apush period 1-2ish (copy)

Horticulture

a form of agriculture in which people work small plots of land with simple tools

Aztecs

Spanish term for the Mexica, an indigenous people who built an empire in present-day Mexico in the centuries before the arrival of the Spaniards.

Tenochtitlan

Capital of the Aztec Empire

Maya

People who established large cities on the Yucatán peninsula with strong irrigation and agricultural techniques. This civilization was strongest between 300 and 800 C.E.

incas

Andean people who built an empire in the centuries before the arrival of the Spaniards amid the fertile land of the Andes Mountains along the Pacific coast. Reaching the height of their power in the fifteenth century, they controlled some sixteen million people.

Pueblo

American Indian peoples who lived in present-day New Mexico and Arizona who built permanent multi-story adobe dwellings.

Renaissance

The cultural and intellectual flowering that began in fifteenth-century Italy and then spread north throughout the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. During this time, European rulers pushed for greater political unification of their states.

Missionaries

People who travel to foreign lands with the goal of converting those they meet and
interact with to a new religion.

Caravel

A small and swift sailing ship invented by the Portuguese during the fifteenth century.

mariners

sailors

Astrolabe

A tool invented by Greek astronomers and sailors for navigation or astrological problems.

Inquisition

A religious judicial institution designed to find and eliminate beliefs that did not align with official Catholic practices. The Spanish Inquisition was first established in 1478.

Atlantic World

The interactions between the peoples from the lands bordering the Atlantic Ocean (Africa, the Americas, and Western Europe) beginning in the late fifteenth century.

Columbian Exchange

The biological exchange between the Americas and the rest of the world between 1492 and the end of the sixteenth century. Although its initial impact was strongest in the Americas and Europe, it was soon felt globally.

Staple crops

crops that are continuously in demand

Conquistador (encomienda)

A Spanish conqueror of the Americas

feudalism

A social and economic system organized by a hierarchy of hereditary classes. Lower social orders owed loyalty to the social classes above them and, in return, received protection or land.

Capitalism

An economic system based on private ownership of property and the open exchange of goods between property holders.

aristocratic

Members of the highest class of society, typically nobility who inherited their ranks and titles.

Requerimiento

A legal document explaining the obligations of Indian people to the King of Spain and the church, requiring their cooperation; Indians who failed to accept the statement could be killed or enslaved

tribute

Money paid for protection (a tax)

Spanish caste system

A system developed by the Spanish in the sixteenth century that defined the status of diverse populations based on a racial hierarchy that privileged Europeans.

Franciscan

Roman Catholic religious order of friars that organized a chain of missions in California

mission system

System established by the Spanish in 1573 in which missionaries, rather than soldiers, directed all new settlements in the Americas.

Huguenots

French Protestants influenced by John Calvin

Colonization

The process of settling and controlling an already inhabited area for the economic benefit of the settlers, or colonizers.

Calvinism

Developed in Switzerland by John Calvin, a version of Protestantism in which civil judges and reformed ministers ruled over a Christian society.

Iroquois Confederacy

A group of allied American Indian nations that included the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca, and later the Tuscarora. The Confederacy was largely dissolved by the final decade of the 1700s.

Pueblo Revolt

1680 uprising of Pueblo Indians against Spanish forces in New Mexico that led to the Spaniards' temporary retreat from the area. The uprising was sparked by mistreatment and the suppression of Pueblo culture and religion.

Inflation

A general and progressive increase in prices

enclosure movements

The process of consolidating small landholdings into a smaller number of larger farms in England during the eighteenth century.

Indentured Servitude

Servants contracted to work for a set period of time without pay. Many early migrants of the English colonies indentured themselves in exchange for the price of passage to North America.

joint-stock company

Companies in which large numbers of investors own stock. They were able to quickly raise large amounts of money and shared risk and reward equally among investors.

Powhatan Confederacy

Large and powerful confederation of Algonquian-speaking American Indians in Virginia. The Jamestown settlers had a complicated and often combative relationship with the leaders of the Powhatan Confederacy.

cash crop

A crop produced for profit rather than for subsistence

Headright System

Created in Virginia in 1618, it rewarded those who imported indentured laborers and settlers with fifty acres of land.

House of Burgesses

Local governing body in Virginia established by the English crown in 1619.

veto

The right to block a decision made by a governing body.

Privy Council

Group of royal advisors who set policies for Britain's American colonies

Church of England

National church established by King Henry VII after he split with the Catholic Church in 1534.

Act of Religious Toleration

1649 act passed by the Maryland Assembly granting religious freedom to all Christians.

English Civil War

Conflict from 1640 to 1660; featured religious disputes mixed with constitutional issues concerning the powers of the monarchy; ended with restoration of the monarchy in 1660 following execution of previous king

slave code

Laws restricting enslaved peoples' rights, largely due to slaveholders' fears of rebellion.

Bacon's Rebellion

1676 uprising in Virginia led by Nathaniel Bacon. Bacon and his followers, many of whom were former indentured servants, were upset by the Virginia governor's unwillingness to send troops to intervene in conflicts between settlers and American Indians and by the lack of representation of western settlers in the House of Burgesses.