APUSH midterm 2026 key terms

most terms, I left out some that were obvious or didn't matter

Aristocratic

Members of the highest class of society, typically nobility who inherited their ranks and titles.

Astrolabe

A tool invented by Greek astronomers and sailors for navigation or astrological problems.

Atlantic World

The interactions between the peoples from the lands bordering the Atlantic Ocean — Africa, the Americas, and Western Europe — beginning in the late fifteenth century.

Aztecs

Spanish term for the Mexica, an indigenous people who built an empire in present-day Mexico in the centuries before the arrival of the Spaniards.

Tenochtitlan

Capital city of the Aztec Empire.

Feudalism

A social and economic system organized by a hierarchy of hereditary classes. Lower social orders owed loyalty to the social classes above them and, in return, received protection or land.

Capitalism

An economic system based on private ownership of property and the open exchange of goods between property holders.

Caravels

A small and swift sailing ship invented by the Portuguese during the fifteenth century.

Columbian Exchange

The biological exchange between the Americas and the rest of the world between 1492 and the end of the sixteenth century. Although its initial impact was strongest in the Americas and Europe, it was soon felt globally

Conquistadors

Spanish soldiers who were central to the conquest of the civilizations of the Americas. Once conquest was complete, conquistadors often extracted wealth from the people and lands they came to rule.

Encomienda System

first established by Christopher Columbus by which Spanish leaders in the Americas received land and the labor of all American Indians residing on it. For American Indians, the encomienda system amounted to enslavement.

Franciscan

Member of a Catholic religious order founded by St. Francis of Assisi in the thirteenth century. Many founded missions in the New Mexico area.

Horticulture

A form of agriculture in which people work small plots of land with simple tools.

Incas

Andean people who built an empire in the centuries before the arrival of the Spaniards amid the fertile land of the Andes Mountains along the Pacific coast. Reaching the height of their power in the fifteenth century, the Incas controlled some sixteen million people.

Inquisition

A religious judicial institution designed to find and eliminate beliefs that did not align with official Catholic practices. The Spanish Inquisition was first established in 1478.

Maya

People who established large cities on the Yucatán peninsula with strong irrigation and agricultural techniques. The Maya civilization was strongest between 300 and 800 C.E.

Missionaries

People who travel to foreign lands with the goal of converting those they meet and interact with to a new religion.

mission system

System established by the Spanish in 1573 in which missionaries, rather than soldiers, directed all new settlements in the Americas.

Pueblo

American Indian peoples who lived in present-day New Mexico and Arizona and built permanent multi-story adobe dwellings.

Renaissance

The cultural and intellectual flowering that began in fifteenth-century Italy and then spread north throughout the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. During this time, European rulers pushed for greater political unification of their states.

Requerimiento

A legal document issued by the Spanish crown in 1513 to justify the Spanish conquest of territory in the Americas.

Spanish caste system

A system developed by the Spanish in the sixteenth century that defined the status of diverse populations based on a racial hierarchy that privileged Europeans.

Staple crops

Crops that are frequently planted and eaten, and therefore a central part of one’s diet.

Act of Religious Toleration

1649 act passed by the Maryland Assembly granting religious freedom to all Christians.

Anglo-Powhatan Wars

Series of conflicts in the 1620s between the Powhatan Confederacy and English settlers in Virginia and Maryland.

Bacon’s Rebellion

1676 uprising in Virginia led by Nathaniel Bacon. Bacon and his followers, many of whom were former servants, were upset by the Virginia governor’s unwillingness to send troops to intervene in conflicts between settlers and American Indians and by the lack of representation of western settlers in the House of Burgesses.

Common law

Law established from custom and the standards set by previous judicial rulings.

Consumer revolution

A process through which status in the colonies became more closely linked to financial success and a refined lifestyle rather than birth and family pedigree during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The consumer revolution was spurred by industrialization and increased global trade.

Colonization

The process of settling and controlling an already inhabited area for the economic benefit of the settlers, or colonizers.

Covenant Chain

The alliance formed between Iroquois leaders and colonists during a meeting Albany in 1677 in hopes of salvaging their fur trade and preventing future conflict.

Dominion of New England

The consolidation of Northeastern colonies by King James II in 1686 to establish greater control over them, resulting in the banning of town meetings, new taxes, and other unpopular policies. The Dominion was dissolved during the Glorious Revolution.

Enclosure movements

The privatized use of common land for personal or financial gain by noblemen, who evicted commoners who relied on the land for subsistence. This led to increased social conflict, famine, inflation, and immigration to North America.

Enlightenment

European cultural movement spanning the late seventeenth century to the end of the eighteenth century emphasizing rational and scientific thinking over traditional religion and superstition.

Gang labor

A particularly harsh labor system that forced enslaved Africans and African Americans to work at a continuous pace throughout the day.

Glorious Revolution

1688 rebellion that forced James II from the English throne and replaced him with William and Mary. The Glorious Revolution led to greater political and commercial autonomy for the British colonies.

Great Awakening

Series of religious revivals in colonial America that began in 1720 and lasted to about 1750.

Headright system

Created in Virginia in 1618, it rewarded those who imported indentured laborers and settlers with fifty acres of land.

Household mode of production

A system of exchange, managed largely through barter, that allowed individual households to function even as they became more specialized in what they produced. Whatever cash was obtained could be used to buy imported goods.

House of Burgesses

Local governing body in Virginia established by the English crown in 1619.

Impressment

The forced enlistment of civilians into the army or navy. The impressment of residents of colonial seaports into the British navy was a major source of complaint in the eighteenth century.

Indentured servitude

Servants contracted to work for a set period of time without pay. Many early migrants to the English colonies indentured themselves in exchange for the price of passage to North America.

Iroquois Confederacy

A group of allied American Indian nations that included the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca, and later the Tuscarora. The group was largely dissolved by the final decade of the 1700s.

Joint-stock companies

Companies in which large numbers of investors own stock. They were able to quickly raise large amounts of risk and reward equally among investors.

King George’s War

1739–1748 war between France, Spain, and England fought in North America.

King William’s War

1689–1697 war that began as a conflict over competing French and English interests on the European continent but soon spread to the American frontier. Both sides pulled American Indian allies into the war.

Leisler’s Rebellion

Class revolt by urban artisans and landless renters led by Merchant Jacob Leisler in 1689 New York over new taxes and centralized rule.

Mayflower Compact

Written agreement created by the Pilgrims upon their arrival in Plymouth. It was the first written constitution adopted in North America.

Metacom’s War

1675–1676 conflict between New England settlers and the region’s American Indians. The settlers were the eventual victors, but fighting was fierce and casualties on both sides were high.

Middle passage

The brutal voyage of slave ships laden with human cargo from Africa to the Americas. It was the middle segment in a triangular journey that began in Europe, went first to Africa, then to the Americas, and finally back to Europe.

Mercantilism

Economic system centered on maintaining a favorable balance of trade for the home country, with more gold and silver flowing into that country than flowed out. Seventeenth- and eighteenth-century British colonial policy was heavily shaped by mercantilism.

Navigation Acts

Acts passed by Parliament in the 1650s and 1660s that prohibited smuggling, established guidelines for legal commerce, and set duties on trade items.

New Light clergy

Colonial clergy who called for religious revivals and emphasized the emotional aspects of spiritual commitment. The New Lights were leaders in the Great Awakening.

Old Light clergy

Colonial clergy from established churches who supported the religious status quo in the early eighteenth century.

Patriarchal family

Model of the family in which fathers have absolute authority over wives, children, and servants. Most colonial Americans accepted the patriarchal model of the family, at least as an ideal.

Pequot War

1636–1637 conflict between New England settlers, their Narragansett allies, and the Pequots. The English saw the Pequots as both a threat and an obstacle to further English expansion.

Powhatan Confederacy

Large and powerful confederation of Algonquian-speaking American Indians in Virginia. The Jamestown settlers had a complicated and often combative relationship with the leaders of the Powhatan Confederacy.

Privy Council

A powerful group of advisors appointed to provide guidance to the British monarch.

Pueblo revolt

1680 uprising of Pueblo Indians against Spanish forces in New Mexico that led to the Spaniards’ temporary retreat from the area. The uprising was sparked by mistreatment and the suppression of Pueblo culture and religion.

Puritan migration

The mass migration of Puritans from Europe to New England during the 1620s and 1630s.

Queen Anne’s War

1702–1713 war over control of Spain and its colonies; also known as the War of the Spanish Succession. Although the Treaty of Utrecht that ended the war in 1713 was intended to bring peace by establishing a balance of power, imperial conflict continued to escalate.

Redemptioners

Immigrants who borrowed money from shipping agents to cover the costs of transport to America, loans that were repaid, or “redeemed,” by colonial employers. Redemptioners worked for their “redeemers” for a set number of years.

Slave code

Laws restricting enslaved peoples’ rights, largely due to slaveholders’ fears of rebellion.

Slave laws

A series of laws that defined slavery as a distinct status based on racial identity and which passed that status on through future generations.

Stono Rebellion

1739 uprising by enslaved Africans and African Americans in South Carolina. In its aftermath, white fear of slave revolts intensified.

Treaty of Utrecht

1713 Treaty that ended Queen Anne’s War. It aimed to achieve peace by balancing the interests of European powers and their colonial possessions.

Tuscarora War

War launched by Tuscarora Indians from 1711 to 1715 against European settlers in North Carolina and their allies from the Yamasee, Catawba, and Cherokee nations. The Tuscaroras lost their lands when they signed the peace treaty and many then joined the Iroquois Confederacy to the north.

Yamasee War

A pan-American Indian war from 1715 to 1717 led by the Yamasee who intended, but failed, to oust the British from South Carolina.

Walking Purchase

1737 treaty that allowed Pennsylvania to expand its boundaries at the expense of the Delaware Indians. The treaty, likely a forgery, allowed the British to add territory that could be walked off in a day and a half.

Battle of Fallen Timbers

Battle in which U.S. General Anthony Wayne won a major victory over a multi-tribe coalition of American Indians in the Northwest Territory in 1794.

Alien and Sedition Acts

1798 security acts passed by the Federalist-controlled Congress. One allowed the president to imprison or deport noncitizens; another placed significant restrictions on political speech.

Battle of Bunker Hill

1775 American Revolution battle in which British troops narrowly defeated patriot militias, emboldening patriot forces.

Coercive Acts

1774 acts of Parliament passed in response to the Boston Tea Party. They closed the port of Boston until damages were paid and moved Massachusetts court cases against royal officials back to England.

committee of correspondence

Type of committee first established in Massachusetts to circulate concerns and reports of protest and other events to leaders in other colonies in the aftermath of the Sugar Act.

Continental Army

Army created by the Second Continental Congress after the battles of Lexington and Concord began the American Revolution in 1775.

Continental Congress

Congress convened in Philadelphia in 1774 in response to the Coercive Acts. Delegates hoped to reestablish freedoms colonists had previously enjoyed.

Constitutional Convention

Meeting held in Philadelphia from May to September of 1787 to draft the United States Constitution, establishing a strong federal government with three branches.

Currency Act

1764 act of Parliament preventing colonial assemblies from printing paper money or bills of credit, limiting local economic expansion.

Daughters of Liberty

Group of female patriots who challenged new taxes through economic boycotts and the homespun movement.

Declaration of Independence

Document declaring the colonies independent from Great Britain, drafted primarily by Thomas Jefferson and made public on July 4, 1776.

Declaratory Act

1766 act announcing Parliament’s authority to pass any law to bind the colonies and people of North America.

Democratic-Republicans

Political party that opposed Federalist policies in the 1790s and supported Thomas Jefferson for president.

Dunmore’s Proclamation

1775 proclamation offering freedom to enslaved African Americans who joined the British army, raising patriot fears about independence.

effigy

A roughly made image or model of a person created to be destroyed in an act of protest.

electoral college

Group of electors who formally vote for president and vice president after the general election as a compromise system.

The Federalist Papers

Collection of 85 essays by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay promoting ratification of the Constitution.

Federalists

Supporters of ratifying the Constitution, often from urban and commercial backgrounds.

French Revolution

Revolution from 1789 to 1799 that overthrew the French monarchy, inspired by American ideals and later led to widespread violence and war in Europe.

guerilla

Nontraditional military tactics used against a larger, better-supplied force.

Indian Trade and Intercourse Act

1790 law intended to regulate trade between American Indians and white settlers, though it was often ignored.

Intolerable Acts

Name used by colonists for the Coercive Acts and the Quebec Act.

Jay Treaty

1796 treaty requiring British troop withdrawal from U.S. soil, repayment of debts to British firms, and limits on American trade.

loyalists

Colonists who supported Great Britain during the American Revolution.

minutemen

Militia members trained to respond quickly to British attacks.

naturalization

Process by which a noncitizen becomes a citizen of a nation.

Naturalization Act

1798 law that increased residency requirements for citizenship from five to fourteen years.

Neutrality Proclamation

1793 declaration stating the U.S. would remain neutral in conflicts between European powers.

New Jersey Plan

Proposal at the Constitutional Convention calling for equal state representation in a single legislative house.

Northwest Ordinances

Laws passed in 1785 and 1787 outlining how territories could be surveyed, governed, and admitted as states.

patriots

American colonists who supported independence from Great Britain.

Albany Plan of Union

1754 proposal by Benjamin Franklin to create a unified colonial government for defense, trade, and relations with American Indians.