APUSH Units 1-2

Feudalism

A medieval European system in which land was exchanged for loyalty and service, creating a hierarchy of kings, nobles, knights, and peasants. Its decline helped strengthen monarchies and encouraged the growth of centralized nation-states.

Iroquois Confederacy

An alliance of originally five—and later six—Iroquois nations in the Northeast. It reduced conflict among member nations and became a powerful diplomatic and military force in relations with Europeans.

Protestant Reformation

A sixteenth-century religious movement that challenged the Roman Catholic Church and created Protestant denominations. It intensified competition among European states and influenced the founding and religious character of English colonies.

Henry the Navigator

A Portuguese prince who sponsored navigation, mapping, and voyages along Africa's west coast during the fifteenth century. His support helped Portugal become a leader in Atlantic exploration.

Treaty of Tordesillas

A 1494 agreement, supported by the pope, that divided newly claimed non-European lands between Spain and Portugal. It gave Portugal a claim to Brazil while Spain claimed most of the Americas.

Maritime Technology

Navigation and shipbuilding tools—such as the caravel, compass, astrolabe, improved maps, and lateen sail—that made long ocean voyages safer and more practical. These technologies supported European exploration and empire building.

John Cabot

An Italian explorer sailing for England who reached the North Atlantic coast of North America in 1497. England later used his voyage as a basis for claims in North America.

Encomienda System

A Spanish colonial labor system that granted colonists the right to demand labor or tribute from Native communities in return for supposed protection and Christian instruction. In practice, it produced severe exploitation and contributed to Native population decline.

Asiento System

A contract under which the Spanish government allowed merchants to supply enslaved Africans to Spanish colonies. The system expanded as the Native labor force declined and colonial demand for labor increased.

Middle Passage

The forced Atlantic voyage that carried enslaved Africans to the Americas. Captives endured overcrowding, disease, violence, and high death rates during this central part of the transatlantic slave trade.

Mestizo

A person of mixed Spanish and Indigenous ancestry in the Spanish colonial caste system.

Mulatto

A historical colonial term for a person of mixed European and African ancestry. In the Spanish caste system, this label affected a person's legal status and social opportunities; the term is now considered outdated or offensive in many contexts.

Maroon Communities

Independent settlements formed by people who escaped slavery. Maroons resisted colonial rule and sometimes fought Europeans or negotiated treaties to preserve their freedom.

New Laws of 1542

Spanish laws intended to limit the encomienda system and protect Native Americans from enslavement and abuse. Colonial resistance weakened enforcement, but the laws showed growing criticism of Spanish exploitation.

Virginia House of Burgesses

An elected representative assembly established in Virginia in 1619. It was the first representative legislative body in England's mainland North American colonies, though voting was limited mainly to property-owning men.

Act of Toleration

1649 act that protected Christians in Maryland who believed in the Trinity but did not establish full religious freedom.

Massachusetts Bay Colony

A Puritan colony founded in 1630 during the Great Migration. Its leaders hoped to create a model Christian society governed by church members.

John Winthrop

The Puritan governor of Massachusetts Bay who described the colony as a "city upon a hill," meaning it should serve as a religious example to the world. His vision encouraged community discipline but allowed little religious dissent.

Great Puritan Migration

The movement of about 20,000 English Puritans to New England between 1629 and 1640. They migrated largely for religious reasons and often arrived as families, producing stable communities.

Antinomianism

Anne Hutchinson challenged Massachusetts religious leaders by [this is the question] (teaching that faith, not obedience to religious law, determined salvation). Banished for her views, she became an important example of religious dissent and limits on women's public authority.

Mercantilism

An economic policy in which colonies existed to increase the wealth and power of the mother country by supplying raw materials and buying finished goods. Britain regulated colonial trade to keep wealth within its empire.

Triangular Trade

A simplified model of Atlantic trade connecting Europe, Africa, and the Americas. Manufactured goods, enslaved Africans, and colonial products moved along different routes, although actual trade networks were more complex than a single triangle.

Navigation Acts

English laws beginning in 1651 that restricted colonial trade to English ships and required certain goods to pass through England. They were intended to enforce mercantilism and strengthen English economic control.

Salutary Neglect

Britain's unofficial policy of loosely enforcing many colonial trade laws before 1763. This allowed colonial merchants and assemblies to gain economic and political independence.

New England Confederation

A defensive alliance formed in 1643 by several New England colonies. It coordinated responses to Native conflicts and other threats and was an early example of intercolonial cooperation.

Pequot War

A 1636-1637 conflict in which English colonists and Native allies defeated the Pequot people. The war expanded English power in New England and showed the extreme violence of colonial expansion.

Bacon's Rebellion

A 1676 uprising of Virginia frontier settlers and servants led by Nathaniel Bacon against Governor William Berkeley. Anger over Native policy, land access, and elite rule exposed class tensions and helped encourage Virginia planters to rely more heavily on enslaved African labor.

Pueblo Revolt

The 1680 uprising in which Pueblo peoples expelled Spanish colonists and missionaries from New Mexico. Spain returned in 1692 but adopted somewhat greater religious and cultural accommodation afterward.

Headright System

A system that granted land—often fifty acres—to colonists who paid for their own passage or another person's passage to Virginia. It encouraged immigration, plantation growth, and the accumulation of land by wealthy planters.

Barbados Slave Codes

Laws first developed in Barbados that defined enslaved Africans as property and gave enslavers broad power to control and punish them. Similar laws shaped slave systems in colonies such as South Carolina.

New England Colonies

Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Connecticut. Rocky soil and a colder climate encouraged small farms, fishing, shipbuilding, trade, compact towns, and relatively strong family and religious communities.

Middle Colonies

A region characterized by fertile farmland, grain exports, ports, religious toleration, and ethnic diversity. New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware became a cultural and economic middle ground.

Southern Colonies

Colonies with warm climates and fertile land that supported cash crops such as tobacco, rice, and indigo. Wealthy planters dominated politics, settlements were scattered, and slavery became central to the economy.

Anglicanization

The process by which colonial society adopted English customs, consumer goods, institutions, and the Anglican faith. During the eighteenth century, growing trade made elite colonial culture increasingly resemble Britain's.

Jonathan Edwards / "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God"

A leading Great Awakening minister who preached human sinfulness and dependence on God's grace. His famous 1741 sermon used vivid imagery to urge listeners to experience conversion.

George Whitefield

A charismatic English preacher whose dramatic sermons drew huge audiences throughout the colonies during the Great Awakening. His travels helped create a shared intercolonial religious experience.

John Peter Zenger

A New York printer tried for seditious libel in 1735 after criticizing the royal governor. His acquittal helped establish the idea that truthful criticism of government should not be punished and became a symbol of freedom of the press.

Phillis Wheatley

An enslaved African-born poet whose published work demonstrated extraordinary literary ability. Her success challenged racist claims about African intellectual inferiority, even though she remained constrained by slavery and prejudice.