HIS 201 Test 1 Flashcards

Vocabulary flashcards reviewing major historical concepts, terms, figures, policies, and developments covered in the HIS 201 Test 1 study guide.

Cahokia

A major Mississippian urban and ceremonial center near present-day St. Louis whose large earthen mounds demonstrated the complexity of precontact North American societies.

Mexica

Commonly called the Aztecs, an empire centered on Tenochtitlan that relied on military power, tribute, commerce, and intensive agriculture.

Inca

A large Andean empire linked by roads, officials, labor obligations, and regional administration.

Christopher Columbus

An explorer who sailed under Spanish sponsorship and reached the Caribbean in 1492, beginning sustained contact between Europe and the Western Hemisphere.

Hernan Cortes

Spanish conquistador who entered Mexico in 1519; Spanish military force, Indigenous alliances, political divisions, siege warfare, and epidemic disease contributed to the fall of Tenochtitlan under his campaign in 1521.

Smallpox

An epidemic disease especially destructive to Indigenous populations during the era of Spanish conquest because many communities had no previous exposure to it.

Encomienda

A Spanish colonial system that allowed colonists to claim Indigenous labor or tribute under colonial authority.

Bartolome de Las Casas

A prominent Spanish critic of brutality and exploitation directed against Indigenous peoples.

Columbian Exchange

The transfer of plants, animals, microorganisms, people, technologies, and cultural practices across the Atlantic after sustained European contact.

Jamestown

An English commercial settlement founded in Virginia in 1607 that became the first permanent English settlement discussed in the Early Chesapeake material.

Starving Time

An extreme famine at Jamestown in 1609–1610 during which only about 60 of roughly 500 colonists survived by spring 1610.

Headright system

A system that granted land to people who financed migration to Virginia, encouraging immigration and the growth of landholding.

House of Burgesses

Virginia's representative assembly that first met in 1619.

Indentured servants

Workers who supplied much of Virginia's early agricultural labor before racial slavery became increasingly defined and hereditary under colonial law.

Bacon's Rebellion

A 1676 rebellion led by Nathaniel Bacon against Governor William Berkeley's government that exposed class tensions, frontier resentment, and conflict over Native policy and western defense.

Maryland

A proprietary colony founded under the Calvert family that became an important refuge for English Catholics while also attracting Protestant settlers.

Mayflower Compact

An agreement established in 1620 by English Separatists who founded Plymouth Colony, creating a framework for self-government.

John Winthrop

Puritan leader who described Massachusetts Bay as a Christian model, a 'city upon a hill.'

Roger Williams

Founder of Rhode Island who advocated religious liberty after conflict with Massachusetts religious authorities.

Navigation Acts

Acts that regulated colonial trade to benefit England and its merchants, representing an important effort to strengthen English imperial economic control.

Middle Passage

The forced Atlantic voyage that transported enslaved Africans to the Americas under brutal and deadly conditions.

Coverture

The legal principle under which a married woman's legal identity and many property rights were largely incorporated into those of her husband.

Triangular trade

Atlantic commercial networks linking Europe, Africa, the Caribbean, and the American colonies through exchanges of goods, commodities, and enslaved people.

Great Awakening

An eighteenth-century religious revival associated with evangelical preaching and figures such as George Whitefield and Jonathan Edwards.

New Lights

Colonial religious figures who generally supported Great Awakening revivalism and its emotional evangelical style.

Old Lights

Colonial religious figures who were more skeptical of the Great Awakening's emotional evangelical style.

Enlightenment thought

Eighteenth-century intellectual movement emphasizing reason, natural law, scientific inquiry, and the idea that human institutions could be examined rationally.

John Peter Zenger case

A legal case associated with expanding colonial ideas about freedom of the press and the right to criticize government authority.

Albany Plan of Union

Benjamin Franklin's 1754 proposal for greater colonial cooperation during the Albany Congress.

French and Indian War

A conflict that changed Britain's relationship with its North American colonies by expanding British territory while leaving Britain with major war costs and new imperial responsibilities.

Proclamation of 1763

An imperial measure that attempted to restrict colonial settlement west of the Appalachian Mountains and reduce frontier conflict after the French and Indian War.

Stamp Act

An act that imposed a direct tax on printed materials and intensified colonial arguments that Parliament could not tax colonists without representation.

Boston Massacre

A 1770 event in which British soldiers fired on civilians in Boston, becoming a powerful symbol used by opponents of British imperial policy.

Tea Act

An act that preserved Parliament's taxing authority, prompting resistance that culminated in the Boston Tea Party when colonists destroyed East India Company tea in Boston Harbor.

Intolerable Acts

Punitive British measures imposed after the Boston Tea Party that were viewed by many colonists as threats to self-government and colonial rights.

Lexington and Concord

Sites where British troops and colonial militia exchanged fire in 1775, beginning open armed conflict in the American Revolution.

Apprenticeship system

A labor and training system that transmitted technical knowledge by allowing young workers to learn tool use, materials, work discipline, and trade practices directly from experienced masters.