Labor/Slavery
A system that gave 50 acres of land to anyone who paid for a laborer's passage to the colony, helping wealthy planters build large estates.
Headright system
First permanent English settlement in North America, founded in Virginia in 1607. Its economy eventually depended heavily on tobacco.
Jamestown
1692 trials in Massachusetts in which accusations of witchcraft led to executions and reflected religious and social tensions.
Salem Witch Trials
1630s conflict between New England colonists and the Pequot that resulted in the destruction of much of the Pequot population and expanded colonial control.
Pequot War
1730s–1740s religious revival emphasizing emotional faith and individual religious experience; it challenged traditional religious authority.
First Great Awakening
Brutal transatlantic voyage that transported enslaved Africans to the Americas as part of the Atlantic slave trade.
Middle Passage
Jamestown leader who helped the struggling colony survive through strict leadership and trade with local Native Americans.
John Smith
Puritan dissenter banished from Massachusetts for challenging religious authorities and traditional gender expectations.
Anne Hutchinson
1675–1676 conflict between New England colonists and Native groups led by Metacom. The colonial victory weakened Native resistance in the region.
King Philip's War
Famous Jonathan Edwards sermon that emphasized human sinfulness and the need for religious conversion.
Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God
Poor workers who works for several years in exchange for ocean passage, food, and shelter.
Indentured servitude
Virginia colonist who helped make tobacco a profitable cash crop, encouraging expansion of plantation agriculture.
John Rolfe
Puritan colony established in 1630 that became a major center of New England settlement.
Massachusetts Bay Colony
Economic theory that colonies existed partly to provide raw materials and markets that increased the wealth and power of the mother country.
Mercantilism
Popular traveling preacher whose sermons helped spread the Great Awakening throughout the colonies.
George Whitefield
System in which enslaved people were legally treated as property and slavery became hereditary and racialized.
Chattel Slavery
Established in Virginia in 1619; the first representative legislative assembly in the English colonies.
Virginia House of Burgesses
Puritan leader and governor who described Massachusetts Bay as a “city upon a hill,” emphasizing its role as a model Christian society.
John Winthrop
English laws designed to regulate colonial trade and ensure that colonial commerce benefited England.
Navigation Acts
Calvinist belief that God had already determined who would be saved. This was an important part of Puritan theology.
Predestination
Atlantic trading networks connecting Europe, Africa, and the Americas through the exchange of goods, raw materials, and enslaved people.
Triangular Trade
1676 Virginia uprising against the colonial government. It exposed tensions between wealthy elites and poorer frontier settlers.
Bacon's Rebellion
Religious dissenter who founded Rhode Island and supported religious freedom and separation of church and government.
Roger Williams
Britain's relatively loose enforcement of colonial trade regulations, allowing the colonies significant economic and political independence.
Salutary Neglect
Maryland law granting religious protection to Christians who believed in the Trinity, especially intended to reduce conflict between Catholics and Protestants.
Maryland Toleration Act (1649)