VA and US History: Colonization

Joint-stock company

Company run by a group of investors who share the company’s profits and losses

Virginia Company

Also known as the company that paid for the settlement of Jamestown or the London company

Jamestown

First permanent English settlement in North America. Founded in 1607

Indentured servant

An individual who agrees to work without wages in return for their passage

House of Burgesses

Colonial Virginia’s representative assembly formed in 1619

Quakers

Members of a Christian movement devoted to peaceful principles. Instead of having ministers, they rely on the “Inner Light,” or a sense of Christ’s direct working in the soul.

Puritans

English Protestants who believed in strict religious discipline and wanted to purify the Anglican church

Cavaliers

Wealthy royalist who supported the colony of Virginia and knew very little about surviving

Mayflower Compact

A framework for self government of the Plymouth Colony signed on the ship Mayflower in 1620

Cash crop

A crop grown for sale

Direct democracy

An election where the citizens themselves vote for a candidate

Bacon’s Rebellion

An armed rebellion in 1676 by Virginia colonists led by Nathaniel Bacon against the rule of Governor William Berkley

Middle Passage

The forced passage of enslaved Africans from West Africa to the Americas

Great Awakening

A religious movement in the English colonies during the 1730s and 1740s that was heavily inspired by evangelical preachers

Mercantilism

An economic policy under which a nation accumulates wealth by exporting more goods than it imports.