Pre-Contact & Early Encounters
The global transfer of plants, animals, diseases, and technology between the Eastern and Western Hemispheres post-1492.
What is the Columbian Exchange?
The cash crop introduced by John Rolfe that financially saved the Jamestown colony.
What is tobacco?
The grueling transatlantic voyage that forcibly transported enslaved Africans to the Americas.
What is the Middle Passage?
1676 Virginia rebellion of frontier settlers against Governor Berkeley over land and Native policy disputes.
What is Bacon's Rebellion?
1730s–1740s religious movement emphasizing emotional preaching and personal spiritual rebirth.
What is the First Great Awakening?
Spanish labor system granting landholders control over Native populations in exchange for Christianizing them.
What is the Encomienda system?
1620 agreement signed by Pilgrims establishing self-government based on majority rule.
What is the Mayflower Compact?
Virginia system offering 50 acres of land to anyone who paid for their own or another person's passage.
What is the Headright System?
1680 uprising in New Mexico where Native forces successfully drove out Spanish colonizers for over a decade.
What is the Pueblo Revolt (Popé's Rebellion)?
Great Awakening preacher famous for delivering the sermon "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God."
Who is Jonathan Edwards?
Southwest Native group known for complex agricultural irrigation systems and multi-story cliff dwellings.
Who are the Pueblo (Ancestral Puebloans)?
Middle colony established by William Penn as a refuge for Quakers with broad religious tolerance.
What is Pennsylvania?
Economic doctrine asserting that colonies exist solely to enrich the mother country through favorable trade balances.
What is Mercantilism?
1675–1676 New England conflict between English settlers and a Native alliance led by Wampanoag leader Metacom.
What is King Philip's War?
European intellectual movement emphasizing logic, scientific reason, and natural human rights.
What is the Enlightenment?
Spanish priest who fiercely opposed Native mistreatment and debated Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda at Valladolid.
Who is Bartolomé de Las Casas?
Colonial region characterized by family-run small farms, town meetings, and strict Puritan church life.
What is New England?
Series of English laws beginning in 1651 designed to restrict colonial trade strictly to English shipping.
What are the Navigation Acts?
Unofficial British policy of relaxed trade law enforcement, allowing colonies relative self-governance.
What is Salutary Neglect?
English philosopher whose ideas on natural rights (life, liberty, property) inspired colonial political thought.
Who is John Locke?
Powerful alliance of Native nations in the Northeast that used political diplomacy to dominate trade and territory.
What is the Iroquois Confederacy (Haudenosaunee)?
1649 act passed in Maryland to guarantee religious protection for all Trinitarian Christians.
What is the Maryland Toleration Act?
Unsuccessful 1739 slave uprising in South Carolina that prompted colonies to enforce harsher slave codes.
What is the Stono Rebellion?
Administrative union created by King James II in 1686 to consolidate royal control over New England colonies.
What is the Dominion of New England?
Itinerant English evangelist whose massive outdoor revival tours unified listeners across all thirteen colonies.
Who is George Whitefield?