Exploration & Motives
What are the three broad categories of motives for European exploration and colonization?
What are Economic, Political, and Ideological motives? (Or: What are God, Gold, and Glory?)
What term refers to the policy or practice of a country taking control over another territory, occupying it with settlers, and exploiting its land and resources?
What is Colonialism?
Which European country was the first to claim land in the Americas?
What is Spain?
Which colonial region (including Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and New Hampshire) relied heavily on subsistence farming, shipbuilding, fishing, and trade due to thin, rocky soil?
What are the New England Colonies?
Which Italian explorer sailed under the flag of Spain in 1492, opening the Americas to European exploration?
Who is Christopher Columbus?
What were crops grown primarily to be sold for profit on the market, rather than for personal consumption by the farmer?
What are Cash Crops?
Which European country primarily focused on establishing fur trade networks in present-day Canada and along the Mississippi River, often forming military alliances with local Indigenous nations?
What is France?
Known as the "Breadbasket Colonies" for growing wheat and grain, which colonial region included New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware?
What are the Middle Colonies?
Which explorer's crew completed the first European circumnavigation of the globe after he died en route?
Who is Ferdinand Magellan?
What is the term for native or original inhabitants of a specific region, such as the native peoples of the Americas prior to European arrival?
What is Indigenous?
Which European power established New Amsterdam on Manhattan Island as a global trading hub?
What is the Dutch Empire (or the Netherlands)?
Which colonial region (including Virginia, Maryland, the Carolinas, and Georgia) developed an agrarian economy heavily dependent on plantation slavery and cash crops like tobacco, rice, and indigo?
What are the Southern Colonies?
This Italian explorer recognized that the lands reached by Europeans were a "New World" rather than Asia, giving his name to the continents.
Who is Amerigo Vespucci?
What was the vast transfer of plants, animals, diseases, technology, and populations between the Old World and New World following Columbus's voyages?
What is the Columbian Exchange?
Funded by the Virginia Company for profit, what 1607 settlement became England’s first permanent colony in North America?
What is Jamestown?
Modern day Florida was under the control of which European power?
What is Spain?
What 1494 agreement divided the "new" world between Spain and Portugal?
What is the Treaty of Tordesillas?
This 17th–18th-century intellectual movement emphasized reason, science, and logic, challenging absolute monarchies and divine right authority.
What is the Enlightenment?
What is the name for the Puritan separatist group that landed in Plymouth Bay?
Who are the Pilgrims?
Signed aboard ship in 1620 by Pilgrim leaders, what document established a self-governing "civil body politic" based on majority rule?
What is the Mayflower Compact?