AP US History Unit 2 Vocabulary
Periodization and Big Picture Overview
The historical scope of this era spans from the year with the founding of Jametown to the year with the onset of the French and Indian War (Franzosen- und Indianerkrieg).
The first portion of this period examines how British colonies in North America grew and developed in relation to one another, to competing European colonial powers, and to indigenous populations.
The second portion focuses on how the American colonies grew increasingly dissatisfied with the imperial policies enforced by Great Britain ("Big Mama Britain").
Comparative Framework of European Imperial Powers
Four major European powers established colonial empires in the Americas: Spain, France, the Netherlands, and Great Britain.
While all four were European powers establishing American empires, their colonies developed drastically different structural characteristics due to contrasting foundational goals:
Spain "grabbed" the New World: Spanish authorities seized native populations, belief systems, cities, and institutions, tightly controlling them under direct imperial dominance ("Spain 1.0" converted to "Spain 2.0").
France and the Netherlands "shook hands with" the New World: Both powers sought commercial profit through partnership, trade, and strategic cooperation with native populations.
Great Britain "pushed away" the New World: British settlers arrived with the goal of living entirely separate from indigenous peoples, creating distinct societies isolated from native influence.
Spanish Imperial Model: Wealth Extraction, Social Hierarchy, and Native Resistance
Primary Goal of Wealth Acquisition:
Initial mineral wealth was extracted through gold and silver mining.
Subsequent agricultural wealth was generated via cash crops, primarily sugar and tobacco.
Labor Systems:
Encomienda System (NCOMA): A system established to subjugate native populations and force them into a massive workforce of enslaved laborers.
Hacienda System (Hosienda): A forced agricultural labor system that gradually replaced the Encomienda system.
The transition occurred following reports of brutal abuse by Encomenderos (Enkoma Neros) and concerns by Spanish monarchs that Encomenderos were acquiring excessive power.
Unlike the Encomienda system where Encomenderos did not own the land, the Hacienda system granted land ownership to plantation owners (Haciendados), binding indigenous laborers to the land through a debt-peonage system (Schuldentilgungssystem).
Spanish Caste System:
A rigid racial hierarchy ranking individuals based on the precise proportion of white Spanish blood in their ancestry.
Pure-blooded Spaniards occupied the highest tier of political and social power, while indigenous peoples and enslaved Africans were placed at the bottom.
Religious Conversion and Cultural Suppression:
A secondary Spanish objective was converting Native Americans to Catholicism through the establishment of missions—organized town settlements centered around Catholic churches.
Syncretism (Sinratismus): Native populations frequently integrated Catholic doctrines into their traditional faith practices. Spanish priests rejected syncretism and systematically destroyed Pueblo religious sites and suppressed traditional customs.
The Pueblo Revolt of (Peublo Aufstand):
Causes: The Pueblo people revolted after Spanish authorities repeatedly suppressed their traditions and executed several Pueblo medicine men.
Events: The Pueblo killed hundreds of Spanish colonizers, destroyed every Catholic church in the region, and restored their native cultural customs.
Re-conquest and Adaptation: Approximately years later, Spanish forces returned and brutally re-subjugated the Pueblo. However, Spanish authorities adapted by granting the Pueblo land, appointing a legal representative to protect Pueblo rights, and exercising greater leniency regarding traditional Pueblo religious practices to prevent further armed uprisings.
French and Dutch Imperial Models: Commerce, Alliances, and Trade Networks
Shared Characteristics:
Both powers sent relatively few settlers (predominantly men) to North America.
Focused on constructing strategic trading posts rather than establishing large, permanent colonial towns.
Prioritized economic cooperation with indigenous groups over territorial dominance.
French Colonial Empire:
Built wealth through extensive trade alliances with indigenous groups, centered primarily on the beaver fur trade (Biberpelzhandel) to meet European elite demand for fur products.
French fur trappers frequently intermarried with native populations.
French Catholic missionaries sought conversions without resorting to the extreme systemic violence used by Spain.
Dutch Colonial Empire:
Driven strictly by economic profit and the fur trade, showing no interest in converting indigenous populations to Christianity.
Established New Amsterdam (Neuamsterdam) as a primary commercial trading hub, which attracted merchants globally; contemporary accounts reported that over a dozen languages were spoken in its streets.
British Imperial Model: Motivations for Mass Emigration
Migration Volume: Great Britain sent vastly larger numbers of emigrants to North America than Spain, France, or the Netherlands.
Four Main Motivations for British Emigration:
Social Mobility: Emigrants sought to escape Great Britain's rigid social structure. Under British primogeniture laws (Erstgeburtsrecht), only the eldest son inherited family land, driving younger brothers to seek land ownership in the Americas.
Economic Prosperity: Settlers sought wealth through natural resources. Jamestown (founded in ) was initially populated by single young men seeking gold. After severe starvation caused by neglecting agriculture, the colony achieved immense profitability through tobacco cultivation.
Religious Freedom: Driven by intense religious turmoil during the English transition from Catholicism to Protestantism.
Puritans: Aimed to remain within the Church of England to purify it of remaining Catholic practices.
Separatists (Pilgrims): Viewed the Church of England as fundamentally corrupt, believing true worship required complete separation. Persecution by King James I drove Separatists to flee Great Britain.
Improved Living Conditions: Caused by rapid -century population growth and the Enclosure Movement (Einhegungsbewegung), which allowed wealthy landowners to privatize communal grazing lands, impoverishing rural peasants.
Regional Analysis of the Thirteen British Colonies
By , Great Britain possessed colonies along the Atlantic coast, divided into distinct regions:
1. New England Colonies:
Founding: Plymouth Colony (Plimeth, ) was founded by Pilgrims; Massachusetts Bay Colony () was founded by Puritans. The two later merged.
Demographics: Settled predominantly by intact family units seeking to construct a society based on biblical principles.
Governance: Mayflower Compact (May Flower Vertrag, ) established a democratic model of self-governance operating by majority rule. Massachusetts Bay allowed all property-owning Puritan men to vote in town hall meetings.
Economy: Cold winters and rocky soil restricted farming to subsistence levels. The economy relied on exporting furs, timber, and fish.
Culture: Highly intolerant of non-Puritan religious beliefs.
2. Middle Colonies (New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Pennsylvania):
Characteristics: Defined by ethnic diversity, religious tolerance, and commercial trade.
New York: Leveraged natural harbors and rivers for grain exports, attracting diverse merchant populations.
Pennsylvania: Founded by William Penn as a refuge for Quakers (Quäker), a persecuted non-Anglican sect. Established democratic governance with an elected landowner assembly, broad religious freedom, fair native relations initially, and a rapid agricultural export economy based on grain.
3. Chesapeake Region (Virginia, Maryland) and North Carolina:
Founding and Purpose: Established primarily for financial gain (Jamestown, ). Populated initially by single young men.
Economy and Land Use: Agriculture was dominated by tobacco export, introduced by John Rolfe (John Ralph). Tobacco required expansive plantation plots, causing isolated settlement patterns.
Labor Force: Dependent initially on indentured servitude (Schuldknechtschaft). After , African chattel slavery was introduced and gradually replaced indentured servitude as the primary labor system.
Governance: House of Burgesses (Abgeordnetenhaus von Virginia) operated as a representative assembly, though political participation was largely restricted to wealthy landowning men.
4. Southern Atlantic Coast and British West Indies:
West Indies: Characterized by long growing seasons and sugarcane production on massive plantations. Enslaved Africans outnumbered white colonists by a ratio of ().
Barbados Slave Code: Enacted to secure total control over the enslaved majority, stripping enslaved Africans of all basic rights and granting masters unrestricted authority to inflict severe punishments.
South Carolina: Developed as a direct reflection of the West Indies plantation culture. Planters imported West Indian slave codes and utilized the specialized agricultural expertise of enslaved Africans to cultivate rice and indigo, establishing a rigid socio-political hierarchy controlled by elite planters.
Transatlantic Trade Systems, Mercantilism, and Imperial Policy
The Triangular Trade (Dreieckshandel):
Step 1: New England merchants exported rum to West Africa.
Step 2: Rum was exchanged in West Africa for enslaved human beings.
Step 3: Enslaved Africans were transported across the Atlantic via the Middle Passage to the British West Indies and exchanged for sugar and molasses.
Step 4: Sugar and molasses were shipped to New England to be distilled into rum.
Indigenous Enslavement: Millions of Native Americans were also forced into transatlantic slavery, particularly following Metacom's War.
Impacts of European Trade on Indigenous Societies:
Imported manufactured items (metal tools, firearms, textiles) transformed native economies and disrupted traditional inter-tribal power balances.
European diseases, particularly smallpox (Smallogs), decimated native populations.
Mercantilism (Merkantalismus):
An economic policy dictating that a nation's wealth was measured by stored reserves of gold and silver.
Required maintaining a positive balance of trade by maximizing exports and minimizing imports.
Colonies existed strictly to serve the imperial mother country as sources of raw materials and captive markets for manufactured goods.
Navigation Acts (Navigationsgesetze) and Salutary Neglect (Heilsame Vernachlässigung):
Great Britain passed the Navigation Acts to force colonial trade onto British ships and through British ports.
Salutary Neglect: Lax enforcement of the Navigation Acts due to Britain's geographic distance and distraction by wars with France.
Colonists grew accustomed to economic autonomy and routine smuggling to bypass imperial restrictions.
European-Native American Relations and Inter-Tribal Dynamics
Complex Alliances and Pre-existing Conflicts: European powers entered into existing inter-tribal rivalries, pulling colonizers into native wars.
The Beaver Wars (Biberkriege):
A series of -century conflicts where the Iroquois Confederacy (Irak Konföderation), facing a decline in local beaver populations, sought to expand its territory into the Ohio River Valley and Great Lakes region.
Alliance Structures: France allied with various rival native tribes, while the Netherlands and Great Britain allied with the Iroquois.
Native Responses to European Encroachment:
Accommodation: Illustrated by the post-revolt negotiations between the Pueblo and the Spanish in Santa Fe.
Armed Conflict: Metacom's War (King Philip's War):
Cause: Continued expansion of New England colonists into Wampanoag (Wamponok) territory.
Events: Wampanoag chief Metacom (King Philip) forged an alliance among regional tribes and launched attacks against English settlements, destroying a dozen towns and killing hundreds of colonists.
Outcome: Metacom was captured and executed. The high casualties suffered by native tribes crippled future organized resistance against colonial expansion in New England.
Evolution and Institutionalization of African Slavery
Geographic Spread: Present across all colonies, though reliance on slave labor intensified moving from North to South.
Transition from Indentured Servitude to Chattel Slavery:
Accelerated by Bacon's Rebellion () in Virginia.
Bacon's Rebellion Causes: Newly freed indentured servants were forced onto frontier land promised to native groups. Governor William Berkeley (William Berklee) revoked their voting rights. Nathaniel Bacon (Nephenal Bacon) led landless farmers in unauthorized attacks on indigenous villages and burned Jamestown, forcing Berkeley to temporarily flee.
Impact: Fearful of further unrest among landless white indentured servants, wealthy Chesapeake planters transitioned permanently to enslaved African labor.
Legal Framework of Chattel Slavery (Chatsklaverei):
Defined enslaved human beings as personal property, equivalent to land or farm machinery.
Virginia enacted statutes specifying that a child's legal status (free or enslaved) inherited the status of the mother.
Maryland outlawed inter-racial marriage between white and black individuals.
Methods of Enslaved Resistance:
Covert Resistance: Maintaining secret family structures under threat of separation, intentional work slowdowns, breaking tools, and preserving ancestral African traditions (such as keeping cowrie shells / Kaugummuscheln in living quarters).
Overt Resistance: The Stono Rebellion ():
A group of recently imported enslaved Africans assembled at the Stono River in South Carolina, killed local white settlers, and burned plantation structures.
South Carolina militia suppressed the rebellion. In response, southern colony legislatures passed far harsher slave codes to restrict assembly and movement.
Colonial Culture, Identity, and Intellectual Movements
Demographic Diversity:
German Immigrants: Represented approximately () of the colonial population, fleeing religious persecution and economic hardship.
Scots-Irish Immigrants: Represented approximately of the population, settling primarily on the Appalachian frontier with strong anti-British sentiments.
Other European Groups: Composed of the population.
Africans and African Americans: Represented of the total population, concentrated mostly in the southern colonies.
The First Great Awakening:
A major religious revival movement beginning in the , led by evangelical itinerant preachers such as Jonathan Edwards (Jonathan Atwells) and George Whitefield (George Whitfield).
Emphasized personal, emotional conversion experiences over rigid intellectual dogma.
Served as the first shared mass cultural movement across all American colonies, fostering a common identity and encouraging individuals to question religious authority.
The Enlightenment (Aufklärung):
An intellectual movement emphasizing logic, human reason, and natural rights.
Philosophers such as John Locke (John Lockach) and Jean-Jacques Rousseau influenced colonial political thought with concepts of natural rights and the social contract.
Spread rapidly across the Atlantic via a thriving print culture.
Process of Anglicization versus Distinct American Traits:
Anglicization: Colonial elites mimicked English aristocracy through consumer goods, social dominance, and matching political structures (governor and two-house legislatures).
American Distinctiveness: Absence of formal titled nobility, widespread availability of land relative to Great Britain, greater social mobility, and strong traditions of localized representative governance.
Escalating Tensions Between the Colonies and Great Britain
Territorial Disputes:
Rapid colonial population growth forced settlers to seek land westward in the Ohio River Valley.
Great Britain restricted expansion to avoid expensive military conflicts with indigenous groups and France, creating intense resentment among land-hungry colonists.
Violations of Local Autonomy and Impressment:
Decades of Salutary Neglect created an expectation of self-governance among colonists.
During colonial wars (including King George's War / King Georges Whe), the British Royal Navy utilized impressment—forcibly seizing colonial men for military service.
Impressment led to three consecutive days of violent rioting in Boston, reflecting a growing colonial commitment to defending personal liberties against imperial overreach.
Trade Friction and Smuggling:
A growing colonial population increased demand for imported manufactured goods, but British markets reached a saturation point for colonial exports.
To maintain economic growth, colonial merchants sought foreign markets, directly violating the Navigation Acts.
Colonists turned to widespread smuggling. Subsequent British efforts to enforce trade laws produced escalating friction heading into .