history quiz 2

Jamestown (1607)

The first permanent English settlement in North America, founded in Virginia for profit. It was established on land belonging to the Powhatan Confederacy.

“starving time”

winter of 1609-10, A period when disease, food shortages, poor leadership, and conflict with the Powhatan caused Jamestown’s population to fall from about 500 to 60 people.

cash-crop economy

An economy based on growing crops to sell for profit rather than primarily for personal use.

tobacco (significance to colony, role in establishing unfree labor systems)

1612 was first commercially successful harvest, Virginia’s main cash crop, which made the colony profitable but required large amounts of land and labor, increasing demand for unfree labor.

transatlantic slave trade

1500s-1860s, the forced transportation and sale of millions of Africans across the Atlantic to be enslaved in the Americas. European traders exchanged manufactured goods for enslaved people and colonial products.

Middle Passage

The brutal forced voyage of enslaved Africans across the Atlantic to the Americas, involving overcrowding, disease, violence, and death.

indentured servitude

A system in which people worked without wages for a set period, usually 4–5 years, in exchange for passage to the colonies, food, and shelter.

Slavery

A system in which people are legally treated as property. In colonial Virginia, slavery became inheritable, racialized, and purely commercial.

freedom dues

Money, land, clothing, or supplies given to indentured servants when their contracts ended. These allowed some former servants to become planters and compete with wealthy landowners.

3 reasons why Virginia transition from servitude to slavery in the second half of the 1600s

1. Economic causes: Tobacco overproduction lowered prices, and freed servants became competing planters after receiving their freedom dues, making indentured servitude less profitable for elites. There were also declining prospects, meaning fewer people were willing to become indentured servants.

2. Supply causes: Fewer Europeans came as indentured servants, while England’s participation in the slave trade increased the supply of enslaved Africans.

3. Social and political causes: Wealthy elites feared rebellion by poor workers and wanted to prevent poor Black and white laborers from uniting against them.

Bacon’s Rebellion (1676)

An armed uprising led by Nathaniel Bacon against Virginia’s governor, fueled by frontier conflict, taxes, and class resentment. Jamestown was burned to the ground and it alarmed wealthy elites and helped accelerate the shift toward racialized slavery.

definition of race

Race is an idea that categorizes people based on physical traits and attaches meanings to those categories and these ideas about race can change over time.

Anthony Johnson (how his story reflects the construction of race)

A Black man brought to Virginia who gained his freedom, acquired land, owned servants, and was a respected community member. His story shows that early Virginia’s racial and legal boundaries were initially less rigid and later became more restrictive.

Two Virginia laws that helped construct race

1. 1662: "children born… shall be held [slave] or free according to the condition of the mother." Race and slavery became connected through family background and ancestry. Children inherited their enslaved or free status from their mother, making slavery hereditary.

2. 1691: "whatsoever English or other white* man or woman, being free, shall intermarry with a negro, mulatto, or Indian man or woman, [slave] or free, shall within three months after such marriage be banished and removed from this dominion forever." The law explicitly used the word “white” and separated white people from Black and Indigenous people. It banned interracial marriage and threatened punishment for those who violated the rule, helping preserve racial boundaries and the slave system. *First time the word "white" appears in Virginia law.