HIST 262 Midterm Review -- Keywords

Northwestern University, Fall 2025. Taught by Scott Sowerby.

Taino

The indigenous group that inhabited Tortuga when Columbus found it in 1492

• Suffered “the great dying” following European arrival due to disease (smallpox), gold rush, enslavement (labor camps), famine, violent repression of rebellions (1502/03)

• No longer a distinct pop. group by 1600

St. Augustine

A Florida colony set up by France in 1564, then known as Fort Caroline

• Used as a base to attack Spanish shipping

• A Spanish naval expedition wipes it out in 1565

Flota system

A system through which Spanish ships carrying manufactured goods to sell in the New World travel together at/via designated times and routes for protection, formalized in 1561

• Royal Fifth: the Crown keeps 1/5 of all silver mined in Spanish America

• Merchants weren’t too happy. CONS:

  • 2% tax on goods you’re carrying

  • All ships show up together, flood market and cause price drop

  • Limited options for when to leave

• “New Spain Flota” left Spain in April, bound for Veracruz, “Tierra Firme Flota” left Spain in August, bound for Cartagena. Reunite in Havana and return

• Dutch captured Veracruz silver fleet (1628) before it met up with the second half

  • 32 ships used to capture 15 silver ships, made approx. $360 million

Jean Le Vasseur

The military engineer who led 50 Huguenots to settle Tortuga following the second massacre by the Spanish, builds the Rock Fort and repels the 1643 Spanish attack force

Indentured Servitude

A system through which people sell their labor for a period of time, often three to five years, receiving free passage to their destination in exchange

• Mostly men (hard labor)

• 25% of Caribbean indentured servants died of disease within two years of arriving

• Did not receive wages, but masters were responsible for food, clothing and shelter

• Could be punished physically but could appeal “barbarous treatment”

• Runaways could be prosecuted

• Could only marry with permission

• Similar to, but not the same as, slavery

  • NOT hereditary

  • NOT lifetime

  • COULD appeal to courts if they were brutally mistreated

  • SOMETIMES got payment at the end of the term

• Many indentured servants become privateers at the end of their terms

  • Women were sometimes forced to become sex workers, or continue their work on the farms

The Western Design

An English naval expedition launched by Oliver Cromwell in 1654-55 aimed at attacking the Spanish and their colonies

• Oliver Cromwell effectively ruled England from 1649-1658

  • Very protestant, puritan, didn’t like Catholics (and therefore the Spanish)

• Cromwell launched The Western Design in 1654-55, a naval expedition aimed at killing the Spanish, destroying their colonies, and limiting their control of the ocean

  • Led by Admiral William Penn and Colonel Robert Venables

• Attack on Santo Domingo, 1655

  • Ambushed by Spanish, English fled + gave up on the island

• Attack on Jamaica, 1655

  • First time a major Spanish settlement (actually populated) was taken away from them

• Port Royal founded in 1656 as a result, after which Penn and Venables decide they’ve done enough and go home (promptly jailed)

The Treaty of Madrid

A 1670 treaty in which Spain agreed to recognize English ownership of all West Indies territories it had settled in return for England halting privateering raids

• Lasted until 1702

• Stopped Jamaican governors from issuing letters of marque, big blow to privateers

Pieter Janszoon

A Jamaican pirate who attacked a Spanish ship following the ToM, was tried and executed in Port Royal for piracy and murder in 1672

• Acquitted, put on trial again for a different attack -> convicted

  • Not a popular move with the people

The Act for Restraining and Punishing Privateers and Pirates

A Jamaican law passed 1681, declared it to be a felony if any Jamaican was a pirate/privateer without having a license from the governor of Jamaica

• Basically closes the Tortuga loophole, where pirates would get a French LoM from Tortuga during the ToM

• Very harsh

  • Anyone harboring a pirate could also be convicted

  • Anyone who resisted arrest could be killed

Hayreddin Barbarossa

One of the most famous Ottoman corsairs, played a major role in taking Algiers from the Spanish

• Brother of Aruj

• Made a deal with the sultan of Tunis for a home base early 1500s

• Took Algiers in 1516 (Aruj made Sultan) and 1529 (after Spanish take it back and kill Aruj in 1518)

Renegado

A captive who converted to Islam and decided to stay in the Maghreb rather than try and return to Europe

• Why? Better than being worked to death as a slave (+ might never get ransomed) and some people might start to like the region

• Captives had a genuine chance to work their way up in society, could become a janissary or a corsair or start your own business

• Many religious orders refused to ransom them

umm al-walad

A concubine who had a child, literally meaning “mother of the child”

• Could not be sold and her child would be free & an heir

  • ASSUMING the child was the master’s

• Concubine would be free whenever her master died

Battle of Ksar El Kebir

A Moroccan army defeats a Portuguese Army in 1578, one of the worst defeats in military history

• King Sebastian I killed and most of the Portuguese nobility captured

• Only 100 Portuguese escape

• Literally causes Portugal to lose its independence, Spain absorbed it from 1580-1640, also lost almost all its Moroccan land/possessions

  • Portugal rebelled 1640

• 50,000 men and 23 cannons under Sultan Abd Al-Malik

• 23,000 men and 40 cannons under King Sebastian I

The bano

Slave quarters, where most unskilled male slaves were sent/lived

• Several in every major corsair port

  • 1+ run by government, rest run privately

• All of the dey’s male slaves were housed in the dey’s bano (bano grande del rey)

  • BGDR housed 1500-3000 slaves, most were significantly smaller

• Each bano had a guardian + some assistants + some janissary guards

• Bano space was rented, either the master or the slave paid rent to the guardian

• Slaves largely spoke lingua franca (a mixture of French, Spanish, Italian, and Provençal)

• Escapes rare

  • Did happen though. William Okeley (slave from 1639-44) worked for a shopkeeper, used income to build a ship with other slaves and managed to row to Majorca (120 miles away) in 6 days