Colonial America (1607–1754): every key term you need (+ practice quiz)
102 flashcard terms for AP U.S. History Unit 2, written to match the course framework. Study them here, then drill them as interactive flashcards, or test yourself with the 29-question quiz — free, no account needed.
England's first permanent colony, founded by the Virginia Company as a profit venture. Early years brought starvation and death until tobacco saved the economy.
Virginia Company
The joint-stock company that financed Jamestown, expecting gold and quick profit; investors instead got years of losses before tobacco paid off.
The 'Starving Time' (1609–10)
A catastrophic winter at Jamestown when the population fell from ~500 to ~60 through famine and disease.
John Smith
Jamestown's tough early leader — 'He who shall not work shall not eat' — who imposed discipline and negotiated with the Powhatan.
Powhatan Confederacy
The powerful chiefdom surrounding Jamestown; relations swung between trade, uneasy peace (Pocahontas's marriage to John Rolfe), and open war.
Anglo-Powhatan Wars
Rounds of warfare (1610s–1646) that broke Native power in tidewater Virginia and set a pattern of expulsion rather than incorporation.
John Rolfe & Tobacco
Rolfe's sweet tobacco strain (1612) gave Virginia its cash crop — the 'brown gold' that drove land hunger and labor demand.
Headright System
Fifty acres granted for each person whose passage a colonist paid — encouraging both immigration and the accumulation of large estates.
Indentured Servitude
Poor English migrants exchanged 4–7 years of labor for passage to America; the Chesapeake's main labor source before African slavery.
House of Burgesses (1619)
Virginia's assembly — the first representative legislature in English America.
1619 — First Africans in Virginia
A Dutch ship sold ~20 Africans at Jamestown; their status was initially ambiguous, hardening into hereditary racial slavery over the century.
Bacon's Rebellion (1676)
Nathaniel Bacon led frontier settlers and servants against Governor Berkeley and Native peoples; the scare pushed planters from indentured labor toward African slavery.
Slave Codes Emerge
Late-1600s Virginia laws defined slavery as lifelong, hereditary (through the mother), and racial — constructing the legal architecture of American slavery.
Maryland (1634)
Founded by Lord Baltimore as a refuge for Catholics; its Act of Toleration (1649) protected all Christians — while prescribing death for non-Christians.
Plymouth & the Pilgrims (1620)
Separatists seeking to worship apart from the Church of England; before landing they signed the Mayflower Compact, agreeing to self-government.
Mayflower Compact
A covenant to form a 'civil body politic' and obey common laws — a foundational precedent for self-government by consent.
Massachusetts Bay Colony (1630)
Puritans under John Winthrop built a 'city upon a hill' — a model godly commonwealth with unusually broad (church-member) male suffrage.
John Winthrop
Massachusetts's longtime governor who framed the colony's mission in 'A Model of Christian Charity' — the covenant community watched by the world.
Puritans vs. Separatists
Puritans wanted to purify the Church of England from within; Separatists (Pilgrims) abandoned it entirely.
Great Migration (1630s)
Some 20,000 Puritans — largely families — migrated to New England, giving it a stable, healthy, family-based society unlike the Chesapeake.
New England Town & Congregation
Settlement by covenanted towns with meetinghouse, common, and town meeting — local self-government at its most intense.
Roger Williams & Rhode Island
Banished for demanding church-state separation and fair dealing with Natives, Williams founded Rhode Island on liberty of conscience.
Anne Hutchinson
Tried and banished for antinomian teachings that challenged clerical authority — a test of Puritan orthodoxy and gender boundaries.
Halfway Covenant (1662)
Allowed partial church membership for children of members — a response to declining conversions and a marker of cooling piety.
Salem Witch Trials (1692)
Panic that executed 20 people; reflected social tensions, frontier war anxiety, and the era's religious worldview before spectral evidence was rejected.
Pequot War (1637)
English and Native allies destroyed the Pequot, including the massacre at Mystic — opening Connecticut to settlement.
King Philip's War (1675–76)
Metacom's pan-Native resistance devastated New England (proportionally America's deadliest war) but broke southern New England's Native power.
New Netherland → New York (1664)
England seized the Dutch colony; New York inherited Dutch diversity, commerce, and the patroon estates of the Hudson Valley.
Pennsylvania & William Penn (1681)
Penn's Quaker 'Holy Experiment': religious liberty, relatively fair Native dealings (at first), cheap land, and heavy promotion — the fastest-growing colony.
Quakers
The Society of Friends — believers in the 'Inner Light,' equality, and pacifism; persecuted in England and New England, they shaped the middle colonies' tolerance.
The Carolinas
Carolina's south grew rice with enslaved African labor and Barbados-style slavery; North Carolina attracted poorer, more independent farmers.
Rice & the Lowcountry
South Carolina's rice economy — built on African skills and labor — produced the mainland's harshest slavery and a Black majority.
Georgia (1733)
Oglethorpe's buffer and debtor colony, initially banning slavery and rum; both bans collapsed as Georgia copied South Carolina.
Chesapeake vs. New England
Chesapeake: cash crops, scattered plantations, high mortality, male-heavy, unequal. New England: family farms, towns, churches, longevity, relative equality — two Englands in America.
Middle Colonies
New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware — the 'bread colonies': grain exports, ethnic and religious diversity, and thriving ports (Philadelphia, New York).
Mercantilism
The theory that colonies exist to enrich the mother country — supplying raw materials, buying manufactures, and keeping gold within the empire.
Navigation Acts
English laws requiring colonial trade in English ships and routing key goods through England — enforcing mercantilism, often laxly.
Salutary Neglect
Britain's long stretch of lax enforcement, which let colonial assemblies, smuggling, and habits of self-rule flourish — with revolutionary consequences later.
Dominion of New England (1686–89)
James II's consolidation of northern colonies under autocratic Governor Andros; overthrown when the Glorious Revolution reached Boston.
Glorious Revolution in America (1688–89)
England's overthrow of James II inspired colonial revolts (Boston, New York, Maryland) and reaffirmed rights of Englishmen and assembly government.
Triangular Trade
Shorthand for Atlantic commerce linking the colonies, Africa, the Caribbean, and Europe — rum, enslaved people, sugar, and manufactures.
Middle Passage
The horrific Atlantic crossing endured by enslaved Africans — packed ships, disease, and death rates around 15%.
Stono Rebellion (1739)
South Carolina's largest slave uprising; rebels marched toward Spanish Florida before suppression — leading to even harsher slave codes.
Colonial Slavery — Regional Variation
Slavery existed in every colony but varied: gang-labor rice and tobacco in the South, farm and household slavery in the North, a Black majority in South Carolina.
First Great Awakening (1730s–40s)
A wave of evangelical revivals — Edwards's theology, Whitefield's mass preaching — that split churches, founded colleges, and taught ordinary people to question authority.
Jonathan Edwards
Puritan theologian of the Awakening — 'Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God' — combining terror of damnation with intense religious psychology.
George Whitefield
The Awakening's celebrity itinerant, preaching to open-air crowds of thousands across the colonies — America's first truly intercolonial experience.
Old Lights vs. New Lights
Established clergy (Old Lights) condemned revival enthusiasm; New Lights embraced it — the split spawned new denominations and colleges (Princeton, Brown, Rutgers).
The Enlightenment in America
Reason, natural rights, and science crossed the Atlantic — embodied by Benjamin Franklin, and supplying the vocabulary of the coming Revolution.
Benjamin Franklin
Printer, scientist, and civic improver — the American Enlightenment personified, from Poor Richard's Almanack to the lightning rod.
Zenger Trial (1735)
A jury acquitted printer John Peter Zenger of seditious libel because his criticisms of New York's governor were true — a landmark for press freedom.
Colonial Assemblies' Power
Elected lower houses used their control of taxes and salaries to dominate royal governors — self-government becoming a colonial habit.
Consumer Revolution
Rising imports of British goods (tea, cloth, ceramics) tied colonists into a shared Anglo-American consumer culture — and later gave boycotts their power.
Scots-Irish & German Migration
18th-century waves settled the backcountry (Pennsylvania to the Carolinas), adding ethnic diversity and frontier grievances against coastal elites.
Powhatan (Wahunsenacawh)
The paramount chief who ruled some 30 tributary peoples around Jamestown — alternately feeding, fighting, and negotiating with the intruders.
Pocahontas
Powhatan's daughter whose captivity and 1614 marriage to John Rolfe sealed a fragile peace; she died in England in 1617.
Opechancanough's Attacks (1622, 1644)
Powhatan's successor launched coordinated assaults killing hundreds of colonists; Virginia's retaliation broke tidewater Native power.
Virginia Becomes Royal (1624)
After the 1622 attack and company bankruptcy, the crown revoked the Virginia Company's charter — the first royal colony.
Tobacco Brides
Women shipped to Virginia (passage paid in tobacco) to stabilize a colony of single men — family formation as policy.
Chesapeake Mortality
Malaria, dysentery, and typhoid gave early Virginia settlers a life expectancy in the 40s; population grew only through immigration.
Squanto (Tisquantum)
A Patuxet who had been enslaved to Europe and returned to find his people dead of plague; he became Plymouth's translator and advisor.
Massasoit's Alliance
The Wampanoag leader allied with Plymouth (1621) against his rivals — the pragmatic diplomacy behind the 'First Thanksgiving.'
Pequot War's Aftermath
The Treaty of Hartford (1638) dissolved the Pequot nation — survivors enslaved or absorbed — a template of annihilation.
Praying Towns
John Eliot's villages of Christianized 'Praying Indians' — conversion requiring cultural surrender; devastated during King Philip's War.
Fundamental Orders of Connecticut (1639)
Often called the first written constitution in America — Connecticut towns creating a government by covenant.
Thomas Hooker
Minister who led followers to found Hartford, arguing the people's consent grounds authority — Connecticut's founder.
New England Confederation (1643)
A defensive league of Puritan colonies — an early experiment in intercolonial cooperation (excluding heretical Rhode Island).
Quaker Persecution in Massachusetts
Boston whipped, banished, and hanged returning Quakers (Mary Dyer, 1660) — Puritan orthodoxy enforced with the gallows.
Jeremiads
Sermons lamenting New England's spiritual decline from founding zeal — the rhetoric of the second and third generations.
Leisler's Rebellion (1689–91)
New York's Glorious Revolution uprising; Jacob Leisler seized power in the people's name and was hanged when royal government returned.
Coode's Rebellion (1689)
Maryland Protestants overthrew the Catholic proprietor's government amid Glorious Revolution upheaval.
Culpeper's Rebellion (1677)
Carolina settlers revolted against Navigation Act enforcement — early friction over imperial trade rules.
Pueblo Revolt (1680)
Popé led the Pueblos to expel the Spanish from New Mexico for twelve years — the most successful Native revolt in North American colonial history.
Spanish Return to New Mexico
Reconquest (1692–96) came with compromise: less forced labor, more tolerance of Pueblo religious practice — resistance had won concessions.
New France (1608)
Champlain founded Quebec; France's St. Lawrence empire rested on the fur trade, Native alliances, and very few settlers.
Coureurs de Bois & Voyageurs
French fur traders who traveled deep into the interior, often marrying into Native nations — empire by kinship and commerce.
Jesuit Missionaries in New France
French 'Black Robes' lived among the Huron and Iroquois learning languages — conversion with less coercion than Spain's missions.
Beaver Wars
Iroquois campaigns (mid-1600s) to dominate the fur trade devastated the Huron and reshaped the interior — Native geopolitics driving empire.
Covenant Chain
The alliance system between the Iroquois Confederacy and English colonies — diplomacy that made the Iroquois power brokers.
Middle Ground
Historians' term for the Great Lakes world where French and Algonquians met as rough equals, creating shared customs of trade and diplomacy.
New Netherland's Diversity
Dutch tolerance drew Walloons, Jews, and dissenters; eighteen languages were spoken in 1640s New Amsterdam.
Peter Stuyvesant
New Netherland's autocratic last governor, who surrendered to the English fleet without a fight in 1664.
Barbados Connection
South Carolina's founders came from sugar-rich Barbados, importing its brutal slave code and plantation model to the mainland.
Indigo & Eliza Lucas Pinckney
A teenage woman planter developed indigo as South Carolina's second staple — dye for Britain's textile industry.
Naval Stores & the Carolinas
Tar, pitch, and timber from Carolina pines supplied the Royal Navy — mercantilism's strategic goods.
James Oglethorpe
Georgia's founder-general: philanthropist, Indian diplomat, and defender of the colony against Spanish Florida.
War of Jenkins' Ear (1739)
An Anglo-Spanish war fought partly on the Georgia-Florida frontier — imperial rivalry touching colonial lives.
Stono's Aftermath
South Carolina's Negro Act (1740) tightened control: no assembly, literacy, or drums — legislated terror after rebellion.
New York Conspiracy Trials (1741)
Fires and rumor brought executions of enslaved people and poor whites — slavery's paranoia in a northern port.
Gullah Culture
Lowcountry African Americans' creole language and culture — African retention strongest where Black majorities and isolation prevailed.
Task System vs. Gang System
Rice's task system gave enslaved people some daily autonomy after set work; tobacco's gang labor meant sunup-to-sundown supervision.
Redemptioners
German immigrants who sold years of labor on arrival to pay passage — indentured servitude's 18th-century variant.
Paxton Boys (1764)
Scots-Irish frontiersmen massacred peaceful Conestoga Indians and marched on Philadelphia — backcountry rage at Quaker government.
Regulator Movements
Carolina backcountry uprisings (1760s–71) against corrupt or absent coastal government — East-West tension inside colonies.
Colonial Cities
Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Charleston — ports of perhaps 15–40,000 — concentrated commerce, print, artisans, and inequality.
Colonial Family & Population Boom
Early marriage and abundant land doubled the colonial population every ~25 years — Franklin predicted America would outgrow England.
Women's Legal Status — Coverture
Married women's legal identity merged into their husbands' — no property, contracts, or custody rights; widows regained some autonomy.
Anne Bradstreet & Phillis Wheatley
America's early poets: a Puritan matron and an enslaved African girl whose published verse (1773) challenged assumptions about race and genius.
Deference Politics
Voters (broad among white men) still elected their 'betters' — gentry rule by consent, before revolutionary equality talk.
Molasses Act (1733)
Taxed French West Indian molasses to protect British planters; colonists simply smuggled — salutary neglect in action.
Currency & Credit Tensions
Colonial paper money and debts to British merchants created chronic friction — Parliament's Currency Acts restricting colonial bills.
Anglicization
Paradox of the 18th century: colonists grew more British — consuming, reading, and imitating the metropole — even as their institutions diverged.