5/5 LEQ Terms

Indentured servitude

A labor system in which colonists in British North America worked for a set number of years (typically 4-7) in exchange for passage from Europe, room, and board.

Transatlantic slave trade

The forced transport of millions of Africans across the Atlantic Ocean (the Middle Passage) to the Americas between the 16th and 19th centuries to work primarily on plantations.

Fur Trade

A commercial exchange between European colonists (and later Americans) and Native Americans for animal pelts—especially beaver—for European markets, driving exploration and alliances.

Mercantilism

An economic theory that held nations should accumulate wealth (gold and silver) by exporting more than importing and by controlling colonial trade to benefit the mother country.

First Great Awakening (Great Awakening)

A series of evangelical Protestant revivals in the 1730s-40s (notably led by Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield) that emphasized personal faith, challenged established churches, and encouraged greater religious diversity.

Enlightenment

An intellectual movement in the 17th-18th centuries stressing reason, individualism, and skepticism of authority; its ideas (natural rights, social contract) deeply influenced American political thought.

Anglicization

The process by which British colonists in North America increasingly adopted English cultural norms, institutions, language, and laws during the 17th and 18th centuries.

Declaration of Independence

The document adopted on July 4, 1776, in which the thirteen American colonies proclaimed their freedom from British rule and articulated Enlightenment principles of natural rights.

Salutary neglect

An unofficial British policy (17th-mid-18th century) of lax enforcement of parliamentary laws in the colonies, which allowed for colonial self-government and economic autonomy.

Navigation Acts

A series of mid-17th- to early-18th-century British laws requiring that colonial goods be transported on British ships and pass through English ports, aiming to enforce mercantilist policies.

Tobacco

A cash crop first cultivated in Virginia and Maryland; its high demand in Europe made it the backbone of Chesapeake colonial economies.

Sugar

A lucrative Caribbean plantation crop (from sugarcane) that relied heavily on enslaved labor and became central to British colonial trade.

Rice

A staple and lucrative cash crop grown in South Carolina's tidal marshes, using West African laborers' expertise in wet-field agriculture.

Sugar Act (1764)

A British law that halved the duty on molasses but strengthened enforcement and expanded the list of taxable colonial exports to raise revenue and curb smuggling.

Townshend Acts (1767)

A series of British measures placing duties on imports such as glass, paper, paint, and tea to pay colonial governors' salaries and assert Parliament's right to tax the colonies.

Tea Act (1773)

Legislation granting the British East India Company a monopoly on tea exports to America and allowing it to sell directly to colonists, sparking protests like the Boston Tea Party.

Columbian Exchange

The widespread transfer of plants, animals, people, and diseases between the Americas and Afro-Eurasia after 1492, dramatically reshaping global ecology and societies.

Early settlement patterns of the British colonists

Distinct regional colonies—New England (town-based, mixed economy), Middle (diverse agriculture and commerce), Chesapeake and Lower South (plantation agriculture relying on tobacco, rice).

American Revolution

The conflict (1775-1783) in which the thirteen colonies fought for and won independence from Britain, resulting in the founding of the United States.

Metacom's War (King Philip's War, 1675-1676)

A brutal conflict between New England colonists and Native American tribes led by the Wampanoag sachem Metacom ("King Philip"), resulting in heavy losses on both sides and colonial expansion.

Common Sense (1776)

A pamphlet by Thomas Paine arguing that monarchy was a corrupt form of government and urging American independence, widely read and influential in swaying public opinion.

Transition from indentured to enslaved labor in the Chesapeake

A shift in the late 17th century as planters replaced diminishing numbers of European indentured servants with lifelong African chattel slavery for a more controllable labor force.

United States foreign trade in the early republic

The commercial activities of the new nation (1789-1820) characterized by exports of agricultural products (tobacco, cotton) and imports of manufactured goods, often constrained by European wars and U.S. neutrality policies.

Seven Years' War (French and Indian War, 1754-1763)

A global conflict between Britain and France (plus Native American allies), in North America resulting in British victory, France's loss of Canada, and increased British war debt.

Proclamation of 1763

A royal decree forbidding colonial settlement west of the Appalachian Mountains to stabilize relations with Native Americans after the Seven Years' War.

Pontiac's Rebellion (1763-1766)

A Native American uprising led by Ottawa chief Pontiac against British forts and settlers in the Great Lakes region, protesting British post-war policies and encroachment.

Stamp Act (1765) and Declaratory Act (1766)

The Stamp Act required colonists to buy stamped paper for legal documents, newspapers, and more, prompting protest and repeal; the Declaratory Act then affirmed Parliament's authority to legislate for the colonies 'in all cases whatsoever.'

Triangular trade

A transatlantic network linking Europe (manufactured goods) → Africa (trade for enslaved people) → Americas (raw materials) back to Europe, fueling the slave economy.

Cash crops

Farm products grown for sale rather than subsistence, such as tobacco, rice, indigo, and sugar, which shaped colonial economies and labor systems.

Middle Passage

The harrowing sea voyage that brought enslaved Africans to the Americas, marked by brutal conditions and high mortality rates.

Stono Rebellion (1739)

The largest slave uprising in colonial North America, occurring in South Carolina when a group of enslaved people attempted to march to Spanish Florida for freedom.

Black Codes

Laws passed in southern colonies (and states) to restrict the rights and movement of enslaved and free Black people, codifying racial slavery and discrimination.

Boston Massacre (1770)

A confrontation in which British soldiers killed five colonists during a dispute in Boston, fueling anti-British sentiment and colonial propaganda.

Native American society before 1491

Diverse indigenous cultures across North America with complex societies, economies, and trade networks, entirely independent of European influence.

East Asia trade

Early globalization routes (overland and maritime) through which Asian commodities—spices, silks, porcelain—reached Europe, spurring European exploration for direct access.

British colonization of North America in the 1600s

The establishment of English settlements—Jamestown (1607), Plymouth (1620), Massachusetts Bay (1630)—motivated by economic opportunity, religious freedom, and imperial competition.

Native American Empire (Aztec Empire)

A highly organized Mesoamerican civilization centered at Tenochtitlán (in today's Mexico City), conquered by Spanish forces under Hernán Cortés in 1521.

Isolation of the Americas from Afro-Eurasian disease pools

The pre-Columbian separation that left Native Americans immunologically vulnerable to Old World diseases like smallpox and measles upon European contact.

Naval technology (caravel)

The Portuguese-developed ship with lateen sails and shallow draft that enabled European explorers to sail faster, farther, and into coastal waters.

Christopher Columbus

The Genoese navigator whose 1492 voyages—funded by Spain—opened sustained European exploration and colonization of the Americas.

Ferdinand Magellan

The Portuguese explorer who initiated the first circumnavigation of the globe (1519-1522) under Spain's flag, demonstrating Earth's roundness and the scale of the Pacific.

Spanish Conquest of Mexico

The military defeat of the Aztec Empire (1519-1521) by Hernán Cortés and his indigenous allies, leading to Spain's colonization of Mexico.

Smallpox

A deadly Old World disease accidentally introduced to the Americas after 1492, causing catastrophic epidemics among Native American populations.

Encomienda

A Spanish colonial system granting settlers the right to extract labor and tribute from indigenous people in return for 'protection' and Christian instruction.

Silver mining

The extraction of silver (notably at Potosí and Zacatecas) that fueled Spain's 16th- and 17th-century economy and global trade in the silver-Asian market.

Plantation agriculture

Large-scale farms (especially in the Caribbean and Southern colonies) using coerced labor (enslaved Africans) to produce export crops like sugar, tobacco, and rice.

Henry Hudson

An English navigator hired by the Dutch (and later the English) who explored the Hudson River (1609) and Hudson Bay (1610-11), laying groundwork for New Netherland.

John Smith

An English adventurer and leader of Jamestown (1608-1609) whose discipline and diplomacy with Powhatan Indians helped the colony survive its early years.

Roanoke

The 'Lost Colony' founded in 1587 on present-day North Carolina coast that vanished by 1590 for unknown reasons.

Jamestown (1607)

The first permanent English settlement in North America, founded in Virginia for economic gain, and site of early tobacco cultivation.

Powhatan

The paramount chief of a confederation of Algonquian-speaking tribes in eastern Virginia who initially traded with and later clashed with Jamestown settlers.

Chattel slavery

A form of slavery in which people are treated as personal property (chattel) to be bought, sold, and owned permanently.

House of Burgesses (1619)

The first representative legislative assembly in English America, established in Virginia, which became a model for colonial self-government.

Quakers

Members of the Religious Society of Friends, a Protestant sect advocating pacifism, equality, and religious freedom; they founded Pennsylvania under William Penn.

Religious toleration (Middle colonies)

The policy (notably in Pennsylvania, New York, and Maryland) of allowing multiple Christian denominations—and in some cases non-Christians—to worship freely.

Town meetings (New England)

Local assemblies in Puritan New England where male church members voted on community issues, early practice of direct political participation.