Chapter 2: The Contest for North America, 1500-1664

Vocabulary and key concepts from the lecture notes covering French, Dutch, and English colonization efforts in North America and their interactions with Native American tribes.

Huguenots

A group of French Protestants who engaged in violent conflicts with Roman Catholics during the 1500s.

Edict of Nantes

A 1598 decree by the French crown that provided limited religious toleration to French Protestants, ending internal religious wars.

Samuel de Champlain

Accomplished soldier and explorer known as the "Father of New France" for his leadership and energy in establishing Québec in 1608.

coureurs de bois

Meaning "runners of the woods," these adventurous French fur-trappers traveled across North America in pursuit of beaver pelts.

voyageurs

French explorers and fur traders who recruited Native Americans into the beaver trade across vast distances of the continent.

Protestant Reformation

A movement launched in the 1530s when King Henry VIII broke with the Roman Catholic Church, eventually leading to Protestantism becoming dominant in England.

Sir Walter Raleigh

A courtier and favorite of Queen Elizabeth I who organized the failed Roanoke Island colony in 1585.

Spanish Armada

A massive 130-ship flotilla sent by Philip II of Spain to invade England in 1588; its defeat marked the beginning of Spain's decline and England's rise as a naval power.

enclosing

The process by English landlords of fencing off croplands for sheep grazing, which forced many small farmers off their land and contributed to immigration to America.

primogeniture

Legal tradition in England where only the eldest sons were eligible to inherit landed estates, forcing younger sons to seek fortunes elsewhere.

joint-stock company

A business structure perfected in the early 1600s that allowed investors, or "adventurers," to pool their capital to fund colonial ventures while limiting individual risk.

Virginia Company of London

A joint-stock company that received a charter from King James I in 1606 to establish a settlement in the New World in search of gold and a passage to the Indies.

charter

A significant document that guaranteed New World settlers the same rights of Englishmen they would have enjoyed in their home country.

Jamestown

The first permanent English settlement in North America, established on May 24, 1607, located on the banks of the James River.

Captain John Smith

An intrepid young adventurer who took control of Jamestown in 1608 and established the rule, "He who shall not work shall not eat."

First Anglo-Powhatan War

A conflict ending in 1614 that utilized "Irish tactics" against the Powhatan people, eventually settled by the marriage of Pocahontas and John Rolfe.

Second Anglo-Powhatan War

A final 1644 effort by Native Americans to dislodge the Virginians; the resulting 1646 treaty banished the Indians from their ancestral lands.

New Netherland

A Dutch colony established in 1623-1624 in the Hudson River area for the quick-profit fur trade.

patroonships

Vast feudal estates fronting the Hudson River granted to Dutch promoters who agreed to settle fifty people on the land.

Peter Stuyvesant

The last director-general of New Netherland who led military actions against New Sweden before surrendering to the English in 1664.

Iroquois Confederacy

A military and social alliance of five Indian nations (Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, and Senecas) founded in the late 1500s in the Mohawk Valley.