World in 1492
The exchange of plants, animals, diseases, culture, and ideas between the Americas, West Africa, and the Old World following 1492.
What is the Columbian Exchange?
Compared to the Southern Colonies, New England's economy was diversified, focusing on trade, fishing, and subsistence farming due to rocky soil.
What is subsistence farming?
The name for a labor contract where an individual works without compensation for a set number of years to repay the cost of their journey to the colonies.
What is Indentured Servitude?
The British policy that banned colonial settlement west of the Appalachian Mountains after the Seven Years' War to stabilize the frontier.
What is the Proclamation of 1763?
The idea that government derives its authority solely from the approval of the people.
What is the Consent of the Governed?
The economic theory that rejected free trade and promoted maximizing exports to enrich the mother country. Enter Category Name
What is Mercantilism?
The British laws intended to enforce mercantilist policies by restricting colonial trade to benefit the mother country.
What are the Navigation Acts?
This 1676 rebellion of poor white farmers against Virginia's Governor Berkeley exposed class tensions and accelerated the shift to African slavery.
What is Bacon's Rebellion?
This conflict, also known as the French and Indian War, resulted in Britain acquiring vast new territory but also a massive national debt.
What is the Seven Years' War (or French and Indian War)?
The Enlightenment philosopher most influential in shaping the Declaration of Independence through his ideas on "Natural Rights" and the "Social Contract."
Who is John Locke?
This event was the most significant impact of the Columbian Exchange on Native American populations immediately following 1492.
What is the catastrophic demographic decline caused by European diseases (like smallpox)?
This colonial region, founded by Quakers like William Penn, was most similar to New England in its core motivation to seek religious freedom and tolerance.
What are the Middle Colonies?
The laws passed in the Southern Colonies that restricted the social, economic, and political autonomy of enslaved Africans and made racial slavery permanent.
What are the Virginia Slave Codes (or simply Slave Codes)?
The colonists' central objection to new British acts passed after 1763 was best summarized by this four-word phrase.
What is "No taxation without representation"?
This section of the Declaration of Independence listed the specific complaints against King George III and justified the colonies' break from Britain.
What are the Grievances?
The French primarily sought this resource in the Americas, leading them to maintain generally cooperative relations with Native American tribes.
What is fur (or the fur trade)?
The labor system in the Southern Colonies was highly dependent on this due to the long growing season and the need for intensive labor on cash-crop plantations.
What is enslaved labor (or chattel slavery)?
This crop was the primary driver of the plantation economy and mass labor demand in the Chesapeake colonies (Virginia/Maryland).
What is tobacco?
This British tax, a direct levy on all legal documents and paper publications in the colonies, caused the most widespread protest.
What is the Stamp Act?
The crucial role Thomas Paine's 1776 pamphlet, Common Sense, played in the movement for American independence.
What is convincing a mass audience that immediate separation from Britain was necessary and justified?
This development in the New World, involving silver and gold extracted by conquistadors, accelerated Europe's transition from feudalism to capitalism.
What is the influx of new resources (or gold and silver from Spanish conquest)?
This system was designed to attract indentured servants to the Chesapeake colonies by promising land to those who financed their journey.
What is the Headright System?
The poor soil and climate of New England meant their labor system was less reliant on mass chattel slavery and more focused on this economic activity.
What is trade, fishing, and small-scale manufacturing?
The primary consequence of the Seven Years' War that led Parliament to impose new, direct taxes on the American colonists.
What is Great Britain's massive war debt?
The agreement where the government protects the people's natural rights, and the people, in turn, obey the government, according to Enlightenment thought.
What is the Social Contract?