Apush unit 2

Joint-stock company

A business entity in which investors pooled capital to fund colonial settlements in the New World, sharing both profits and financial risks.

House of Burgesses

The first elected legislative assembly in English North America, established in Virginia in 1619 to make laws and levy taxes.

Indentured servitude

A labor system in which individuals bound themselves to work for an employer for a specified number of years in exchange for passage to the Americas, food, and shelter.

Salutary Neglect

The unofficial British policy of relaxed enforcement of colonial trade regulations during the late 17th and early 18th centuries, which fostered autonomous colonial self-governance.

Maryland Toleration Act (1649)

A law passed in 1649 granting religious freedom to all Trinitarian Christians in Maryland, enacted to protect Catholic settlers from Protestant dominance.

Quaker Holy Experiment

William Penn's colonial settlement in Pennsylvania designed to provide religious freedom, peaceful relations with Native Americans, and liberal political governance.

Triangular Trade

A complex transatlantic trade network involving the exchange of rum, manufactured goods, enslaved Africans, and raw agricultural products between Europe, West Africa, and the Americas.

Dominion of New England

An administrative union created by King James II in 1686 that merged several northern colonies under Sir Edmund Andros to enforce the Navigation Acts and revoke local self-governance.

Half-Way Covenant

A 1662 Puritan policy permitting baptism and partial church membership for the children of non-converted church members, intended to maintain religious influence as fervor declined.

Beaver Wars

A series of 17th-century bloody conflicts between the Iroquois Confederacy, backed by the Dutch and English, and neighboring tribes allied with the French over control of the fur trade.

Transatlantic Print Culture

The widespread sharing of books, pamphlets, and newspapers across the Atlantic Ocean that helped spread European Enlightenment ideals and shared colonial identities.

Mercantilism

An economic theory adopted by European imperial powers holding that colonies exist to enrich the mother country through raw material extraction and controlled trade.

Navigation Acts

A series of English mercantilist laws restricting colonial trade strictly to English ships and ports, fueling eventual colonial economic resentment.

Bacon's Rebellion

A 1676 armed uprising of Virginia frontiersmen and former indentured servants against Governor Berkeley over land and defense policies, accelerating the colonial shift to enslaved labor.

Pueblo Revolt

A successful 1680 uprising of Indigenous peoples against Spanish forced labor and religious persecution, temporarily expelling the Spanish from New Mexico.

First Great Awakening

A major Protestant religious revival throughout the American colonies during the 1730s and 1740s that emphasized personal devotion, emotional preaching, and spiritual equality.

Middle Passage

The brutal, forced oceanic crossing undertaken by enslaved West Africans traveling to the Americas under inhumane conditions.

Mayflower Compact

A 1620 agreement written by Plymouth settlers establishing an early colonial form of self-government based on majority rule.

Metacom's War (King Philip's War)

A devastating 1675-1676 conflict between New England colonists and a coalition of Native nations, resulting in heavy casualties and expanded English encroachment on Indigenous land.

Stono Rebellion

A 1739 slave uprising in South Carolina that led colonial authorities to pass much harsher laws governing the assembly and movement of enslaved individuals.