History 7A Midterm 9/24

Virgin Land

Land portrayed as completely untouched, unowned, and unused by humans. Ready to be shaped by man. Colonizers believed they found “virgin land” in the Americas.

Beaver

Their pelts were very fashionable in Europe. After they became over hunted and extinct in Russia, a large market for beaver pelts from the colonies grew from trade between native populations and the Dutch settlers. Hunting so many of these Beavers changed the land unitentionally, because they no longer were able to dam and control water flow. This allowed for tall grass to grow, pushing out north american species like deer, moose, and bears. In its place, the land became more suitable for animals like cows, pigs, and sheep, in turn making it more attractive to European farmers.

Domesticated animals

Native peoples and Europeans domesticated animals very differently. Native people didn’t domesticate animals except for semi-wild dogs. Europeans believed because native people chose not to domesticate their animals that they were “failures”. Europeans regarded their own success as breeding and domestication of animals.

Ownership v. Sovereignty

Europeans came in and declared they had ownership over the land. Native people believed in group sovereignty over the land, but not ownership. They didn’t believe that people could own land.

Land as a commodity

Europeans introduced and held the idea that land can be bought/sold/traded like product. Native people believed in land being passed down through heritage and people. It was their collective identity as a people.

Freehold Property

Form of land ownership (common in the modern West) in which an individual can buy, sell, bequeath, or exchange the land at will.

Subsistence Farming

An agricultural system where a farmer grows crops and raises livestock solely to feed themselves and their family, leaving little to no surplus for sale or trade.

Empire of Goods

Term used by recent historians to describe the way consumption linked dispersed colonial populations to one another and to the British Empire during the 18th century.

Colonial Cities

New Mexico-Santa Fe, New France, New Netherland, New England, the Cheasapeake, Plymouth,

George Whitefield

1714-1770. English Anglican priest and itinerant evangelist who helped spark the first great awakening. He toured North America in 1739 and became sort of a celebrity.

Haudenosaunee

League of the Iroquois: Mohawks, Senecas, Cayugas, Oneidas, Onodagas. Largest political power in north america during european arrival. This confederation arose before the arrival of Europeans (grew stronger w/ European presence).

Santa Fe

Founded by the Spanish in 1610, city in modern-day New Mexico. Oldest capitol in American History.

Puritans

Radical Protestants in 17th century England who opposed the Anglican Church. Great Puritan migration 1620-1640. sought religious freedom, religion dominated the town. “bible was law”. Very interested in print to spread the Bible.

Pequot War

New England settlers and native tribes uniting against pequot people. 1636-1637 military conflict. Mainly involving the Pequot people and colonists of Massachusettes and Connecticut and their native allies.

Pueblo Revolt

Successful multicultural and multilingual indigenous uprising against Spanish rule in the Rio Grande valley in 1680.

Bacon’s Rebellion

A revolt in 1676 by Virginia settlers, led by Nathaniel Bacon, against the colonial governor William Berkeley. The rebellion was fueled by dissatisfaction with the governor's policies towards Native Americans and land expansion. Caused by class conflict.

King Philip’s War

1675-1676. Major military conflict among New England colonists, the Wampanoags, and other native peoples.

Middle Passage

12 million people loaded onto ships (only 10 million made it there). These people were recorded as property and owners took records of them like products. African people were taken and dehumanized to products exported to the Americas and other places for benefit of the colonizers.

Chattel Slavery in the Americas

Labor system in which human beings are held captive, bought, and sold as moveable property.

Transition to Slavery in the Chesapeake

Expanding English role in the African slave trade. Competition for English emigration from other colonies. Slave status inherited through the mother. Slave codes.

African Diaspora

Captives usually came from the western coast of Africa (40%). They were brought to markets where Europeans would purchase them. Diaspora: a community connected by a remembered or envisioned relationships to a distant homeland.

Crusades

Series of religiously motivated military expeditions by European Christians in the medieval era to seize control on Jerusalem and other lands held by non-Christians.

Reconquista

Crusades by Catholic powers on the Iberian Peninsula to oust Muslim rule and colonize Atlantic islands between the eighth and fifteenth centuries. Much more successful than the crusades.

Limpieza de Sangre

“Purity of Blood”. 15th century. Spain and Portugal. Christians as a racial definition. System of racial hierarchy.

Saö Tome and Principe

Islands in the Gulf of Guinea colonized by Portugal in 1485, where Africans were transported and enslaved to work sugar plantations.

Adelantados

Spanish term for “advance men” who organized conquest expeditions to foreign lands on behalf of the monarchy.

Tainos

Inhabitants of the Caribbean islands Columbus encountered, who became targets of Spanish violence and forced labor. Population of natives. They were taxed by Columbus and when they didn’t pay there was mass enslavement and mass killing.

The Great Dying

The long process of European presence killing native populations. Could have possibly contributed to the little ice age. Mass killing, enslavement, disease.

Columbian Exchange

The exchange of animals, crops, goods, resources, and diseases between the “Old World” and the “New World”. Westward: Europeans, Africans, Smallpox, measles, typhoid fever, horses, cattle, sheep, rats, clover, bluegrass. Eastward: tobacco, chocolate, corn, potatoes, tomatoes, pumpkins, peanuts, syphilis.

Ayuba Suleiman Diallo

Diallo was an esteemed and educated gentleman from West Africa. He was Muslim, memorized the entire Quran as a teenager, and came from a wealthy family who owned slaves themselves. One day in 1731 he was captured and sold to an English slaver and brought to Maryland. There he was able to write a letter to his father and eventually return home. His story is documented because the letter ended up with a professor in Oxford where then the Royal African Company bought him and arranged for his return home.

Beringia

Region encompassing a land bridge from Asia, across which some of the first humans to inhabit the Americas migrated. Connected far east asia (by russia) to alaska. It disappeared when the ice age ended.

North Atlantic Warming Period

aprox. 950 CE-1250 CE. bringing milder conditions to the north atlantic, supporting viking settlements in Greenland. Climate changes.

Medieval American cities

Cahokia, Chaco Canyon

Chaco Canyon

Largest city of Ancestral Puebloans, located in present-day New Mexico, which housed a population of several thousand.

Cahokia

Center of the mississippian civilization, in present-day Ollinois, with large earthwork mounds and a population of ten to twenty thousand. Powerful pull and a broad reach. There was a capital and several suburbs.

Chunkey

Popular Cahokian hoop-and-pole game that became a mjor part of mississippian culture. Lots of spectators, people making bets, and even an istrument of dipolmacy and politics.

Covenant Chain

System of diplomatic negotiation between British colonies and Native American groups during the first half of the eighteenth century, led by New York and the Iroquois League.

Great Lakes Region—Pays d’en Haut

Balance-of-Power Diplomacy