American History Exam 1

Encomienda

A crushing demand for labor bedeviled Europeans because there were not enough colonists to perform the work necessary to keep the colonies going. Spain granted encomiendas- legal rights to native labor- to reflected the Spanish view of colonization; the king rewarded successful conquistadors who expanded the empire.

Indenture Servants

An indenture is a labor contract that young, impoverished, and often illiterate Englishman and occasionally Englishwoman signed in England. Pledging to work for a number of years, usually between 5 and 7. They signed this to grow tobacco in the Chesapeake colonies. In return, indentured servants received paid passage to America and food, clothing, and lodging. At the end of their indenture servants received "freedom dues," usually food and other provisions, like land, provided by the colony.

Columbian Exchange

As Europeans traveled the Atlantic, they brought with them plants, animals, and diseases that changed lives and landscapes on both sides of the ocean. These two-way exchanges between the Americas and Europe/Africa are known as the Columbian Exchange. Of all the commodities in the Atlantic, sugar proved to be the most important. Sugar carried the same economic importance as oil does today. European rivals raced to create sugar plantations in the Americas and fought wars for control of some of the best sugar production areas.

Vice-admiralty Courts

British royal courts without juries that settled disputes occurring at sea. In 1696, the Navigation Act created the Board of Trade, replacing the Lords of Trade. This act, meant to strengthen enforcement of customs laws, also established vice-admiralty courts. This is where the crown could prosecute customs violators without a jury. Under this act, customs officials were empowered with warrants known as "writs of assistance" to board and search vessels suspected of containing smuggled goods.

Chattel Slavery

Chattel slavery is a system of servitude in which people are treated as personal property to be bought and sold. Those seeking protection, or relief from starvation, would become the servants of those who provided relief, often in the Nile valley. Debt could also be worked off through a form of servitude. Typically, these servants became a part of the extended tribal family. Found that there was a slave trade route through the Sahara that had slaves from all over the world.

Boston Massacre

Conflict turned deadly on March 5, 1770, in a confrontation that came to be known as the Boston Massacre. On that night, a crowd of Bostonian's from many walks of life started throwing snowballs, rocks, and sticks at the British soldiers guarding the customs house. In the resulting scuffle, some soldiers, annoyed by the mob that trash talked calling them lobster backs, fired into the crowd, killing 5 people. Crispus Attucks, the first man killed, and though no one could have known it then, the first official casualty in the war for Independence.

First Great Awakening

During the 18th century, the British Atlantic experienced an outburst of Protestant revivalism known as the First Great Awakening. This protestant revival emphasized individual, experiential faith over church doctrine and the close study of scripture. Evangelists came from the ranks of several Protestant denominations, they rejected what appeared to be sterile, formal modes of worship in favor of a vigorous emotional religiosity.

Dominion of New England

In 1686, James II applied his concept of a centralized state to the colonies by creating an enormous colony called the Dominion of New England. The Dominion included all the New England colonies (Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Plymouth, Connecticut, New Haven, and Rhode Island). In 1688 Dominion was enlarged by the addition of New York and New Jersey.

Massachusetts Circular

In Massachusetts in 1768, Samuel Adams wrote a letter that became known as the Massachusetts Circular. This letter laid out the unconstitutionality of taxation without representation and encouraged the other colonies to boycott British goods. Great Britain's response to this threat of disobedience served only to unite the colonies further. The colonies' initial response to the Massachusetts Circular was lukewarm at best. The letter got Parliament's attention and Lord Hillsborough sent 4,000 British troops to Boston to deal with the unrest and put down any potential rebellion there.

Coercive Acts

In early, leaders in Parliament responded with a set of four measures designed to punish Massachusetts, commonly known as the Coercive Acts. The four acts were Administration of Justice Acts, Massachusetts Government Act, Port Act, and Quartering Act. These acts were used to punish Massachusetts for destroying the tea and refusing to pay for the damage.

Proclamation Line

Is a line along the Appalachian Mountains, imposed by the Proclamation of 1763, west of which British colonists could not settle. The Proclamation line aimed to forestall further conflict on the frontier, the clear flash point of tension in British North America. British colonists who had hoped to move west after the war chafed at this restriction, believing the war had been fought and won to ensure the right to settle west. Line therefore came as a setback to their vision of westward expansion.

Jesuits

Jesuits are members of the Society of Jesus, an elite Catholic religious order founded in the 1540s to spread Catholicism and to combat the spread of Protestantism. The first Jesuits arrived in Quebec in the 1620's, and for the next century, their number did not exceed forty priests. The Jesuits in the colony called New France labored to convert the native peoples to Catholicism.

Mercantilism

Mercantilism is the protectionist economic principle that nations should control trade with their colonies to ensure a favorable balance of trade. Mercantilism shaped European perceptions of wealth from the 1500s to the late 1700s. Mercantilism held that only a limited amount of wealth, as measured in gold and silver bullion, existed in the world. Mercantilism was designed to benefit the nation.

Navigation Acts

Navigation Acts is a series of English mercantilist laws enacted between 1651-1696 in order to control trade with the colonies. Creating wealth for the Empire remained the primary goal, England attempted to gain better control of trade with the American colonies. In order to reap the greatest economic benefit from England's overseas possessions, Charles II enacted the mercantilist Navigation Acts, although many colonial merchants ignored them because enforcement remained lax.

Non-importation Movement

Non-importation Movement is a widespread colonial boycott of British goods. This movement was led by The Daughters' of liberty. It broadened the pretest against the Stamp Act, giving women a new and active role in the political dissent of the time. Women were responsible for purchasing goods for the home, so by exercising the power of the purse, they could wield more power than they had in the past. Although they could not vote, they could mobilize others and make a difference in the political landscape.

Repartimiento

Repartimiento is a Spanish colonial system requiring Indian towns to supply workers for the colonizers. The encomienda system exploited native workers. It was eventually replaced by another colonial labor system, the repartimiento, which required Indian towns to supply a pool of labor for Spanish overlords.

Roanoke

Roanoke was the first English colony in Virginia. Roanoke mysteriously disappeared sometime between 1587 and 1590. This colony was an island off the coast of present day North Carolina. The colony was small, consisting of only 117 people, who suffered a poor relationship with the local Indians, the croatans, and struggled to survive in their new land. Sir Walter Raleigh attempted to establish a colony at Roanoke.

Salutary Neglect

Salutary Neglect is the laxness with which the English crown enforced the Navigation Acts in the 18th century. Historians have described this lack of strict enforcement of the Navigation Acts as salutary neglect. In addition, nothing prevented colonists from building their own fleet of ships to engage in trade. Great Britain exercised lax control over the English colonies during most of the 18th century because of the policies of Prime Minister Robert Walpole.

Committees of Correspondence

Shadow governments organized by the Patriot leaders of the 13 colonies on the eve of the American Revolution. Convened to coordinate plans of resistance against the British. After the passage of the Intolerable Acts in 1774, The committees of correspondence and sons of liberty went to work, spreading warnings about how the acts would affect the liberty of all colonists, not just urban merchants and laborers. The Massachusetts Government Act had shut down the colonial government there, but resistance-minded colonists began meeting in extralegal assemblies.

Beringia

Some scholars believe that between 9 and 15 thousand years ago, a land bridge existed between Asia and North America that we now call Beringia. The first inhabitants of what would be named the Americans migrated across this bride in search of food. When the glaciers melted, water engulfed Beringia, and the Bering Strait was formed. Beringia was significant because it was used as a passageway and used to search for resources.

Sons of Liberty

Sons of liberty were artisans, shopkeepers, and small-time merchants who opposed the Stamp Act and considered themselves British patriots. Helped lead the popular resistance of the Stamp Act alongside of the Daughters of Liberty. Before the act had gone into effect, the Sons of Liberty began protesting. They used newspapers and circulars to call out by name those merchants who refused to sign such agreements, sometimes they were threatened by violence. Smuggling was crucial for the colonists ability to maintain their boycott of British goods.

Black Legend*

The Black Legend was the notion that Spaniards only brought bad things like murder, disease, slavery. Though true, they also brought good things such as law systems, architecture, Christianity, language, and civilization, so that the Black Legend is partly, but not entirely, accurate. It was also the idea that the Spanish were bloodthirsty conquerors with no regard for human life.

Daughters of Liberty

The Daughters of Liberty are well-born British colonial women who led a non-importation movement against British goods. This group and The Sons of liberty showed their distaste for the new act by boycotting the British goods and protesting the streets. The two groups lead the popular resistance to the Stamp Act. Both groups considered themselves British patriots defending their liberty, just as their forebears had done in the time of James II.

Enlightenment

The Enlightenment was an 18th century intellectual and cultural movement that emphasized reason and science over superstition, religion, and tradition. The Enlightenment is also known as the Age of Reason. Using the power of the press, Enlightenment thinkers like John Locke, Isaac Newton, and Voltaire questioned accepted knowledge and spread new ideas about openness, investigation, and religious tolerance throughout Europe and the Americas. Many consider the Enlightenment a major turning point in Western civilization, an age of light replacing an age of darkness.

Black Death

The black death is two strains of the bubonic plague. A different strain, spread by airborne germs. The black death simultaneously swept western Europe in the fourteenth century, causing the death of nearly half the population. Social and economic devastation arrived in 1340s, however, when Genoese merchants returned from the Black Sea accidentally bringing a rat-borne and highly contagious disease known as the bubonic plague.

French and Indian War

The final imperial war was the French and Indian War, taking place from 1754 to 1763. This is also known as the Seven Years' War taking place from 1756 to 1763 in Europe. This war proved to be the decisive contest between Great Britain and France in America. It began over rival claims along the frontier in present day western Pennsylvania. Well connected planters from Virginia faced stagnant tobacco prices and hoped expanding into these western lands would stabilize their wealth and status. British coming out of the war with a Victory.

Pilgrims

The first group of Puritans to make their way across the Atlantic was a small contingent known as the Pilgrims. The pilgrims were led by William Bradford, who established the first English settlement in New England in 1620. The pilgrims differed from other Puritans in their insistence on separating from what they saw as the corrupt Church of England. For this reason, pilgrims are known are separatists.

Headright System

The headright system was originally created in 1618 in Jamestown, Virginia. It was used as a way to attract new settlers to the region and address the labor shortage. With the emergence of tobacco farming, a large supply of workers was needed. New settlers who paid their way to Virginia received 50 acres of land, plus an additional 50 for each servant or family member they brought with them.

Joint Stock Company

The joint stock company is a business entity in which investors provide the capital and assume the risk in order to reap significant returns. The first permanent English settlement was established by a joint stock company, the Virginia Company. Named for Elizabeth, the "virgin queen," the company gained royal approval to establish a colony on the east coast of North America, and in 1606, it sent 144 men and boys to the New World. In early 1607, this group sailed up Chesapeake Bay.

Middle Passage

The middle passage is the perilous, often deadly transatlantic crossing of slave ships from the African coast to the New World. Once sold to traders, all slaves sent to America endured the hellish Middle Passage. By 1625, more than 325,800 Africans had been shipped to the New World, though many thousands perished during the voyage.

No taxation without representation

The principle, first articulated in the Virginia Stamp Act Resolutions, that the colonists needed to be represented in Parliament if they were to be taxed. The Stamp Act reinforced the sense among some colonists that Parliament was not treating them as equals of their peers across the Atlantic. As a direct tax on the colonists, the Stamp Act imposed an internal tax on almost every type of printed paper colonists used, including newspaper, legal documents, and playing cards. While the architects of the Stamp Act saw the measure as a way to defray the costs of the British Empire, it nonetheless gave rise to the first major colonial protest against British imperial control as expressed in the famous slogan, "no taxation without representation."

Puritans

The puritans are a group of religious reformers in the 16th and 17th centuries. They wanted to "purify" the Church of England by ridding it of practices associated with the Catholic Church and advocating greater purity of doctrine and worship. The puritans followed the teachings of John Calvin and other Protestant reformers.

Wampum

Wampum are shell beads used in ceremonies and as jewelry and currency. Native peoples had always placed goods in the graves of their departed, and this practice escalated with the arrival of European goods. The abundance of European goods rise to new artistic objects. For example, iron awls made the creation of shell beads among the native people of the Eastern Woodlands much easier, and the result was an increase in the production of wampum.