Colonial Beginnings
This economic theory argued that a nation's power came from controlling colonies and accumulating gold and silver.
Mercantilism
This European empire established missions and used systems like encomienda to control Native labor.
Spanish
These colonies emphasized Puritanism, town meetings, and subsistence farming due to rocky soil.
New England
This three-part trade system linked Europe, Africa, and the Americas through goods and enslaved people.
Triangular Trade
This 1730s–1740s religious revival emphasized emotional experience and challenged traditional authority.
These private investors funded early English colonization through pooled capital—reducing risk to the crown.
Joint Stock Companies
This European power’s reliance on fur trade required diplomacy and cultural adaptation with Native allies.
French
Known for “breadbasket” agriculture and religious tolerance, these colonies included Pennsylvania and New York.
Middle Colonies
Passed between 1650 and 1673, these laws restricted colonial commerce to benefit the British economy.
Navigation Acts
This Enlightenment philosopher argued for natural rights and the right of revolution—ideas that influenced colonial leaders.
John Locke
This confederation of Native nations played a pivotal role in shaping the survival—and eventual conflict—of settlers in early Virginia.
Powhatan Confederacy
The colony of New Netherland, marked by tolerance and trade, was founded by this European power.
Dutch
This land incentive program allowed wealthy elites to gain land and laborers, intensifying inequality in colonies like Virginia.
Headright System
These specific goods—such as tobacco and sugar—could only be sold to England under mercantilist law.
Cash Crops
This Enlightenment idea stated that government is a contract between rulers and the ruled, and can be broken if violated.
Social Contract
This event in 1517 triggered religious upheaval that shaped both Catholic and Protestant colonial ambitions.
Protestant Reformation
English colonial society differed by emphasizing this type of migration over the male-dominated settlements of other empires.
Family Migration
This 1662 religious policy in Massachusetts allowed partial church membership and marked waning Puritan control.
Halfway Covenant
These legal codes passed by colonies like Virginia and Massachusetts institutionalized race-based slavery and hereditary bondage.
Slave Codes
His 1733 trial laid the foundation for freedom of the press by challenging the British governor of New York.
John Peter Zenger
This conflict between elite landowners and frontier settlers revealed how internal colonial divisions could influence long-term labor systems.
Bacon's Rebellion
This rigid racial hierarchy in Spanish America placed peninsulares above all others and institutionalized social inequality.
Casta System
This 1649 law in Maryland attempted to reduce sectarian tensions, but only protected Christians—excluding others.
Act of Toleration
This British policy of relaxed enforcement allowed colonial merchants to smuggle goods and develop economic independence, despite mercantilist laws.
Salutary Neglect
This 1680 Indigenous uprising drove Spanish colonists from New Mexico and led to a significant change in colonial policy.
Pueblo Revolt