History test 1

This test covers Ch. 1-4

historical record

The sum of all evidence, whether physical or digital, that provides information about the past.

origin stories

The history of how a particular place or people came to be, often involving legend or mythology.

paleo- americans

The first humans to settle in the Americas, having crossed a land bridge from Asia at some point between 15,000 and 20,000 years ago.

Agricultural revolution

A transition from hunting and foraging to settled agricultures, which enabled increasingly complex societies. There were at least seven independent such transitions across the globe; in the Americas, it happened as peoples began cultivating maize

Little Ice Age

A global climate change event, beginning in the fourteenth century and ending in the nineteenth, characterized by extremely cold winters and relatively cool summers

Inquisition

A Spanish judicial institution created in 1478 with the goal of eradicating heresy, using brutal interrogation methods on Spanish Jews and Muslims in an effort to forcibly convert them to Catholicism

printing press

The device invented by Johannes Gutenberg in the fifteenth century that allowed for the rapid printing of books, resulting in a more rapid and extensive spread of knowledge

biological exchange

The transfer of biological and social elements—such as plants, animals, people, diseases, and cultural practices—among Europe, the Americas, and Africa in the wake of Christopher Columbus's voyages to the Americas

smallpox

One of many highly contagious and deadly diseases brought to the Americas by European ships; responsible for the deaths of large numbers of Native Americans, who had no natural immunity

conquistadors

The Spanish term for "conquerors," applied to Spanish and Portuguese explorer-soldiers of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, who violently seized lands held by indigenous peoples in central and southern America as well as territory that includes the current states of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California

sovereignty

The right of a state, nation, or people to govern itself

Requerimiento

A 1513 document detailing the Spanish Crown's version of the world's origins and justifying conquest; conquistadors read it aloud to Native Americans, informing them to submit to Spanish rule and Catholic conversion or else be enslaved or executed

mestizos

The sixteenth-century Spanish term for mixed-race people, usually having a Spanish father and an indigenous mother

trading companies

Businesses that operated in colonial North America by buying specialized products from one region, such as furs, and selling them to consumers in another

fur trade

Beginning in the 1500s, an industry through which French traders purchased animal furs from Native Americans and shipped them back to Europe to manufacture luxury goods

missionaries

Followers of a religion who travel to another region to promote their faith and encourage conversion

charter

A legal document through which a government grants certain rights to a company, city, or other body

Protestant Reformation

The sixteenth-century religious movement initiated by Martin Luther, a German monk whose public criticism of corruption in the Roman Catholic Church, and whose teaching that Christians can communicate directly with God, gained a wide following

corporation

A group of people that is recognized as a single legal entity.

Virginia charter

In 1606, King James claimed dominion over the land from today's South Carolina to Canada, established a council in England to oversee the colonies, and allowed for the settlers to create their own council for local affairs

House of Burgesses

The elected representatives of the Virginia General Assembly and the first self-governing body in British America, formed in 1619.

Atlantic slave trade

A significant segment of the global slave trade, spanning the mid-sixteenth century to the 1860s, in which European slave traders enslaved millions of Africans and forcibly transported them across the Atlantic Ocean to be sold in the Americas

pilgrims

Religious separatists who broke completely with the Church of England, finding it morally corrupt, and sailed to the New World aboard the Mayflower. Also called Puritans, they founded Plymouth Colony on Cape Cod in 1620

Puritans

English religious dissenters who sought to "purify" the Church of England of its Catholic practices

Magna Carta

The English charter signed by King John in 1215 granting that monarchs were subject to the rule of law and establishing specific rights for "all free men"—meaning, at that time, noblemen

trial by jury

A right established by Magna Carta that transformed the English legal system by prioritizing factual evidence as evaluated by a jury of one's peers over methods that claimed to represent divine intervention

plantations

Large agricultural estates that relied on enslaved labor for the planting and harvesting of crops, particularly sugar cane, cotton, and tobacco

Body of Liberties

A list of rights for Englishmen established in 1641 by the Massachusetts legislature that also affirmed the legality of enslaving Native Americans and Africans

Quakers

A religious sect founded in England in 1647. Followers rejected the use of formal sacraments and ministry, refused to take oaths, and embraced pacifism. Fleeing persecution, they ultimately settled and established the colony of Pennsylvania

John Locke

An English philoso_pher (1632–1704) whose ideas were influential during the Enlightenment. He argued in his Essay on Human Understanding (1690) that humanity is largely the product of the environment, the mind being a blank tablet, or tabula rasa, on which experience is written

Metacom's War

An unsuccessful Algonquian revolt led by Metacom against the New England colonists who had invaded their lands

Bacon's Rebellion

The unsuccessful 1676 revolt led by planter Nathaniel Bacon against Virginia governor William Berkeley's government, which, Bacon charged, had failed to protect settlers from Native American attacks

indentured servitude

The system through which colonial settlers consented to work for a defined period of labor (often four to seven years) in exchange for having their passage to the New World paid by their "master.

Pueblo Revolt (1680)

An uprising led by an alliance of the Pueblo and Apache peoples that drove the Spanish out of New Mexico after decades of drought, starvation, suffering under the encomienda system, and religious persecution

encomienda system

A forced labor system under which Spanish army officers (conquistadores) were given a grant (encomienda) of Native Americans; the colonizers were expected to convert the indigenous people to Christianity in exchange for their labor and tributes of gold

Enlightenment

A revolution in thought originating in Europe in the seventeenth century that emphasized reason and the scientific method over the authority and myths of traditional religion

natural rights

Advanced by political theorists of the Enlightenment, the idea that an individual's basic rights should not be violated by any government or community

Great Awakening

The fervent revival movement of Christianity that swept England's mainland colonies from the 1720s through the 1740s

censorship

Forbidding or otherwise suppressing the dissemination of news, ideas, or media, typically due to a conflict of ideology

seditious libel

A false published statement with the intent to defame. specifically refers to published statements intended to criticize the government

free press

A news outlet or publisher with the ability to print materials or information without government censorship

reducciones

Settlements founded in Spanish America with the intent of converting indigenous peoples to Christianity

Tuscarora War (1711–1712)

A war fought in North Carolina between the Tuscarora and recent European settlers, mostly of German and Swiss origin; it resulted in the death of hundreds of Europeans and thousands of Tuscarora

Yamasee War (1715–1717)

A continuation of the Tuscarora War, fought in the Carolinas between British colonists and a coalition of Native Americans led by the Yamasee

presidios

Spanish military forts

slave societies

Societies built on the social, economic, and political order of slavery, impacting every facet of life

slave codes

Ordinances passed by a colony or state to regulate the behavior of enslaved people, often including brutal punishments for infractions

creole languages

Languages that developed by combining elements of two or more languages into a new one

triangular trade

A network of trade among North America, western Europe, and western Africa in which exports from one region were sold to another region, which sent its exports to a third region, which exported its own goods back to the first country or colony

mercantilism

The economic policy of Great Britain and other imperial powers that involved regulating the economies of their colonies to benefit the home country

manumission

The act of freeing enslaved persons

Albany Congress

The 1754 convention to form a colonial alliance, with representatives sent by the legislatures of Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island.

Plan of Union

A failed proposal put forth in Albany in 1754 by representatives of seven English colonies advocating unification against the French and their Native allies.

Seven Years' War (1756–1763)

The last—and the most important—of four colonial wars fought among England, France, and indigenous allies for control of North America east of the Mississippi River

Indians' Great Awakening

A period of spiritual renewal and unity among some Native Americans.

Treaty of Paris (1763)

The settle_ment between Great Britain and France that ended the Seven Years' War; under its terms, France ceded all territorial claims in mainland North America

Pontiac's War (1763–1766)

An armed conflict between a confederation of Native Americans and the British after France ceded to the British its territory east of the Mississippi River, as part of the Treaty of Paris, without consulting France's Indian allies.

Proclamation of 1763

A decree by the English king George III drawing a boundary along the Appalachian Mountains from Canada to Georgia in an attempt to minimize occurrences of violence between settlers and Indians; colonists were technically forbidden to settle lands west of the line

Proclamation of 1763

A decree by the English king George III drawing a boundary along the Appalachian Mountains from Canada to Georgia in an attempt to minimize occurrences of violence between settlers and Indians; colonists were technically forbidden to settle lands west of the line.

Sugar Act

A 1764 act of Parliament that reduced the pre-existing tax on sugar but increased enforcement of tax collection, leading many colonists to raise prices and limit their potential markets; also known as the Revenue Act of 1764.

taxation without representation

The policy requiring citizens or subjects to pay taxes without allowing them any means of voicing their own opinions in government

Stamp Act

An act of Parliament in 1765 requiring that all printed materials (e.g., newspapers, bonds, and even playing cards) in the American colonies use paper with an official tax stamp; the goal was to raise revenue for the British military protection of the colonies

Sons of Liberty

First organized by Samuel Adams in the 1770s, groups of colonists dedicated to militant resistance against British control of the colonies

Daughters of Liberty

Formed in 1765, a political organization of women who protested the British government's tax policies by exercising their economic power; they boycotted British products such as clothing by weaving their own "homespun" fabric

Somerset v. Stewart (1772)

The English court case that ruled in favor of an enslaved man, James Somerset; the decision established the unlawful nature of slavery in England. The legality of slavery throughout the rest of the British Empire was left ambiguous, however

Coercive Acts

Four parliamentary measures that required the colonies to pay for the Boston Tea Party's damages, imposed a military government, annulled the Massachusetts charter, disallowed colonial trials of British soldiers, and forced the quartering of troops in private homes

First Continental Congress

Held in Philadelphia in 1774, a meeting of delegates from twelve colonies that sought to develop a response to the Coercive Acts, with the eventual outcome of a collective boycott of British imports as well as the preparation of colonial militias.