An Empire of Wealth: Vocabulary Foundation (Chapters 1-8)

This flashcard deck focuses on key vocabulary, legal acts, and technical inventions from Chapters 1 through 8 of 'An Empire of Wealth', highlighting the development of the early American economy.

Tangible Renaissance Inventions

The full-rigged ocean-going ship and the printing press, which broke the Church's monopoly on knowledge.

Intellectual Renaissance Inventions

Double-entry bookkeeping and the corporation, essential for financing risky New World ventures.

Virginia Company

A profit-seeking joint-stock corporation that founded Jamestown in $1607$, rather than the English crown.

Headrights

A $1616$ policy granting $50$ acres per settler and $50$ additional acres for each person whose passage they paid.

House of Burgesses

Formed on July $30$, $1619$, it was the first representative assembly in the Western Hemisphere.

Toleration Act (1649)

A Maryland law guaranteeing the rights of all Christians; the first such religious-toleration law in American history.

Cowboy

A term originally applied to black slaves herding cattle in colonial Carolina.

Adventurers

The original term for shareholders in joint-stock companies, such as those that founded Plymouth.

Saugus Ironworks

The first heavy industry in North America, operational by $1646$ in Lynn, MA.

Flushing Remonstrance

A $1657$ rejection of Governor Peter Stuyvesant's attempt to expel Quakers and Jews from New Amsterdam.

Mercantilism

The theory that national wealth is measured in gold and silver, requiring a maximized favorable trade balance.

Pine tree shilling

The currency illegally minted by Massachusetts beginning in $1652$ to circumvent British coinage restrictions.

The sinews of war

A phrase by Cicero meaning 'infinite money,' describing the Bank of England's role in funding British conflicts.

Continentals

Paper money issued by the Continental Congress that suffered runaway inflation ($225\text{ million}$ face value by $1779$).

Three-fifths clause

A constitutional compromise counting slaves at $3/5$ of their actual number for congressional apportionment.

Thaler

The $16\text{th}$-century silver coin from the Joachimsthal region of Germany that is the etymological root of 'dollar'.

Buttonwood Agreement

A $1792$ pact signed by $24$ brokers under a tree at $68$ Wall Street, forming the precursor to the NYSE.

Cotton gin

Eli Whitney's $1793$ invention that used nails and brushes to clean seeds from short-staple cotton.

Spinster

A word for women who performed the extremely slow task of hand-spinning cotton at home.

Waltham mill

The first fully vertically integrated textile factory in the world ($1814$), turning raw cotton into finished cloth.

Tariff of Abominations

The high tariff of $1828$ that triggered the Nullification Crisis in South Carolina.

Macadam

A road construction method using layered stone and gravel, perfected by engineer John McAdam.

Lock

A mid-15th century mechanical invention that enables canals to cross uneven terrain.

Erie School of Engineers

The cadre of project-trained workers, such as Canvass White, who pioneered domestic hydraulic cement.

Scrip

Small-denomination paper currency issued by local businesses and municipalities during the $1811-1816$ banking gap.

Pet banks

The state banks Andrew Jackson used to store federal deposits after withdrawing them from the Second Bank of the United States.

Specie Circular

An $1836$ executive order requiring federal land purchases to be paid in gold or silver coins.

Rotary steam engine

James Watt's $1784$ invention that converted piston motion to shaft rotation, allowing factories to be sited anywhere.