The Settlement of the Chesapeake — Vocabulary Flashcards

Vocabulary flashcards covering key people, events, laws, and concepts from the Chesapeake settlement notes.

Protestant Reformation

16th-century religious movement challenging the Catholic Church, leading to the rise of Protestant churches.

Primogeniture

Right of the firstborn son to inherit the family estate, shaping land distribution in colonies.

joint-stock company

A company funded by multiple investors that pool capital for ventures like colonization.

Virginia Company

English company that sponsored the Virginia colony and received a charter to settle the Chesapeake, guaranteeing rights of Englishmen.

Rights of Englishmen

Traditional liberties guaranteed to English subjects, incorporated into colonial charters.

Jamestown

First permanent English settlement in North America, established in 1607 along the James River.

House of Burgesses

Virginia’s first representative assembly, created in 1619 with tax and legislative powers.

Act of Toleration (1649)

Maryland law granting religious tolerance to Christians, but punishing denial of Jesus’ divinity.

Barbados Slave Code

Early colonial laws that defined enslaved people as property and regulated their treatment.

John Smith

Leader of Jamestown who asserted, “He who does not work does not eat” and helped stabilize the colony.

Pocahontas

Powhatan woman who helped sustain peace with settlers and married John Rolfe.

John Rolfe

Jamestown settler who perfected tobacco cultivation and allied with Pocahontas to improve relations.

“soil butchery”

Soil degradation from repeated tobacco planting and poor soil management.

“poor man’s crop”

Tobacco viewed as an affordable cash crop that supported colonial economies.

Lord Baltimore

George Calvert; founder of Maryland and its proprietor, promoting a Catholic haven.

James Oglethorpe

Founder of Georgia, established as a philanthropic haven for debtors and a buffer against Spanish Florida.

indentured servant

Person who works 5–7 years in exchange for passage and “freedom dues” at end; often forbidden to marry.

headright system

Land grant: 50 acres awarded to each new settler whose passage was paid.

Bacon’s Rebellion

1676 uprising led by Nathaniel Bacon against Governor Berkeley, highlighting frontier tensions and leading to harsher controls; Bacon died and rebellion collapsed.

tobacco economy/plantation system

Economic pattern in Virginia: cash crop (tobacco) grown on large plantations with enslaved or coerced labor.

1619 Africans in Jamestown

First Africans arrive in Jamestown; status unclear (slaves or indentured servants) and foreshadowing the shift toward racial slavery.

Slave Codes (late 1600s)

Laws that made enslaved Africans property for life and restricted literacy and legal rights; promoted racial slavery.

Tobacco as “cash crop” in Chesapeake

Dominant crop shaping settlement patterns, labor needs, and social structure in Virginia and Maryland.