Colonial Society, Culture, and Imperial Relations

Vocabulary flashcards covering colonial demographics, cultural movements, economic structures, and conflicts with Great Britain based on the provided APUSH review lecture transcripts.

German Immigrants (Colonial America)

A European immigrant group making up approximately 6% of the colonial population who fled religious persecution and economic oppression in Germany, mostly settling in Pennsylvania as Lutheran Christians.

Scots-Irish Immigrants

Lowland Scots forced into Ireland by Great Britain who comprised about 7% of the colonial population, settled primarily on the Appalachian Frontier, and brought Presbyterianism to the American colonies.

Anglicization

The gradual process during the colonial era through which American colonial society, customs, social hierarchies, consumer tastes, and government structures increasingly came to resemble those of England.

The Enlightenment

An 18th-century European intellectual movement applying scientific and philosophical reasoning to political and social structures, emphasizing rational thought, natural rights, and the social contract.

The Great Awakening

A widespread religious revival movement across the American colonies in the 1730s and 1740s that emphasized personal, highly emotional religious experience over traditional institutional church authority.

Halfway Covenant

A New England Congregationalist policy allowing children of unconverted parents to be baptized and granted partial church membership without delivering a full conversion testimony.

Jonathan Edwards

A Massachusetts Congregational minister whose philosophical yet intense preaching, including the sermon 'Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,' initiated spontaneous emotional revivals during the Great Awakening.

George Whitefield

A British minister whose powerful oratorical style and extensive preaching tours across the American colonies energized the mass spiritual revival of the Great Awakening.

New Lights vs. Old Lights

The factional split during the Great Awakening between ministers who supported emotional, personal conversion experiences (New Lights) and traditional clergy who favored rational, established worship practices (Old Lights).

Impressment

The British naval practice of forcibly recruiting colonial men to serve on warships, which generated severe colonial backlash such as the Boston impressment riots of 1747.

Zenger Trial (1735)

The New York legal case of printer John Peter Zenger, whose acquittal by a colonial jury after he criticized the royal governor helped establish an early colonial precedent for press freedom.

Navigation Acts

A series of English trade regulations requiring colonial commodities to be transported on English or colonial ships and restricting colonial export partners exclusively to Great Britain.

Proprietorship

A colonial land grant issued directly to an individual by the English crown, granting the proprietor freedom to govern within the boundary of English law, as seen in Pennsylvania.

William Penn

The Quaker founder of Pennsylvania who established a 'holy experiment' featuring religious freedom, pacifism, democratic voting rights for male property owners, and equitable land purchases from Native Americans.

Dominion of New England

A centralized mega-colony established by King James II from 1686 to 1689 that consolidated New England, New York, and New Jersey under royal command and abolished local legislative assemblies.

Sir Edmund Andros

The unpopular royal governor of the Dominion of New England who eliminated local assemblies and mandated Anglican worship until he was ousted following the Glorious Revolution.

Glorious Revolution (1688)

The bloodless overthrow of King James II of England, replacing him with William and Mary, establishing a constitutional monarchy under the Declaration of Rights, and bringing an end to the Dominion of New England.

Stono Rebellion (1739)

An armed slave revolt near Charleston, South Carolina, where enslaved individuals killed white settlers and attempted to flee to Spanish Florida, resulting in the passage of much stricter colonial slave codes.

Salutary Neglect

The unofficial British policy, named by philosopher Edmund Burke, of laxly enforcing colonial trade laws as long as the colonies remained economically lucrative to Great Britain.

South Atlantic System

A transatlantic trade network based in the Caribbean and South America focused primarily on sugar production, heavily dependent on enslaved African labor and English mercantile shipping.

Middle Passage

The transatlantic ocean voyage that transported enslaved Africans to the Americas under crowded, highly unsanitary, and brutal conditions.

Molasses Act of 1733

A British parliamentary statute placing a steep tariff on foreign French molasses, which colonial merchants routinely evaded through widespread smuggling.

Currency Act of 1751

A British law prohibiting the New England colonies from printing paper money, requiring all public debts to be settled using gold or silver currency.

Revenue Act of 1673

A parliamentary act that imposed export duties on colonial shipments of sugar and tobacco to enforce compliance with English trade restrictions.