Pre-Columbian era

• Name for the period of History in the New World before Christopher Columbus became the first European to arrive (except for the Vikings’ limited exploration) in 1492

Mercantilism

• Economic system that promoted the establishment of colonies around the world for the enrichment of European powers during the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries

• Under this system, colonies exported raw materials to the powerful European “motherland” and then purchased the finished products produced from these raw materials

• System explains why nations were so eager to find, populate, and maintain colonies

Christopher Columbus

•Italian-born explorer who sailed on behalf of Spain

•First European (except for the Vikings) to land in the Americas (the New World) in 1492

New World

•Popular name for the Americas in the century or so after Christopher Columbus became the first European to “discover” the area

Conquistadors

• Name for Spanish explorers who flocked to the New World in the sixteenth century

• They were seeking gold and other treasures, and they treated the Native Americans brutally

• They were often accompanied by the Catholic missionaries

Industrial Revolution

• Term for the conversion of society from an agrarian one (centered on farming and other agricultural pursuits) to an industrial one (centered on manufacturing and other mechanized pursuits).

• Took place in the mid eighteenth century• Took place in America in the nineteenth century• Initially focused in the American northeast

Jamestown

• First successful colony in Virginia • Founded in 1607• More than two-thirds of the original settlers died

during the “starving time” of the first winter• Site of John Rolf’s first experiment plating

tobacco for export to Britain• Served as the capital of Virginia for many years

Joint-stock company

• A company funded by selling stock to investors to fund exploration and colonization in the 16th and 17th centuries.

• Virginia was founded by a joint stock company that earned great dividends for its stockholders from the sale of tobacco exported to Britain from Virginia

John Smith

• First governor of the Jamestown colony

Powhatan

The name of the group of Native American peoples that lived in eastern Virginia at the time of the first English settlements.

Tobacco

The English colonists discovered that they could sell this crop in Europe for a great profit

John Rolfe grew it and sold it back to England, this saved the Jamestown colony.

Headright system

The name of the system, in which each new person who came to the colony received 50 acres of land and another 50 acres for each family member who came.

Cash Crop

A crop grown for sale rather than the farmers personal use

Indentured Servant

• A person who could not afford passage to the American colonies from Britain and promised his or her servitude (usually for a period of seven years) to someone who was then willing to pay his or her passage across the Atlantic Ocean.

• Became less popular as slavery became more widespread.

House of Burgesses

• Legislature of colonial Virginia

• First legislature body in colonial America

slavery

• Practice of buying and selling people from Africa and of African descent as household servants and/or farm workers

• First practiced in the New World in Virginia in 1619• Slaves were imported from Africa, where they were brought or

kidnapped and transported to the Americas by a sea voyage known as the Middle Passage

• In the American colonies it was more prevalent in the South than in the North

• Created political problems, beginning with the drafting of the Constitution and lasting through the Civil War

• Ended by the 13th Amendment (one of the Civil War Amendments)

The Ring Shout

This dance paid tribute to the ancestors and gods of the

slaves.

Triangular Trade

• In this process merchants carried rum and other goods from New England to Africa. In Africa merchants traded merchandise for enslaved people. They transported these people to the West Indies and sold them for Sugar and molasses. These goods were then shipped to New England to be distilled into rum.

Middle Passage

• Middle leg of the journey from Europe to Africa to America, then back to Europe in which slaves, spices, furs, gold, and other goods were transported

• Name by which the brutal experience of crossing the Indian and Atlantic Oceans after being sold or kidnapped into slavery in Africa was known

• Almost 15 percent of slaves did not survive the trip

Pilgrims

• Religious dissidents who left England for freedom in the American colonies.

• Settled first in Plymouth, Massachusetts• Came over on the Mayflower, from which their

agreement on how to govern the Colony, the Mayflower Compact, took its name.

• Pioneered the concept of the separation of the church and state.

• Separate from the puritans, who maintained membership in the Church of England Pilgrims had abandoned.

Mayflower Compact

• The first “constitution” in North America

• Signed by 41 Pilgrim men who came to Plymouth on the Mayflower in 1620

• Established the rule of law and the separation of church and state

Separation of Church and State

• Notion that government and religion should function separately

• Established in the Constitution by the First Amendment (in the Bill of Rights)

• Pioneered by the Pilgrims in the Mayflower Compact and first entered into American law by Thomas Jefferson’s Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom

Plymouth

• Massachusetts settlement founded by the Pilgrims in 1621

• Governed by the Mayflower Compact

New Netherland

Colony founded by the Dutch in 1621

New Amsterdam

Capital of the Dutch colony New Netherland

Puritans

• Religious dissidents who left England to establish a purer branch of the Church of England

• Settled the Massachusetts Bay Colony around the area we now know as Boston in 1630

• Led by John Winthrop, who envisioned the Puritan society as an example to the world, a “City Upon a Hill”

• Separate from the Pilgrims, who abandoned the Church of England

Pequot War

The name of the 1st major conflict between the New England colonists and Native Americans that arose in Connecticut in 1637.

Roger Williams

the preacher that Puritan leaders banished for his beliefs that government officials should not punish those with different religious views and that settlers should buy, not take, land from the Native Americans.He would later form a colony in what is now Rhode Island.

John Winthorp

the first governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony (New England)

Anne Hutchinson

Woman that was banished for her beliefs that people did not need church leaders to interpret the bible, and that people could gain enlightenment on their own through the holy spirit.

Metacom

The Wampanoag chief (nicknamed King Phillip) that led a war against the English which would cost the colonists 1/10th of their fighting age men. He was eventually killed by the Puritans and his head was put on display for 20 years in Plymouth.

Bacon’s Rebellion

• 1675 uprising in Virginia

• Led by Nathaniel Bacon, who was unhappy about the colonial government’s unwillingness to help settlers on the western frontier protect themselves against Native Americans

• He turned his sites to the colonial government, deposing the governor and burning down Jamestown

• Bacon died in 1676, allowing the previous governor, William Berkeley, to regain control of Virginia.

King Philip’s War

• Led by King Phillip, a Native American tribal leader whose Indian name was Metacom

• Fought when King Phillip’s Wampanoag tribe joined with two other tribes and attacked settlements on the western frontier of New England in 1675 and 1676

• Ended when King Phillip was killed in 1676

Sir Edmond Andros

The man appointed by King James II to govern over the Dominion of New England in 1686.

He severely punished smugglers and refused to allow the colonists to form assemblies

Salem Witch Trials

• Famous 1662 episode in the Puritan town of Salem, Massachusetts, in which 175 people were arrested and 22 were executed for allegedly practicing witchcraft

• Most of the testimony came from a group of teenage girls

• Invoked by some as an analogy during the McCarthyism (playwright Arthur Miller wrote The Crucible about this analogy)

First Great Awakening

• Religious revival in the 1740’s that spread a more evangelical brand of Protestantism across the colonies, including the popularization of Baptist and Methodist denominations

• George Whitfield and Jonathan Edwards were the most famous preachers of the time

This man was a religious leader during the Great Awakening of

the 1730’s and 1740’s.

Jonathan Edwards

• The phrase, "gold, God, and glory" best describes the motivations of which of the following groups during the Age of Discovery?

a) Pilgrimsb) Puritansc) conquistadorsd) Native Americans

• The first successful colony in the New World was

a) Roanokeb) Richmondc) Raleighd) Jamestown

• The first slaves introduced to the American colonies arrived in which state in 1619?

a) Georgiab) Kentuckyc) Virginiad) South Carolina

• In contrast to early settlers in Virginia and many other parts of North America who came seeking financial gain, the earliest settlers of Massachusetts came from Britain seeking

a) profitable tradeb) religious purityc) land to farmd) cleaner air

• The colony founded on principles of social equality and religious tolerance was

a) New Yorkb) Plymouthc) Massachusetts Bayd) Pennsylvania

• Which colony was established by dissenters fleeing persecution from the Puritans?

a) Rhode Islandb) Pennsylvaniac) Marylandd) Connecticut

• What was the economy of the Southern Colonies based upon?

a) lumberingb) cash cropsc) fur tradingd) shipbuilding

• The New England economy was heavily dependent on

a) slave laborb) the production of many staple

cropsc) fishing, shipbuilding, and

commerced) all of the above

• In which colony did the Quakers settle?

a) Pennsylvaniab) Virginiac) North Carolinad) Maryland

• Which colony was established as a place for Catholics but welcomed all faiths?

a) Georgiab) New Hampshirec) Connecticutd) Maryland

• Which colonies were part of the middle colonies?

a) New Jersey, Delaware, Connecticutb) New York,  New Jersey, Virginiac) Maryland, Virginia, Pennsylvaniad) Pennsylvania, New York, Delaware

• Which region of the colonies maintained allegiance to the Church of England and had closer social ties with England?

a) Middle coloniesb) Colonies in the foothills of

the Appalachiansc) Southern coloniesd) New England colonies

• What term describes people who agreed to a limited term of work in exchange for passage to North America as well as food and shelter?

a) indentured servantsb) slaveryc) headright systemd) separatists

• What cargo was carried on what is known as the middle passage of  triangular trade?

a) enslaved peopleb) rumc) lumberd) tobacco

• What was the House of Burgesses?

a) the Virginia colonial assemblyb) the U.S. House of

Representativesc) a Virginia family's homed) the hereditary line of

England's kings

• Which city did NOT grow as a seaport or commercial center during the colonial period?

a) Raleighb) Baltimorec) Philadelphiad) New York City

• The Great Awakening caused some colonists to

a) pay more attention to scientific method.

b) abandon their Puritan and Anglican congregations.

c) shift their loyalty from England to America.

d) seek spirituality through the use of reason.

• Which country did not have large-immigration to new areas in the New World and developed friendly relations with the native people?

a) Franceb) Portugalc) Spaind) England