APUSH Midterm Vocab Study Guide

Canadian Shield

Canadian Shield

First part of the North American landmass to emerge above sea level.

Incas

Highly advanced South American civilization that occupied present-day Peru until it was conquered by Spanish forces under Francisco Pizarro in 1532. The Incas developed sophisticated agricultural techniques such as terrace, farming, in order to sustain large, complex societies in the harsh Andes Mountains.

Aztecs

Native American empire that controlled present-day Mexico until 1521, when they were conquered by Spanish Hernan Cortes. The Aztecs maintained control over their vast empire through a system of trade and tribute. They came to be known for their advances in mathematics and writing and their use of human sacrifices in religious ceremonies.

nation-states

The form of political society that traditionally combines centralized government with a high degree of ethnic and cultural unity.

Cahokia

Mississippian settlement near present-day East St. Louis, home to as many as 25 thousand Native Americans.

middlemen

In trading systems, those dealers who operate between the original producers of goods and the retail merchants who sell to consumers.

caravel

Small, regular vessel with a high deck and three triangular sails. Caravels could sail more closely into the wind, allowing European sailors to explore the Western shores of Africa, previously made inaccessible due to prevailing winds on the homeward journey.

plantation

Large-scale agricultural enterprise growing commercial crops, historically often employing coerced or slave labor. European settlers established plantations in Africa, South America, the Caribbean, and the American South.

Columbian exchange

The transfer of goods, crops, and diseases between New and Old World societies after 1492.

Treaty of Tordesillas

(1494) Signed by Spain and Portugal, dividing the territories of the New World. Spain received the bulk of territory in the Americas, compensating Portugal with titles to lands in Africa and Asia.

conquistadores

Sixteenth century Spanish military adventurers who fanned out across the Americas, from Colorado to Argentina, and eventually conquered the Aztec and Incan empires.

capitalism

Economic system characterized by private property, generally free trade, and open and accessible markets. European colonization of the Americas, and in particular, the discovery of vast bullion deposits, helped bring about Europe’s transition to capitalism.

encomienda

Spanish government’s policy to “commend”, or give, Natives to certain colonists in return for the promise to Christianize them. Part of a broader Spanish effort to subdue Native tribes in the West Indies and on the North American mainland.

noche triste

(June 30, 1520) “Sad night”, when the Aztecs attacked Hernan Cortes and his forces in the Aztec capital, Tenochtitlan, killing hundreds. Cortes laid seigle to the city the following year, precipitating the fall of the Aztec empire and inaugurating three centuries of Spanish rule.

mestizos

People of mixed Native and European heritage, notably in Mexico.

Battle of Acoma

(1599) Fought between Spaniards under Don Juan de Oñate and the Pueblo Natives in present-day New Mexico. Spaniards brutally crushed the Pueblo peoples and established the territory as New Mexico in 1609.

Popé’s Rebellion

(1680) Pueblo Native rebellion that drove Spanish settlers from New Mexico.

Black Legend

False notion that Spanish conquerors did little but butcher the Natives and steal their gold in the name of Christ.

Protestant Reformation

Movement to reform the Catholic Church launched in Germany by Martin Luther. Reformers questioned the authority of the Pope, sought to eliminate the selling of indulgences, and encouraged the translation of the Bible from Latin, which few at the time could read. The Reformation was launched in England in the 1530s when King Henry VIII broke with the Roman Catholic Church.

Roanoke Island

(1585) Sir Walter Raleigh’s failed colonial settlement off the coast of North Carolina.

Spanish Armada

Spanish fleet defeated in the English Channel in 1588. The defeat of the Armada marked the beginnings of the decline of the Spanish Empire.

primogeniture

Legal principle that the oldest son inherits all family property or land. Landowner’s younger sons, forced to seek their fortunes elsewhere, pioneered early exploration and settlement of the Americas.

joint-stock company

Short-term partnerships between multiple investors to fund a commercial enterprise; such arrangements were used to fund England’s early colonial ventures.

Virginia Company

English joint-stock company that received a charter from King James I allowing it to found the Virginia colony.

Charter

Legal document granted by a government to some group or agency to implement a stated purpose, and spelling out the attending rights and obligations. British colonial charters guaranteed inhabitants all the rights of Englishmen, which helped solidify colonists’ ties to Britain during the early years of settlement.

Jamestown

(1607) First permanent English settlement in North America founded by the Virginia Company.

First Anglo-Powhatan War

(1610-1614) Series of clashes between the Powhatan Confederacy and English settlers in Virginia. English colonists torched and pillaged Native villages, applying tactics used in England’s campaigns against the Irish.

Second Anglo-Powhatan War

(1644-1646) Last-ditch effort by the Natiive to dislodge Virginia settlements. The resulting peace treaty formally separated white and Natives areas of settlement.

House of Burgesses

(1619) Representative parliamentary assembly created to govern Virginia, establishing a precedent for government in the English colonies.

Act of Toleration

(1649) Passed in Maryland, it guaranteed toleration to all Christians but decreed the death penalty for those, like Jews and atheists, who denied the divinity of Jesus Christ. Ensured that Maryland would continue to attract a high proportion of Catholic migrants throughout the colonial period.

Barbados Slave Code

First formal statute governing the treatment of slaves, which provided for harsh punishments against offending slaves but lacked penalties for the mistreatment of slaves by masters. Similar statutes were adopted by southern plantation societies on the North American mainland in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Iroquois Confederacy

Bound together five tribes—the Mohawks, the Oneidas, the Onondagas, the Cayugas, and the Senecas—in the Mohawk Valley of what is now New York State.

squatters

Frontier farmers who illegally occupied land owned by others or not yet officially opened for settlement. Many of North Carolina’s early settlers were squatters who contributed to the colony’s reputation as being more independent minded and “democratic” than its neighbors.

Tuscarora War

(1711-1713) Began with a Native attack on New Bern, NC. After the Tuscaroras were defeated, remaining Native survivors migrated northward, eventually joining the Iroquois Confederacy as its sixth nation.

Yamasee Natives

Defeated by the South Carolinians in the war of 1715-1716. The Yamasee defeat devastated the last of the coastal Native tribes in the southern colonies.

buffer

A territory between two antagonistic powers, intended to minimize the possibility of conflict between them. In British North America, Georgia was established as a buffer colony between British and Spanish territory.

Calvinism

Dominant theological credo of New England Puritans based on the teachings of John Calvin. Calvinists believed in predestination—that only “the elect” were destined for salvation.

Puritans

English Protestant reformers who sought to purify the Church of England of Catholic rituals and creeds. Some of the most devout Puritans believed that only “visible saints” should be admitted to church membership.

predestination

Calvinist doctrine that God has foreordained some people to be saved and some to be damned. Though their fate was irreversible, Calvinists, particularly those who believed they were destined for salvation, sought to lead sanctified lives in order to demonstrate to others that they were in fact members of the “elect”.

conversion

Intense religious experience that confirmed an individual’s place among the “elect” or the “visible saints”. Calvinists who experienced conversion were then expected to lead sanctified lives to demonstrate their salvation.

Separatists

Small group of Puritans who sought to break away entirely from the Church of England; after initially settling in Holland, a number of English Separatists made their way to Plymouth Bay, Massachusetts, in 1620.

Mayflower Compact

(1620) Agreement to form a majoritarian government in Plymouth, signed aboard the Mayflower. Created a foundation for self-government in the colony.

Massachusetts Bay Colony

(Founded 1630) Established by non-separating Puritans, it soon grew to be the largest and most influential of the New England colonies.

Great English Migration

(1630-1642) Migration of seventy thousand refugees from England to the North American colonies, primarily New England and the Caribbean. The twenty thousand migrants who came to Massachusetts largely shared a common sense of purpose—to establish a model Christian settlement in the New World.

Quakers

Religious group known for their tolerance, emphasis on peace, and idealistic Native policy, who settled heavily in Pennsylvania in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

antinomianism

Belief that the truly saved religious need not obey the law of either God or man; most notably espoused in the colonies by Anne Hutchinson.

Fundamental Orders

(1639) Drafted by settlers in the Connecticut River valley, this document was the first “modern constitution” establishing a democratically controlled government. Key features of the document were borrowed for Connecticut’s colonial charter and, later, its state constitution.

Pequot War

(1636-1638) Series of clashes between English settlers and Pequot Natives in the Connecticut River valley. Ended in the slaughter of the Pequot by the Puritans and the Narragansett Native allies.

King Philip’s War

(1675-1676) Series of assaults by Metacom, King Philip, on English settlements in New England. The attacks slowed the westward migration of New England settlers for several decades.

English Civil War

(1642-1651) Armed conflict between royalists and parliamentarians, resulting in the victory of pro-Parliament forces and the execution of Charles I.

New England Confederation

(1643) Weak union of the colonies in Massachusetts and Connecticut led by Puritans for the purposes of defense and organization; an early attempt at self-government during the benign neglect of the English Civil War.

Dominion of New England

(1686-1689) Administrative union created by royal authority, incorporating all of New England, New York, and East and West Jersey. Placed under the rule of Sir Edmund Andros, who curbed popular assemblies, taxed residents without their consent, and strictly enforced Navigation Laws. Its collapse after the Glorious Revolution in England demonstrated colonial opposition to strict royal control.

Glorious Revolution

(1688-1689) Relatively peaceful overthrow of the unpopular Catholic monarch, James II, who was replaced with Dutch-born William III and Mary II, daughter of James II. William and Mary accepted increased parliamentary oversight and new limits on monarchical authority,

statutory neglect

(1688-1763) Unofficial policy of relaxed royal control over colonial trade and only weak enforcement of Navigation Laws. Lasted from the Glorious Revolution to the end of the French and Indian War in 1763.

Navigation laws

Series of laws passed, beginning in 1651, to regulate colonial shipping; the acts provided that only English ships would be allowed to trade in English and colonial ports and that all goods destined for the colonies would first pass through England.

patroonships

Vast tracts of land along the Hudson River in New Netherland granted to wealthy promoters in exchange for bringing fifty settlers to the property.

blue laws

Also known as sumptuary laws, they are designed to restrict personal behavior in accord with a strict code of morality. Blue laws were passed across the colonies, particularly in Puritan New England and Quaker Pennsylvania.

indentured servants

Migrants who, in exchange for transatlantic passage, bound themselves to a colonial employer for a term of service, typically between four and seven years. Their migration addressed the chronic labor shortage in the colonies and facilitated settlement.

headright system

Employed in the tobacco colonies to encourage the importation of indentured servants. It allowed an individual to acquire fifty acres of land if he paid for a laborer’s passage to the colony.

Bacon’s Rebellion

(1676) Uprising of Virginia backcountry farmers and indentured servants led by a planter Nathanial Bacon; initially a response to Governor William Berkeley’s refusal to protect a backcountry settlers from Native attacks, the rebellion eventually grew into a broader conflict between impoverished settlers and the planter elite.

Royal African Company

English joint-stock company that enjoyed a state-granted monopoly on the colonial slave trade from 1672 until 1698. The supply of slaves to the North American colonies rose sharply once the company lost its monopoly privileges.

middle passage

Transatlantic voyage that slaves endured between Africa and the colonies. Mortality rates were notoriously high.

slave codes

Set of laws beginning in the 1662 defining racial slavery. They established the hereditary nature of slavery and limited the rights and education of slaves.

Congregational Church

Self-governing Puritan congregations without the hierarchical establishments of the Anglican Church

jeremiad

Often-fiery sermons lamenting the waning piety of parishioners first delivered in New England in the mid-seventeenth century; named after the doom-saying Old Testament prophet Jeremiah.

Half-Way Covenant

(1662) Agreement allowing unconverted offspring of church members to baptize their children. It signified a waning of religious zeal among second and third generation Puritans.

Salem Witch Trials

(1692-1693) Series of witchcraft trials launched after a group of adolescent girls in Salem, Massachusetts, claimed to have been bewitched by certain older women of the town. Twenty individuals were put to death before the trials were put to an end by the governor of Massachusetts.

Leisler’s Rebellion

(1689-1691) Armed conflict between aspiring merchants led by Jacob Leisler and the ruling elite of New York. One of many uprisings that erupted across the colonies when wealthy colonists attempted to re-create European social structures in the New World.

New York slave revolt

(1712) Uprising of approximately two dozen enslaved Africans that resulted in the deaths of nine whites and the brutal execution of twenty-one participating slaves.

South Carolina slave revolt

(1739) Uprising, aka Stono Rebellion, of more than 50 South Carolina slaves along the Stono River. They attempted to reach Spanish Florida, but were stopped by the South Carolina militia.

triangular trade

Exchange of rum, slaves, and molasses between the North American colonies, Africa, and the West Indies. A small but immensely profitable subset of the Atlantic trade.

Molasses Act

(1733) Tax on imported molasses passed by Parliament in an effort to stop the North American trade with the French West Indies. It proved largely ineffective due to widespread smuggling.

Great Awakening

(1730s-40s) Religious revival that swept the colonies. Participating ministers, most notably Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield, placed an emphasis on direct, emotive spirituality. A Second Great Awakening arose in the nineteenth century.

new lights

Ministers who took part in the revivalist, emotive religious tradition pioneered by George Whitefield during the Great Awakening.

old lights

Orthodox clergymen who rejected the emotionalism of the Great Awakening in favor of a more rational spirituality.

Poor Richard’s Almanac

(1732-1758) widely read annual pamphlet edited by Benjamin Franklin. Best known for its proverbs and aphorisms emphasizing thrift, industry, morality, and common sense.

Zenger Trial

(1734-1735) New York libel case against John peter Zenger. Established the principle that truthful statements about public officials could not be prosecuted as libel.

royal colonies

Colonies where governors were appointed directly by the king. Though often competent administrators, the governors frequently ran into trouble with colonial legislatures, which resented the imposition of control from across the Atlantic.

proprietary colonies

Colonies—MD, PA, and DE—under the control of local proprietors, who appointed colonial governors.

Huguenots

French Protestant dissenters, the Huguenots were granted limited toleration under the Edict of Nantes. After King Louis XIV outlaws Protestantism in 1685, many Huguenots fled elsewhere, including to British North America.

Edict of Nantes

(1598) Decree issued by the French crown granting limited toleration to French Protestants. Ended religious wars in France and inaugurated a period of preeminence in Europe and across the Atlantic. Its repeal in 1685 prompted a fresh migration of Protestant Huguenots to North America.

coureurs de bous

French-Canadian fur trappers; literally “runners of the woods”

voyageurs

French-Canadian explorers, adventurers, and traders.

King William’s War

(1689-1697) War fought largely between French trappers, British settlers, and their respective Native allies. The colonial theater of the larger War of the League of Augsburg in Europe.

Queen Anne’s War

(1702-1713) Second in a series of conflicts between the European powers for control of North America, fought between the English and French colonists in the North, and the English and Spanish in Florida. Under the peace treaty, the French ceded Acadia (Nova Scotia), Newfoundland, and Hudson Bay to Britain.

War of Jenkins’s Ear

(began in 1739) Small-scale clash between Britain and Spain in the Caribbean and in the buffer colony, Georgia. It merged with the much larger War of Austrian Succession in 1742.

King of George War

(1744-1748) North American theater of Europe’s War of Austrian Succession that once again pitted British colonists against their French counterparts in the North. The peace settlement did not involve any territorial realignment, leading to conflict between New England settlers and the British government.

French and Indian War

(1754-1763) Nine-year war between the British and the French in North America. It helped spark the Seven Years’ War in Europe, and resulted in the expulsion of the French from the North American mainland.

Albany Congress

(1754) Intercolonial congress summoned by the British government to foster greater colonial unity and assure Iroquois support in the escalating war against the French

regulars

Trained professional soldiers, as distinct from militia or conscripts.

Battle of Québec

(1759) Historic British victory over French forces on the outskirts of Quebec. The surrender of Quebec marked the beginning of the end of French rule in North America.

Proclamation of 1763

Decree issued by Parliament in the wake of Pontiac’s uprising, prohibiting settlement beyond the Appalachians. Contributed to rising resentment of British rule in the American colonies.

Pontiac’s uprising

Bloody campaign waged by Ottawa chief Pontiac to drive the British out of Ohio Country. It was brutally crushed by British troops, who resorted to distributing blankets infected with smallpox as a means to put down the rebellion.

republicanism

Political theory of representative government, based on the principle of popular sovereignty, with a strong emphasis on liberty and civic virtue. Influential in eighteenth-century American political thought, it stood as an alternative to monarchical rule.

radical Whigs

Eighteenth-century British political commentators who agitated against political corruption and emphasized the threat to liberty posed by arbitrary power. Their writings shaped American political thought and made colonists especially alert to encroachments on their rights.

mercantilism

Economic theory that closely linked a nation’s political and military power to its bullion reserved. Mercantilists generally favored protectionism and colonial acquisition as means to increase exports.

Sugar Act

(1764) Duty on imported sugar from the West Indies. It was the first tax levied on the colonists by the crown and was lowered substantially in response to widespread protests.

Quartering Act

(1765) required colonies to provide food and quarters for British troops. Many colonists resented the act, which they perceived as an encroachment on their rights.

stamp tax

(1765) Widely unpopular tax on an array of paper goods, repealed in 1766 after mass protests erupted across the colonies. Colonists developed the principle of “no taxation without representation” that questioned Parliament’s authority over the colonies and laid the foundation for future revolutionary claims.

admiralty courts

In British law, special administrative courts designed to try maritime cases without a jury.