APUSH Unit 1 (1491-1607) & Unit 2 (1607-1754) Vocabulary

Vocabulary flashcards covering key terms, historical figures, legislation, economic systems, and regional comparisons from AP US History Unit 1 (1491–1607) and Unit 2 (1607–1754).

3 Gs

The three primary motivations for European exploration and conquest in the Americas: Gold (economic motives), Glory (political motives), and God (religious motives).

Corn (maize)

A staple crop cultivated in present-day Southern Mexico by at least 5000 BCE that spread across the Americas, fostering economic development, permanent sedentary settlements, advanced irrigation, and complex social hierarchies.

Longhouses

Large timber structures built by Northeastern Native American groups like the Iroquois, housing multiple generations of an extended family—sometimes up to 200 people.

Iroquois Confederation

An alliance of Native American tribes located in the Northeast region of North America that developed semi-sedentary agricultural settlements based on maize.

Cahokia

The largest Mississippian culture urban settlement, housing 10,000 to 20,000 people near complex river systems that facilitated extensive trade and social hierarchies.

Sioux (Ute)

Nomadic Native American groups of the Great Basin and Great Plains regions that lived in mobile animal-skin tipis and migrated seasonally to hunt buffalo, deer, and antelope.

Chinook

A Native American society in the Pacific Northwest that established permanent, sedentary coastal settlements by harvesting abundant ocean and forest resources without relying on agriculture.

Caravel

A fast, highly navigable ocean-going vessel developed by the Portuguese featuring triangular lateen sails that allowed it to take wind from both directions.

Joint-Stock Company

A private business arrangement where multiple investors pooled their capital to fund overseas colonial expeditions, distributing financial risk and profits among stockholders.

Trading Post Empire

A imperial network established by Portugal along the African coast and Indian Ocean focused on controlling strategic coastal posts to dominate trade rather than colonizing inland territories.

Encomienda System

A Spanish colonial labor system established in 1512 in Hispaniola under which the Spanish crown granted land and forced Indigenous labor to Spanish colonizers in exchange for protection and Christian education.

Caste System

A formal racial hierarchy imposed by the Spanish in the Americas that reorganized society based on ancestry, placing Spanish-born peninsulares at the top and Indigenous and African people at the bottom.

Treaty of Tordesillas

A 1494 agreement between Spain and Portugal that established a papal line of demarcation, assigning New World territory west of the line to Spain and east to Portugal.

Columbian Exchange

The transatlantic transfer of plants, animals, minerals, diseases, and human populations between Afro-Eurasia (Old World) and the Americas (New World) following Christopher Columbus's 1492 voyage.

Smallpox

A devastating European epidemic disease introduced to the Americas during the Columbian Exchange that killed up to 90% of some Indigenous populations due to their lack of immunity.

Valladolid Debate

A 1550 formal debate in Spain between Bartolomé de Las Casas and Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda regarding the moral status and treatment of Indigenous peoples in the Spanish colonies.

Bartolomé de Las Casas

A Spanish Dominican friar and advocate for Indigenous rights who argued at the Valladolid Debate that Native Americans were fully human and should not be subjected to the forced labor of the encomienda system.

Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda

A Spanish scholar who argued at the Valladolid Debate that Indigenous Americans were less than human and naturally suited to servitude under Spanish rule.

New Laws of 1542

Legislation issued by King Charles V of Spain intended to protect Indigenous peoples in the Americas from abuse and forced labor within the encomienda system.

Jamestown

The first permanent English settlement in North America, established in Virginia in 1607 by the Virginia Company.

Virginia House of Burgesses

The first representative legislative assembly established in British North America, created in Virginia in 1619.

Mayflower Compact

A 1620 agreement drafted by the Pilgrims aboard the Mayflower establishing a self-governing political structure for the Plymouth Colony based on congregational principles.

Puritans

English religious dissenters led by John Winthrop who founded the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1630 to establish a devout, self-governing Christian community.

Anne Hutchinson

A religious dissenter banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1638 for challenging Puritan orthodoxy and holding private religious meetings in her home.

Act of Toleration

A 1649 Maryland statute granting religious freedom to all Trinitarian Christians in the colony and offering protections for Roman Catholics.

Barbados Slave Code

A 1661 set of colonial laws enacted in Barbados that legally defined enslaved Africans as chattel property, providing a model for slave codes across British North America.

Bacon's Rebellion

A 1676 uprising of frontier farmers and former indentured servants led by Nathaniel Bacon against Virginia Governor William Berkeley, accelerating the colony's reliance on enslaved African labor over indentured servitude.

Metacom's War (King Philip's War)

A 1675-1676 conflict between New England English colonists and an alliance of Native American tribes led by Wampanoag chief Metacom, resulting in heavy Indigenous losses and expanding English domain.

Pueblo Revolt

A successful 1680 uprising of Pueblo tribes in present-day New Mexico that expelled Spanish colonizers and temporarily reestablished Indigenous control of the region.

Dominion of New England

A administrative consolidation created by King James II in 1686 combining New England colonies under royal governor Sir Edmund Andros to enforce the Navigation Acts and strengthen crown control.

Mercantilism

An economic policy pursued by European imperial powers measuring national wealth in gold and silver and maintaining a favorable trade balance by utilizing colonies for raw materials and captive markets.

Navigation Acts

A series of English mercantilist laws restricting colonial trade to English ships and requiring key export goods to pass through taxed English ports.

Salutary Neglect

An unofficial British imperial policy of lax enforcement of commercial trade regulations, which permitted the North American colonies relative political and economic autonomy.

Triangular Trade

A transatlantic commercial network linking New England, West Africa, and the Caribbean West Indies through the trade of rum, enslaved Africans, and sugar/molasses.

Middle Passage

The brutal legs of the transatlantic slave trade in which captive Africans were transported across the Atlantic Ocean in overcrowded and unsanitary slave ships.

Indentured Servants

Laborers who bound themselves by legal contract to work for a fixed period (typically 7 years) in exchange for paid passage to the North American colonies.

Headright System

A land allocation policy used in Southern colonies that granted 50 acres of land to colonial landowners for every laborer whose passage to America they financed.

Stono Rebellion

A 1739 slave revolt in South Carolina where enslaved Africans captured weapons and killed slaveholders while marching toward Spanish Florida before being suppressed.

First Great Awakening

A widespread religious revival movement during the 1730s and 1740s that swept through the American colonies, led by New Light ministers emphasizing emotional personal conversion.

Jonathan Edwards

A Northampton, Massachusetts minister and theologian whose intense, intellectually grounded revival sermons helped initiate the First Great Awakening.

George Whitefield

An English evangelical preacher whose charismatic open-air sermon tours across all American colonies galvanized the First Great Awakening and built a shared colonial identity.

Enlightenment

An 18th-century European intellectual movement emphasizing reason, empirical observation, individual natural rights, and social contract theory over traditional religious authority.

Impressment

The British naval practice of forcibly seizing colonial men and compelling them into service on Royal Navy vessels, which sparked violent resistance such as the 1747 riots.

Molasses Act

A 1733 British parliamentary law placing heavy tariffs on foreign molasses imported into the American colonies to favor British West Indies sugar planters.

Landmark Events Timeline: 1450-1650

A chronological visual mapping of major historic milestones occurring between 1450 and 1650, including European contact in 1492, the Treaty of Tordesillas in 1494, the Encomienda system in 1512, transatlantic slave trade expansion in 1525, and Jamestown's founding in 1607.

Landmark Events Timeline: 1600-1800

A chronological visual mapping of British colonial milestones from 1600 to 1800, highlighting Quebec (1608), the House of Burgesses and first African arrival in Jamestown (1619), Plymouth (1620), British capture of New Amsterdam (1664), King Philip's War (1676), Georgia (1733), and the Seven Years' War (1754).

Comparing Colonial Regions Table

A comparative overview contrasting the New England, Middle Atlantic, and Southern British colonies across characteristics such as population, religious groups, commercial centers, exports, education systems, environment, and representative governments.

Mayas

Lived in the tropical lowlands and highlands of southern Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, and Honduras. Their classic golden age lasted from roughly 250 CE to 900 CE, though the culture existed for thousands of years.

Aztecs

Dominated central Mexico from the 1400s until 1521. Their massive capital city was Tenochtitlan, built on a lake where modern Mexico City stands today.

Incas

Ruled the Andes Mountains in South America, stretching along the western coast from Chile to Colombia. Their empire flourished from 1438 until the Spanish conquest in 1533. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]