Early American and Colonial History Vocabulary

Vocabulary flashcards covering key terms, historical figures, systems, and conflicts from early European exploration and colonial America through the First Great Awakening.

Smallpox Epidemic

A deadly Old World disease brought by Europeans that devastated Native American populations, killing up to 90% in some areas, and playing a major role in European conquest, especially aiding the Spanish in defeating the Aztecs and other large empires.

Encomienda System

A Spanish colonial labor system in which the crown granted settlers control over Native labor in exchange for Christianizing them; in practice, it became forced labor and exploitation in mining and farming that fueled Spain's early wealth in the Americas.

Columbian Exchange

The widespread transfer of plants, animals, people, diseases, and technologies between the Old World and the New World after 1492, leading to major changes where Europeans gained crops like maize and potatoes while Native populations declined sharply due to disease and conquest.

Mexica (Aztecs)

A powerful Native empire in central Mexico, known for advanced agriculture, urban centers (like Tenochtitlán), and human sacrifice rituals, which was conquered by Hernán Cortés in 1521 aided by disease, allies, and superior weapons.

Caste System (Casta System)

A rigid social hierarchy in Spanish America based on race and birthplace, developed to manage the growing multiethnic population, placing Spaniards born in Europe (peninsulares) at the top and Indigenous, African, and mixed-race people at the bottom.

Maize / Three Sisters

Maize (corn) was a staple crop developed in Mesoamerica and spread throughout North America. The "Three Sisters" (maize, beans, and squash) formed the foundation of many Native American agricultural systems, supporting population growth and complex societies.

Joint-Stock Company

A business model where investors pooled money to fund colonial ventures with shared risk and profit, enabling English colonization such as the Virginia Company, which founded Jamestown in 1607.

Maritime Technologies

Advancements like the compass, caravel, astrolabe, and improved maps that made long-distance sea travel possible, enabling European exploration especially by the Spanish and Portuguese in the 15th–16th centuries.

Protestant Reformation

A 16th-century religious movement led by Martin Luther that challenged the Catholic Church, leading to the rise of Protestant denominations and fueling religious rivalry in Europe that encouraged groups like the Puritans to seek religious freedom in the New World.

Black Legend

A term describing the belief that the Spanish uniquely brutalized Indigenous peoples in the Americas, promoted by rival powers like England to justify their own colonization.

New Laws of 1542

Spanish laws issued to limit the abuses of the encomienda system and protect Indigenous peoples, pushed by reformers like Bartolomé de las Casas; they reflected growing moral concern but were often ignored or resisted by colonists.

Pueblo Revolt

A successful 1680 uprising by the Pueblo people against Spanish rule in New Mexico that expelled the Spanish for over a decade, representing the most successful Native resistance movement against European colonization in North America.

New France

The French colonial territory in North America during the 17th and 18th centuries, including Canada, the Great Lakes, and the Mississippi River Valley, centered on fur trading, economic partnerships, and missionary work rather than large-scale colonization.

Jesuit Priests

Members of the Catholic Society of Jesus, founded during the Counter-Reformation, who worked in New France as missionaries to convert Native Americans to Christianity, often learning Indigenous languages and documenting Native cultures.

Mercantilism

An economic theory practiced by European empires that argued colonies existed primarily to benefit the mother country by supplying raw materials and purchasing finished goods.

Proprietary Colony

A colony granted by the English crown to an individual (ex. William Penn in Pennsylvania) or group (ex. Virginia Company in Virginia) who retained significant control over governance.

Royal Colony

A colony governed directly by the English monarchy through an appointed royal governor, which became the form of most colonies by the early 1700s as England sought greater imperial control.

House of Burgesses

The first representative legislative assembly in the English colonies, established in Virginia in 1619, which allowed white male landowners to elect lawmakers and became a model for self-government.

Headright System

A land distribution policy in Virginia that granted 50 acres of land to anyone who paid for their own or another's passage to the colony, encouraging immigration and supporting the growth of tobacco plantations.

Indentured Servitude

A labor system in which poor Europeans agreed to work for a fixed term (usually 4–7 years) in exchange for passage to the American colonies, room, and board, serving as the primary source of labor in the 17th-century Chesapeake colonies.

Bacon’s Rebellion

A 1676 uprising in Virginia led by Nathaniel Bacon, made up of landless former indentured servants and frontier settlers who protested the Governor's refusal to protect them from Native attacks and challenged elite planter authority, leading to a shift toward African slave labor.

Chattel Slavery

A system in which enslaved Africans were legally defined as property (chattel) to be bought, sold, and inherited, codified through slave codes in the late 1600s as a racialized, lifelong system.

Anglican

The Church of England, established in the 16th century during the English Reformation when King Henry VIII broke from the Roman Catholic Church, which became the official Protestant denomination in England and several Southern colonies.

Pilgrims

A group of English Separatists who wanted to separate from the Church of England, sailed aboard the Mayflower in 1620, and established Plymouth Colony seeking religious freedom.

Mayflower Compact

A 1620 agreement created by the Pilgrims establishing a self-governing colony based on majority rule, forming a foundational moment in the development of democratic governance in the colonies.

Puritans

Non-separatist Protestants who wanted to reform (not break from) the Church of England, establishing the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1630 to build a "city upon a hill" and enforce a strict religious and moral code.

Halfway Covenant

A 1662 Puritan rule letting children of partial church members be baptized without a full conversion, created to maintain church membership but criticized by Jonathan Edwards and other Great Awakening preachers for lowering spiritual standards.

Quakers

Also known as the Religious Society of Friends, a Protestant group that rejected formal clergy, promoted pacifism, peace, and equality, and founded Pennsylvania in 1681 under William Penn as a refuge of religious tolerance.

Anglo-Powhatan Wars

A series of three conflicts (1609–1646) that led to the near-destruction of the Powhatan Confederacy and solidified English dominance in the Chesapeake region.

Metacom’s War (King Philip’s War)

A devastating 1675–1676 conflict between New England settlers and Native American tribes led by Wampanoag chief Metacom (King Philip), resulting in thousands of deaths and the near-total collapse of Native resistance in the region.

Navigation Acts

A series of British laws starting in 1651 and expanded in the 1660s that restricted colonial trade to benefit the mother country by requiring colonial goods to be shipped on British vessels.

Transatlantic (Triangular) Trade

A three-part trade system connecting Europe, Africa, and the Americas that included the shipment of enslaved Africans via the Middle Passage to work in the Americas.

Stono Rebellion

A 1739 slave uprising in South Carolina where a group of enslaved Africans attempted to escape to Spanish Florida, resulting in deaths of slaves and colonists and leading to harsher slave codes.

New York Trials of 1741

A mass panic in New York City over a rumored plot by enslaved Africans and poor whites to burn the city, leading to the execution or exile of dozens and revealing racial and class tensions.

First Great Awakening

A widespread Protestant revival in the 1730–1740s caused by declining church attendance that emphasized emotional preaching, personal salvation, and a direct relationship with God, leading to the growth of denominations like Baptists, Methodists, and Presbyterians.