Colonial Economy & Trade
– An economic policy where colonies exist to benefit the mother country through trade and the accumulation of wealth.
Mercantilism
– Natural resources (like timber, furs, and crops) used to produce finished goods.
Raw Materials
– A religious group that wanted to purify the Church of England and settled in New England to practice their beliefs freely.
Puritans
– A colonial slogan protesting British taxes passed without colonial input.
“No taxation without representation”
– A European intellectual movement emphasizing reason, science, and individual rights.
The Enlightenment
– A British tax on printed materials in the colonies; caused widespread protest.
Stamp Act
– A trade system between Europe, Africa, and the Americas involving slaves, raw materials, and manufactured goods.
Triangular Trade
– Crops grown for sale and profit, like tobacco, rice, and indigo.
Cash Crops
- A peaceful religious group that believed in equality and settled largely in Pennsylvania.
Quakers
– The final major battle of the American Revolution where the British surrendered.
Battle of Yorktown
– Basic rights all people are born with, such as life, liberty, and property (John Locke).
Natural Rights
– A colonial protest where patriots dumped British tea into Boston Harbor in opposition to taxes.
Boston Tea Party
– A British policy of loosely enforcing colonial laws, allowing the colonies some freedom to govern themselves.
Salutary Neglect
A large-scale agricultural operation, especially in the Southern Colonies, where cash crops like tobacco and rice were grown using enslaved labor.
Plantation System
– A New England colony founded by Puritans with a focus on religion and strict moral codes.
Massachusetts Bay Colony
– The treaty that officially ended the American Revolutionary War and recognized U.S. independence.
Treaty of Paris 1783
– A 1620 agreement among Pilgrims to form a government and obey its laws.
Mayflower Compact
– A meeting of colonial delegates to organize resistance against Britain and later, manage the war.
Continental Congress
Laws passed by the British government to control colonial trade and ensure it benefited England; required that certain goods be shipped only in English ships and through English ports.
Navigation Acts
Farming in which families grow just enough food to feed themselves, common in New England due to rocky soil and short growing seasons.
Subsistence Farming
A period during the 1630s when thousands of Puritans left England to settle in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in search of religious freedom and a better life.
Great Migration
A law issued by the British government after the French and Indian War that banned colonists from settling west of the Appalachian Mountains to avoid conflicts with Native Americans—angered many settlers.
Proclamation of 1763
– A religious revival in the 1730s–40s that emphasized personal faith and challenged church authority.
First Great Awakening
Common Sense by Thomas Paine – A pamphlet that argued for independence from Britain in clear, persuasive language.
Common Sense by Thomas Paine
The horrific sea journey that enslaved Africans were forced to endure as part of the Triangular Trade which brought them from Africa to the Americas under brutal and deadly conditions.
Middle Passage
A valuable cash crop grown primarily in the Southern Colonies, used to produce blue dye for textiles.
Indigo
Individuals or groups who disagreed with the dominant religious practices in their colony; often left to form new colonies with more religious freedom (e.g., Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson in Rhode Island).
Religious Dissenters
Colonial networks formed to share news and coordinate responses to British policies; helped unite the colonies in opposition to British rule.
Committees of Correspondence
An Enlightenment idea that governments exist based on an agreement between the rulers and the people; if the government fails to protect the people’s rights, the people have the right to change it (promoted by thinkers like John Locke).
Social Contract
– The 1776 document declaring the colonies' break from Britain, listing grievances and Enlightenment ideals.
Declaration of Independence