Peopling the Americas & the Columbian Exchange
This 1492 voyage, funded by the Spanish crown, was intended to find a westward route to Asia.
What is Christopher Columbus's first voyage?
This system forced Native Americans to labor for Spanish colonists in exchange for supposed protection and religious instruction.
What is the encomienda system?
Founded in 1607, this was the first permanent English settlement in North America, which nearly failed before turning to tobacco.
What is Jamestown?
Before enslaved labor became widespread, many English colonists arrived in America bound by this system of contracted, temporary servitude
What is indentured servitude?
This informal royal policy of loosely enforcing trade regulations allowed the American colonies significant self-governance into the mid-1700s
What is salutary neglect?
This term describes the massive transfer of plants, animals, diseases, and people between the Eastern and Western Hemispheres that began after 1492.
What is the Columbian Exchange?
Spanish colonial society used this hierarchical system to classify people according to racial and ethnic mixture.
What is the casta system?
Signed aboard ship in 1620 before landing, this agreement established self-government based on majority rule among the Plymouth colonists.
What is the Mayflower Compact?
This 1676 Virginia uprising, led by a planter against the royal governor, exposed class tensions among colonists and hastened the shift toward African slavery
What is Bacon's Rebellion?
This 1692 series of trials in Massachusetts resulted in the execution of accused witches amid rising social and religious tension.
What are the Salem Witch Trials?
This disease, introduced by Europeans and carrying no prior immunity among Native peoples, caused catastrophic population decline across the Americas.
What is smallpox?
In this 1680 uprising, Pueblo peoples under the leader Popé drove Spanish colonizers out of present-day New Mexico for over a decade
What is the Pueblo Revolt?
This colony was founded by Roger Williams after his banishment from Massachusetts Bay for advocating religious toleration and separation of church and state.
What is Rhode Island?
This economic theory held that colonies existed to benefit the mother country by supplying raw materials and buying finished goods.
What is mercantilism?
This intercolonial religious revival of the 1730s and 1740s emphasized emotional, personal connections to God and challenged established religious authority.
What is the (First) Great Awakening?
This Mesoamerican empire, centered in the Valley of Mexico, was conquered by Hernán Cortés in 1521.
What is the Aztec (Mexica) Empire?
This lucrative trade formed the economic backbone of New France and encouraged relatively cooperative alliances with Native American trading partners
What is the fur trade?
This cash crop became the backbone of the Chesapeake economy, driving demand first for indentured servants and later for enslaved labor.
What is tobacco?
This series of English laws required colonial trade to be carried on English ships and routed through England.
What are the Navigation Acts?
This intellectual movement, emphasizing reason, natural rights, and scientific inquiry, shaped colonial political thought in the 1700s.
What is the Enlightenment?
This Native American culture of the present-day Arizona desert built hundreds of miles of irrigation canals to farm successfully in an arid climate before European contact.
What is the Hohokam culture?
This Dutch colony, centered on Manhattan Island, was seized by the English in 1664 and renamed New York.
What is New Netherland?
Founded by William Penn as a 'Holy Experiment,' this Middle Colony was known for religious tolerance and comparatively peaceful relations with Native Americans.
What is Pennsylvania?
This brutal middle leg of the transatlantic trade network forcibly transported enslaved Africans to the Americas under horrific conditions.
What is the Middle Passage?
This 1675–78 conflict, among the deadliest per capita in American history, pitted New England colonists against a Native coalition led by the Wampanoag sachem Metacom.
What is King Philip's War (Metacom's War)?