US History Openstax Unit 1 Study Guide (Chapters 1 - 6)

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Beringia

An ancient land bridge linking Asia and North America.

The Bubonic Plague

A devastating 14th-century pandemic ("Black Death") that wiped out roughly one-third of Europe's population, severely disrupting feudal structures and destabilizing labor markets.

Koran

The sacred book of Islam, believed by Muslims to be the word of God, dictated to Muhammad through an angel, in the seventh century.

Reconquista

Spain's nearly eight-hundred-year holy war against Islam, which ended in 1492.

The Crusades

A series of military expeditions made by Christian Europeans to recover the Holy Land from the Muslims in the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries.

Chattel Slavery

A system of servitude in which people are treated as personal property to be bought and sold.

Chasquis

Incan relay runners used to send messages over great distances.

Chinampa

Floating Aztec gardens consisting of a large barge woven from reeds, filled with dirt and floating on the water, allowing for irrigation.

Quipu

An ancient Incan device for recording information, consisting of variously colored threads knotted in different ways.

Jerusalem

A sacred holy city targeted by European Crusaders, whose military campaigns inadvertently exposed Europe to luxury silk, spice, and porcelain markets, fueling a desire for water-based trade routes.

Hispanola

The island in the Caribbean, present-day Haiti and Dominican Republic, where Columbus landed on his first voyage to the Americas and established a Spanish colony.

What was the Protestant Reformation?

The massive religious schism in Western Catholicism initiated in the early 16th century by reformers who challenged the absolute spiritual and political authority of the Pope.

Sale of indulgences

Documents for purchase that absolved sinners of their errant behavior.

Who were the Puritans?

a group of religious reformers in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries who wanted to "purify" the Church of England by ridding it of practices associated with the Catholic Church and advocating greater purity of doctrine and worship

Roanoke

the first English colony in Virginia, which mysteriously disappeared sometime between 1587 and 1590

Pilgrims

Separatists, led by William Bradford, who established the first English settlement in New England

privateers

Emcomienda

legal rights to native labor as granted by the Spanish crown

Columbian Exchange

the movement of plants, animals, and diseases across the Atlantic due to European exploration of the Americas

Smallpox

a disease that Europeans accidentally brought to the New World, killing millions of Native Americans, who had no immunity to the disease

The Ninety Five Theses

A list of academic and theological arguments compiled by German monk Martin Luther in 1517 that fiercely protested the sale of indulgences, inadvertently sparking the Reformation.

Jesuits

members of the Society of Jesus, an elite Catholic religious order founded in the 1540s to spread Catholicism and to combat the spread of Protestantism

Indenture

a labor contract that promised young men, and sometimes women, money and land after they worked for a set period of years

Middle Passage

the perilous, often deadly transatlantic crossing of ships carrying captured Africans from the African coast to the New World

Wampum

shell beads used in ceremonies and as jewelry and currency

Who were native people overwhelmed and conquered by the Spanish?

Timucua

Pueblo Revolt 1680

A coordinated indigenous uprising led by Popé that successfully drove Spanish colonizers completely out of New Mexico for over a decade in retaliation for severe religious oppression.

New Amsterdam

A strategic Dutch fur-trading outpost established on Manhattan Island by the Dutch West India Company, later seized by England and re-established as New York.

Tobacco and Jamestown

The commercial introduction of sweet West Indian tobacco by John Rolfe saved the struggling Jamestown settlement from absolute financial ruin, creating a boom economy.

Indentured servants in the Chesapeake region

The primary labor source for tobacco plantations in Virginia and Maryland during the early 17th century before the systematic shift toward permanent racialized slavery

"City Upon a Hill"

A famous metaphor used by Governor John Winthrop to instruct his Massachusetts Bay Puritan colonists to construct a model Christian society rooted in rigorous religious virtue for the entire world to witness.

Proprietary Colonies

colonies granted by the king to a trusted individual, family, or group

Navigation Acts

A series of strict mercantilist laws passed by Parliament between 1651 and 1696 requiring the American colonies to ship goods exclusively on English vessels and route trade directly through English ports

Salutary Neglect

the laxness with which the English crown enforced the Navigation Acts in the eighteenth century

Glorious Revolution

the overthrow of James II in 1688

Deism

an Enlightenment-era belief in the existence of a supreme being—specifically, a creator who does not intervene in the universe—representing a rejection of the belief in a supernatural deity who interacts with humankind

French and Indian War

the last eighteenth-century imperial struggle between Great Britain and France, leading to a decisive British victory; this war lasted from 1754 to 1763 and was also called the Seven Years' War

Quakers

he Society of Friends, a progressive, pacifist religious group that rejected formal church hierarchies, believed every human possessed an "Inner Light," and settled Pennsylvania under William Penn.

How did the Africans respond to the trauma of being inslaved?

nslaved Africans resisted by executing overt actions (armed rebellion, escaping) alongside covert tools (breaking tools, working slowly). They retained their humanity by cultivating distinct hybrid languages (such as Gullah), syncretic religions, and family networks

Loyalists

colonists in America who were loyal to Great Britain

Proclamation Line

a line along the Appalachian Mountains, imposed by the Proclamation of 1763, west of which British colonists could not settle

Sugar Act

A 1764 revenue act that lowered taxes on imported French molasses but drastically intensified imperial enforcement mechanisms, expanding vice-admiralty courts and threatening traditional liberties.

Daughters of Liberty

well-born British colonial women who led a non-importation movement against British goods

Boston Massacre

a confrontation between a crowd of Bostonians and British soldiers on March 5, 1770, which resulted in the deaths of five people, including Crispus Attucks, the first official casualty in the war for independence

Intolerable Acts

the name American Patriots gave to the Coercive Acts and the Quebec Act

Stamp Act

A watershed 1765 act that levied a direct internal tax on nearly all printed paper goods within the colonies, igniting a constitutional crisis over "Taxation Without Representation".

How did British elites view the colonies?

hey viewed the colonies as legally subordinate corporate extensions of the mother country whose primary role was to enrich Great Britain, insisting that Parliament maintained absolute sovereign authority to pass laws for them.

How did the king view the Boston Tea Party?

King George III interpreted the destruction of private British East India Company tea not as an economic protest, but as an act of open defiance, vandalism, and rebellion that had to be met with severe military force. [1]