APUSH WEEK 2 vocab

Joint-Stock Company

Definition
It is a business where investors pool their money together to share profits and risks.

It paid for early English colonies like Jamestown without risking the King's money and started corporate colonization.

---

---

Puritans

Definition: Puritans were a strict English religious group in the 1500s and 1600s who wanted to make their church simpler and purer.

Historical Significance: Shaped early New England's culture, governance, strict moral social order, and town-meeting democracy.

1. Pilgrims

Definition

The Pilgrims were a radical English religious group who fled to the Netherlands and then started Plymouth Colony in 1620.

Historical Significance

They built one of the first permanent English towns in New England and created the Mayflower Compact.

virginia company

efinition
It was an English business that paid for and started the colony of Virginia.

Historical Significance
It started Jamestown in 1607, which became the first lasting English town and introduced tobacco farming and local government.

---

1. Indentured Servitude
   

Definition
It was a system where people agreed to work for free for a few years in exchange for a boat ride to America. [1, 2, 3]

Historical Significance
It was the main source of workers in early Virginia and Maryland before colonies switched to using enslaved labor.

---

John Winthrop

Definition
He was a Puritan governor of Massachusetts who gave the famous "City upon a Hill" sermon.

Historical Significance
He created the strict religious rules for New England and started the idea that America is a special model for the world.

---

mayflower compact

Definition
It was a 1620 agreement signed by Plymouth settlers to make fair laws for their colony. [1, 2, 3]

Historical Significance
It was an early example of American self-government and democracy where people agreed to rule themselves.

Half-Way Covenant

Definition
It was a 1662 Puritan rule giving partial church membership to grandchildren of full members.

Historical Significance
It showed the younger generation was losing religious passion and kept the church in power.

Maryland Toleration Act

1. Definition
   It was a 1649 law that gave religious freedom to all Christians but ordered death for non-Christians.

   Historical Significance
   It was an early step toward religious freedom and protected the Catholic minority in Maryland.

   ---

Middle Colonies

Definition
It was the colonial region made up of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

Historical Significance
It was the "breadbasket" of America because it grew food, had high religious tolerance, and welcomed diverse groups of people.

---

New England Colonies

Definition: The northern region comprising Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and New Hampshire.
Historical Significance: Characterized by Puritan religious foundations, family-based small farms, lumbering, shipbuilding, merchant trade, and town-meeting democracy.

Southern colonies

Definition: The region comprising Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia.
Historical Significance: Developed a plantation economy dependent on cash crops (tobacco, rice, indigo) and a heavily stratified social hierarchy reliant on forced labor.

Roger williams

Definition: A Puritan dissenter banished from Massachusetts Bay in 1636 for advocating total separation of church and state and fair treatment of Native Americans.
Historical Significance: Founded Rhode Island as a sanctuary for complete religious liberty, influencing future First Amendment principles.

Anne Hutchinson

Definition: A Puritan religious leader banished from Massachusetts Bay Colony after challenging the authority and theology of orthodox ministers.
Historical Significance: Demonstrated early individual dissent against Puritan theological control and traditional gender norms in colonial leadership.

Bacon's Rebellion

Definition: A 1676 violent uprising in Virginia led by Nathaniel Bacon, uniting backcountry farmers and poor laborers against Governor Berkeley's government.
Historical Significance: Exposed deep class tensions and accelerated the Chesapeake region's transition from volatile indentured labor to permanent African chattel slavery.

salve codes

Definition: Colonial statutes defining enslaved Africans as legal property and restricting their movements, assembly, and basic rights.
Historical Significance: Institutionalized lifelong, hereditary racial slavery.