APUSH Period 2: Colonial Development and the British Empire (1607–1754)

Vocabulary flashcards covering European imperial models, regional characteristics of the Thirteen Colonies, colonial conflicts, mercantilism, the development of chattel slavery, and cultural movements from 1607 to 1754.

Jamestown (1607)

The first permanent English settlement in North America, founded by the Virginia Company and saved from early collapse through the leadership of John Smith and the introduction of tobacco by John Rolfe.

Headright System

A land-grant policy established in Virginia offering 50 acres of land to anyone who paid for their own voyage or financed the passage of an immigrant to the colony.

House of Burgesses (1619)

The first representative legislative assembly established in British colonial America, formed in Virginia.

Maryland Act of Toleration (1649)

The first colonial statute granting religious freedom to all Christians; passed under Cecil Calvert, it simultaneously mandated the death penalty for anyone who denied the divinity of Jesus.

Bacon's Rebellion (1676)

An armed uprising of backcountry farmers, indentured servants, and enslaved people led by Nathaniel Bacon against Virginia Governor William Berkeley; it resulted in the burning of Jamestown and accelerated the colony's shift from indentured servitude to African chattel slavery.

James Oglethorpe

The founder of Savannah (1733) and first governor of Georgia, who originally organized the colony as a haven to relieve overcrowded English debtor prisons, a military buffer against Spanish Florida, and prohibited rum, gambling, and slavery.

Separatists (Pilgrims)

Radical Calvinist dissenters who completely broke away from the Church of England, fled King James I's persecution, sailed to Plymouth in 1620, and signed the Mayflower Compact.

Mayflower Compact (1620)

An early governing agreement signed by Pilgrims aboard the Mayflower establishing a participatory system of self-government based on majority rule in Plymouth Colony.

John Winthrop

The Puritan leader and governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony who declared in 1630 that Boston would serve as a pious, exemplary model for the world, or a "City upon a Hill."

Great Migration

The mass migration of approximately 15,000 Puritans from England to the Massachusetts Bay Colony during the turmoil of the English Civil War in the 1630s.

Roger Williams

A Massachusetts Bay dissenter who argued that an individual's conscience was beyond church or state control; after being banished, he established Providence (1636), protected American Indian land rights, and provided religious freedom.

Anne Hutchinson

A Puritan dissenter banished from Massachusetts Bay for promoting antinomianism—the idea that faith alone, not deeds or moral laws, is necessary for salvation—who subsequently established the settlement of Portsmouth in 1638.

Fundamental Orders of Connecticut (1639)

The first written constitution in America, establishing a representative government with a legislature elected by popular vote and a governor chosen by that legislature.

New England Confederation (1643)

A military alliance created by Plymouth, Massachusetts Bay, Connecticut, and New Haven to organize mutual defense against French, Dutch, and American Indian threats while England was embroiled in civil war.

Metacom's War (King Philip's War)

A brutal 1675–1676 conflict between an alliance of American Indian tribes united under Wampanoag Chief Metacom and New England colonists, resulting in high casualties and establishing firm English dominance in the region.

Pueblo Revolt (1680)

An indigenous uprising against Spanish imperial rule in the American Southwest that successfully drove out the Spanish for over a decade and resisted religious and economic subjugation.

Quakers (Religious Society of Friends)

A religious group that rejected formal religious institutions and the Bible in favor of the "inner light" of individual souls, practiced pacifism, promoted gender equality, and settled in Pennsylvania.

Holy Experiment

William Penn's governing philosophy for Pennsylvania, designed to provide a religious haven for persecuted groups and test liberal political concepts through a written constitution, grid city planning, and fair relations with American Indians.

Mercantilism

An imperial economic doctrine asserting that colonies exist entirely to benefit the mother country by furnishing raw materials and serving as a captive export market for finished manufactured goods.

Navigation Acts (1650–1673)

A sequence of trade laws passed by the British Parliament mandating that colonial commerce use only English or colonial ships, enter English ports first, and send designated "enumerated goods" exclusively to England.

Middle Passage

The transatlantic voyage that forcibly transported enslaved Africans to the Americas under inhumane conditions as part of the triangular trade network.

Stono Rebellion

An overt uprising of enslaved Africans in the Southern colonies, illustrating active resistance against the chattel slave system.

Halfway Covenant (1662)

A religious compromise in Puritan New England granting partial church membership and baptism to the grandchildren of original members without demanding a full public conversion experience.

First Great Awakening

A major Protestant religious revival spanning the 1730s and 1740s marked by fervent emotional preaching by Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield that undermined traditional religious hierarchies and forged a shared American ethos.

John Locke

An Enlightenment philosopher whose Two Treatises of Government developed the social contract theory and concept of natural rights, profoundly influencing colonial thinkers and the American Founding Fathers.

Zenger Trial (1735)

The New York libel case in which attorney Andrew Hamilton successfully defended printer John Peter Zenger by arguing that truthful criticism of the colonial governor was not libelous, establishing a critical precedent for freedom of the press.

Salutary Neglect

Britain's unofficial imperial policy (c. 1688–1763) of loosely enforcing trade restrictions like the Navigation Acts, permitting American colonies to cultivate autonomous commercial practices and self-governing institutions.

Métis

People of mixed European (notably French) and American Indian ancestry, commonly emerging from the fur trade alliances and intermarriages in North America.