of Puritans who sought to break away entirely from the Church of England; after initially settling in Holland, a number of English Separatists made their way to Plymouth Bay, Massachusetts, in 1620.

Question 36

Slave trade/Middle Passage

Answer 36

Middle segment of the forced journey that slaves made from Africa to America throughout the 1600’s; it consisted of the dangerous trip across the Atlantic Ocean; many slaves perished on this segment of the journey.

Question 37

Salutary neglect

Answer 37

Unofficial policy of relaxed royal control over colonial trade and only weak enforcement of Navigation Laws. Lasted from the Glorious Revolution to the end of the French and Indian war in 1763.

Question 38

Sectarian vs. Nonsectarian

Answer 38

Sectarian means closely adhering to a particular belief system, while nonsectarian means not affiliated with a specific belief system

Question 39

Slave laws

Answer 39

Strictly regulated the lives of enslaved people, defining them as property, limiting their movements, prohibiting assembly, and essentially giving absolute power to slave owners to control their enslaved population

Question 40

Treaty of Tordesillas

Answer 40

Signed by Spain and Portugal, dividing the territories of the New World. Spain received the bulk of territory in the Americas, compensating Portugal with titles to lands in Africa and Asia.

Question 41

Triangular Trade

Answer 41

Exchange of rum, slaves, and molasses between the North American colonies, Africa, and the West Indies. A small but immensely profitable subset of the Atlantic trade.