Chapter 4: British North America Flashcards

Vocabulary flashcards reviewing key terminology, important historical events, legal statutes, and figures from Chapter 4 on British North America.

Indentured Servants

Displaced European workers who agreed to a contract of four to seven years of labor in return for passage to British North America, maintenance, and eventual freedom dues.

Freedom Dues

The items provided to an indentured servant upon completing their term of service, typically consisting of tools, food, clothing, and sometimes land.

Bacon's Rebellion

A 1676 Virginian uprising of 1,000 poor colonists, former indentured servants, and enslaved people led by Nathaniel Bacon against Governor William Berkeley, resulting in attacks on Native Americans and the burning of Jamestown.

Middle Passage

The brutal transatlantic sea voyage undertaken by slave ships from Africa to the Americas, during which up to 20 percent of captive Africans died.

Brookes Slave Ship Diagram

An influential 1789 print depicting the inhumanely overcrowded deck plan used to pack enslaved Africans during the Middle Passage.

Hereditary Slavery Law of 1662

A Virginia law establishing that children inherited the legal status of their mother, making slavery hereditary and granting enslavers legal control over reproduction.

Barbados Slave Code

A 1661 legal code that denied enslaved people basic rights and granted masters total authority to inflict harsh punishments; it served as a model for slave laws adopted in Carolina in 1696.

Antinomianism

A theological assertion championed by Anne Hutchinson in Massachusetts Bay stating that the truly saved do not need to obey the laws of God or man.

Roger Williams

A Salem minister banished in 1635 who advocated for a complete break from the Church of England, fair payment for Native lands, and separation of civil government from religious behavior before founding Rhode Island in 1636.

Fundamental Orders

A 1639 document drafted by Connecticut River colony settlers that functioned as the first modern constitution to establish a democratically controlled government.

Salem Witch Trials

A series of 1692 trials in Salem, Massachusetts, resulting in the execution of 20 people, driven by social stratification, economic friction between market families and subsistence farmers, and religious anxieties.

Pequot War Palisade Diagram

A 1638 illustration showing the 1637 attack on a fortified Pequot village where Puritan militiamen and Native allies encircled, set fire to, and killed nearly 3,000 Pequot men, women, and children.

King Philip's War

A 1675–1676 conflict between New England colonists and an intertribal Native alliance led by Metacom (King Philip), which attacked 52 Puritan towns before the settlers prevailed.

Act of Toleration (1649)

A law passed by Maryland's representative assembly that guaranteed religious freedom to all Christians, protecting both Catholics and Protestants.

Lords Proprietors

The group of eight aristocrats granted ownership of Carolina by King Charles II in 1663, who attracted settlers using land grants, religious tolerance, and political representation.

Tuscarora War

A 1711 war in which North Carolina and South Carolina forces defeated the Tuscarora Native Americans, selling hundreds into slavery and forcing survivors to flee north to the Iroquois Confederacy.

Buffer Colony

The strategic role assigned to Georgia upon its 1732 founding to protect the Carolinas from Spanish Florida and French Louisiana while offering a fresh start for English debtors.

Religious Society of Friends

Also known as Quakers, a Christian group arising in mid-1600s England that rejected paid clergy, oaths, military service, and social titles in favor of equality and religious freedom.

Holy Experiment

William Penn's venture in Pennsylvania starting in 1681 to create a profitable, liberal haven for Quakers featuring complete freedom of worship, fair treatment of Indigenous people, and democratic government.

Germantown Antislavery Petition

A 1688 document written by Pennsylvania Quakers in Germantown that marked the first formal written antislavery petition in British North America.

Navigation Act of 1651

An act passed by the English Parliament requiring colonial merchants to transport all trade goods directly to England using English vessels.

Dominion of New England

A administrative union created by King James II in 1686 that consolidated New England, New York, and New Jersey under the unpopular royal governor Sir Edmund Andros.

Salutary Neglect

An unofficial British policy following the Glorious Revolution where the Crown relaxed enforcement of the Navigation Laws and trade restrictions on North American colonies.

Provincial Colonies

Colonies directly supervised by the English Crown, where the monarch directly appointed the colonial governor.

Proprietary Colonies

Colonies granted to private individuals or groups by the king, who held the power to appoint governors and manage land distribution.

Charter Colonies

Self-governing colonies established by royal charter where eligible colonists elected their own governors and legislative bodies.