AP Colonial America and Early World History Vocabulary Flashcards

Vocabulary flashcards covering early American history, European colonization, religious movements, conflicts, and native societies across all lecture source documents.

Competency

The ability of colonial freeholders to keep their households solvent and independent and pass that land and ability on to the next generation.

Coverture

A principle in English law that placed married women under the legal protection and authority of their husbands, depriving them of independent legal standing.

Household Mode of Production

A system of exchanging goods and labor among 18th-century New England freeholders that developed to survive as available land became scarce.

Tenancy

The rental of agricultural property from wealthy estate owners, widely used by farmers in 18th-century New York.

Squatters

Settlers who establish themselves on land they do not legally own or rent, hoping to obtain ownership or first right of purchase when the area is officially opened.

Walking Purchase of 1737

A fraudulent claim perpetuated by the Penn family to seize Native American territory north of Philadelphia, forcing the Delaware and Shawnee to flee west.

Redemptioner System

A flexible form of indentured servitude in the 18th-century Middle colonies where immigrants negotiated employment contracts after arriving in America rather than before leaving Europe.

Licensing Act

British legislation whose lapse in 1695 ended official government censorship, leading to a printing boom and widespread transmission of Enlightenment ideas in the colonies.

Natural Rights

John Locke's political doctrine that all individuals possess fundamental rights to life, liberty, and property.

Deism

An Enlightenment religious belief, embraced by figures like Benjamin Franklin, holding that God created the Earth but left it to operate through natural laws discoverable via logic and experimentation.

Pietism

A Christian movement originating in Germany around 1700 that emphasized pious behavior, personal spiritual rebirth, and intense religious emotion over formal dogma.

Revival

A renewal of religious enthusiasm within a Christian congregation aimed at inspiring spiritual rebirth among members.

Old Lights

Conservative ministers during the Great Awakening who rejected the emotional passion of revivalists and favored a virtuous Christian life alongside formal theological education.

New Lights

Evangelical preachers during the Great Awakening who condemned purely intellectual faith and emphasized spiritual rebirth and emotional conversion.

Consumer Revolution

An 18th-century increase in the consumption of English manufactured goods in Britain and the American colonies, which raised living standards but left many colonists in debt.

Regulators

Backcountry landowning vigilante groups in South Carolina and North Carolina that demanded government courts, fairer taxation, and better representation from eastern elites.

Paxton Boys

A group of Scots-Irish settlers in Pennsylvania who in 1763 massacred local Native Americans and marched on Philadelphia to protest lack of frontier protection.

Chattel Slavery

A legal system of bondage in which an enslaved person holds the status of personal property and can be bought, sold, and inherited.

Tribute Colonies

Spanish colonial establishments in Mexico and Peru reliant on existing indigenous political systems, mineral wealth extraction, and native labor forces.

Neo-European Colonies

Settlements created by the French, Dutch, and English that sought to replicate or approximate the economic, political, and social structures of their homelands.

Encomienda

A grant of Native American labor in Spanish America awarded by the crown to prominent 16th-century conquerors.

Casta System

A rigid hierarchical system of racial classification created by Spanish colonial elites in Latin America to categorize multi-ethnic populations.

Columbian Exchange

The massive global transfer of living organisms—including people, plants, animals, and diseases—between the Eastern and Western Hemispheres following Columbus's voyages.

Mercantilism

A system of political economy relying on government regulation to ensure a state exports more goods than it imports, securing a favorable balance of trade.

Joint-Stock Corporation

A business entity where investors pool capital and receive stock proportional to their financial contribution, used to fund early English colonial efforts like the Virginia Company.

House of Burgesses

The representative legislative assembly created in Virginia in 1619 to make local colonial laws.

Toleration Act of 1649

Legislation enacted in Maryland granting religious freedom to all Christians to safeguard Catholic settlers against rising Protestant majorities.

Headright System

A land allocation policy that granted 50 acres of land to anyone who paid the transatlantic passage of a new immigrant to the colonies.

Indentured Servitude

A labor arrangement in which individuals signed a contract to work without wages for 4 to 7 years in exchange for passage to America, food, and shelter.

Puritans

English religious dissenters who wished to purify the Church of England of Catholic practices rather than separate from it entirely.

Pilgrims

A group of religious Separatists who left England and established Plymouth Colony in 1620.

Mayflower Compact

A legal covenant created in 1620 by Pilgrim leaders to establish a self-governing political structure for Plymouth Colony.

Covenant of Grace

The Christian concept emphasized by Anne Hutchinson that God grants salvation purely as an unearned gift of grace rather than through earthly good works.

Town Meeting

A local governmental institution in New England where adult male heads of households met regularly to elect selectmen, levy taxes, and manage local public business.

Beringia

A 100-mile-wide land bridge connecting Siberia and Alaska exposed during the last Ice Age, facilitating early human migration into the Americas.

Mississippian Culture

A maize-based Native American culture originating around A.D. 1000 along the Mississippi River, distinguished by urban centers, mound building, and sun worship.

Iroquois Confederacy

A political alliance formed in the Eastern Woodlands among five nations: the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca.

Primogeniture

The European practice where a father bestows all his land onto his eldest son, leaving younger siblings without real estate.

Trans-Saharan Trade

Overland trade routes across the Sahara Desert where West African empires traded gold, slaves, copper, and salt for Mediterranean products.

Reconquista

The centuries-long military campaign completed by Spanish Catholics in 1492 to drive Muslim Moors from the Iberian Peninsula.

Protestant Reformation

A religious movement initiated in 1517 by Martin Luther that challenged Catholic doctrine, causing permanent schisms and religious wars across Europe.

Counter-Reformation

A internal reform movement within the Catholic Church during the 16th century created in reaction to the Protestant Reformation, establishing new orders like the Jesuits.

Potlach

A ceremonial festival hosted by wealthy individuals among Pacific Northwest tribes like the Chinook, where personal possessions were given away to establish social prestige.