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61 Cards in this Set
- Front
- Back
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Protestant Reformation
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Movement to reform the Catholic Church launched in Germany by Martin Luther. Reformers questioned the authority of the Pope, sought to eliminate the selling of indulgences, and encouraged the translation of the bible from Latin, which few at the time could read. The reformation was launched in England in the 1530s when King Henry VIII broke with the Roman Catholic Church.
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Primogeniture
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Legal principle that the oldest son inherits all family property or land. Landowner’s younger sons, forced to seek their fortunes elsewhere, pioneered early exploration and settlement of the Americas.
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Jamestown
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First permanent English settlement in North America founded by the Virginia Company.
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Act of Toleration
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Passed in Maryland, it guaranteed toleration to all Christians but decreed the death penalty for those, like Jews and atheists, who denied the divinity of Jesus Christ. Ensured that Maryland would continue to attract a high proportion of Catholic migrants throughout the colonial period.
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Tuscarora War
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Began with an Indian attack on Newbern, North Carolina. After the Tuscaroras were defeated, remaining Indian survivors migrated northward, eventually joining the Iroquois Confederacy as its sixth nation.
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Iroquois Confederacy
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Bound together five tribes–the Mohawks, the Oneidas, the Onondagas, the Cayugas, and the Senecas–in the Mohawk Valley of what is now New York State.
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Spanish Armada
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Spanish fleet defeated in the English Channel in 1588. The defeat of the Armada marked the beginning of the decline of the Spanish Empire.
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Calvinism
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Dominant theological credo of the New England Puritans based on the teachings of John Calvin. Calvinists believed in predestination–that only “the elect” were destined for salvation.
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Puritans
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English Protestant reformers who sought to purify the Church of England of Catholic rituals and creeds. Some of the most devout Puritans believed that only “visible saints” should be admitted to church membership.
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Mayflower Compact
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Agreement to form a majoritarian government in Plymouth, signed aboard the Mayflower. Created a foundation for self-government in the colony.
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Antinomianism
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Belief that the elect need not obey the law of either God or man; most notably espoused in the colonies by Anne Hutchinson.
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King Philip’s War
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Series of assaults by Metacom, King Philip, on English settlements in New England. The attacks slowed the westward migration of New England settlers for several decades.
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Dominion of New England
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Administrative union created by royal authority, incorporating all of New England, New York, and East and West Jersey. Placed under the rule of Sir Edmund Andros who curbed popular assemblies, taxed residents without their consent and strictly enforced Navigation Laws. Its collapse after the Glorious Revolution in England demonstrated colonial opposition to strict royal control.
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Patroonships
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Vast tracts of land along the Hudson River in New Netherlands granted to wealthy promoters in exchange for bringing fifty settlers to the property.
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Joint-stock company
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Short-term partnership between multiple investors to fund a commercial enterprise; such arrangements were used to fund England’s early colonial ventures.
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Paxton Boys
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Armed march on Philadelphia by Scotts-Irish frontiersmen in protest against the Quaker establishment’s lenient policies toward Native Americans.
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Molasses Act
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Tax on imported Molasses passed by Parliament in an effort to squelch the North American trade with the French West Indies. It proved largely ineffective due to widespread smuggling.
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old lights
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Orthodox clergymen who rejected the emotionalism of the Great Awakening in favor of a more rational spirituality.
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Poor Richard’s Almanack
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Widely read annual pamphlet edited by Benjamin Franklin. Best known for its proverbs and aphorisms emphasizing thrift, industry, morality and common sense.
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1st Anglo-Powhatan Wars
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Series of clashes between the Powhatan Confederacy and English settlers in Virginia. English colonists torched and pillaged Indian villages, applying tactics used in England’s campaigns against the Irish.
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2nd Anglo-Powhatan Wars
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Last-ditch effort by the Indians to dislodge Virginia settlements. The resulting peace treaty formally separated white and Indian areas of settlement.
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Huguenots
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French Protestant dissenters, the Huguenots were granted limited toleration under the Edict of Nantes. After King Louis XIV outlawed Protestantism in 1685, many Huguenots fled elsewhere, including to British North America.
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voyageurs
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French fur-trappers
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War of Jenkins’ Ear
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Small-scale clash between Britain and Spain in the Caribbean and in the buffer colony, Georgia. It merged with the much larger War of Austrian Succession in 1742.
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French and Indian War (Seven Years’ War)
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Nine-year war between the British and the French in North America. It resulted in the expulsion of the French from the North American mainland and helped spark the Seven Years’ War in Europe.
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Battle of Quebec
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Historic British victory over French forces on the outskirts of Québec. The surrender of Québec marked the beginning of the end of French rule in North America.
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Proclamation of 1763
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Decree issued by Parliament in the wake of Pontiac’s uprising, prohibiting settlement beyond the Appalachians. Contributed to rising resentment of British rule in the American colonies.
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Roanoke Island
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Sir Walter Raleigh’s failed colonial settlement off the coast of North Carolina.
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Barbados slave code
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First formal statute governing the treatment of slaves, which provided for harsh punishments against offending slaves but lacked penalties for the mistreatment of slaves by masters. Similar statutes were adopted by Southern plantation societies on the North American mainland in the 17th and 18th centuries.
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Squatters
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Frontier farmers who illegally occupied land owned by others or not yet officially opened for settlement. Many of North Carolina’s early settlers were squatters, who contributed to the colony’s reputation as being more independent-minded and “democratic” than its neighbors.
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Yamasee Indians
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Defeated by the south Carolinans in the war of 1715–1716. The Yamasee defeat devastated the last of the coastal Indian tribes in the Southern colonies.
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Buffer
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In politics, a territory between two antagonistic powers, intended to minimize the possibility of conflict between them. In British North America, Georgia was established as a buffer colony between British and Spanish territory.
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Massachusetts Bay Colony
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Established by non-separating Puritans, it soon grew to be the largest and most influential of the New England colonies.
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Fundamental Orders
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Drafted by settlers in the Connecticut River Valley, document was the first “modern constitution” establishing a democratically-controlled government. Key features of the document were borrowed for Connecticut’s colonial charter and later, its state constitution.
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Arminianism
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Belief that salvation is offered to all humans but is conditional on acceptance of God’s grace. Different from Calvinism, which emphasizes predestination and unconditional election.
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new lights
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Ministers who took part in the revivalist, emotive religious tradition pioneered by George Whitefield during the Great Awakening.
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proprietary colonies
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Colonies–Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Delaware–under the control of local proprietors, who appointed colonial governors.
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Edict of Nantes
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Decree issued by the French crown granting limited toleration to French Protestants. Ended religious wars in France and inaugurated a period of French preeminence in Europe and across the Atlantic. Its repeal in 1685 prompted a fresh migration of Protestant Huguenots to North America.
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English Civil War
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Armed conflict between royalists and parliamentarians, resulting in the victory of pro-Parliament forces and the execution of Charles I.
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Regulator movement
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Eventually violent uprising of backcountry settlers in North Carolina against unfair taxation and the control of colonial affairs by the seaboard elite.
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King William’s War
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War fought largely between French trappers, British settlers, and their respective Indian allies from 1689–1697. The colonial theater of the larger War of the League of Augsburg in Europe.
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coureurs de bois
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Translated as “runners of the woods,” they were French fur-trappers, also known as “voyageurs” (travelers), who established trading posts throughout North America. The fur trade wreaked havoc on the health and folkways of their Native American trading partners.
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Queen Anne’s War
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Second in a series of conflicts between the European powers for control of North America, fought between the English and French colonists in the North, and the English and Spanish in Florida. Under the peace treaty, the French ceded Acadia (Nova Scotia), Newfoundland, and Hudson Bay to Britain.
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Pontiac’s uprising
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Bloody campaign waged by Ottawa chief Pontiac to drive the British out of Ohio Country. It was brutally crushed by British troops, who resorted to distributing blankets infected with smallpox as a means to put down the rebellion.
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Great Awakening
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Religious revival that swept the colonies. Participating ministers, most notably Jonathan Edwards and George Whitfield, placed an emphasis on direct, emotive spirituality. A Second Great Awakening arose in the nineteenth century.
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Zenger trial
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New York libel case against John Peter Zenger. Established the principle that truthful statements about public officials could not be prosecuted as libel.
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triangular trade
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Exchange of rum, slaves and molasses between the North American Colonies, Africa and the West Indies. A small but immensely profitable subset of the Atlantic trade.
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Blue laws
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Also known as sumptuary laws, they are designed to restrict personal behavior in accord with a strict code of morality. Blue laws were passed across the colonies, particularly in Puritan New England and Quaker Pennsylvania.
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Predestination
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Calvinist doctrine that God has foreordained some people to be saved and some to be damned. Though their fate was irreversible, Calvinists, particularly those who believed they were destined for salvation, sought to lead sanctified lives in order to demonstrate to others that they were in fact members of the “elect”.
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Separatists
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Small group of Puritans who sought to break away entirely from the Church of England; after initially settling in Holland, a number of English Separatists made their way to Plymouth Bay, Massachusetts in 1620.
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Navigation Laws
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Series of laws passed, beginning in 1651, to regulate colonial shipping; the acts provided that only English ships would be allowed to trade in English and colonial ports, and that all goods destined for the colonies would first pass through England.
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Pequot War
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Series of clashes between English settlers and Pequot Indians in the Connecticut River valley. Ended in the slaughter of the Pequots by the Puritans and their Narragansett Indian allies.
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Conversion
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Intense religious experience that confirmed an individual’s place among the “elect”, or the “visible saints”. Calvinists who experienced conversion were then expected to lead sanctified lives to demonstrate their salvation.
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Salutary Neglect
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Unofficial policy of relaxed royal control over colonial trade and only weak enforcement of Navigation Laws. Lasted from the Glorious Revolution to the end of the French and Indian War in 1763.
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Great Migration
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Migration of seventy thousand refugees from England to the North American colonies, primarily New England and the Caribbean. The twenty thousand migrants who came to Massachusetts largely shared a common sense of purpose–to establish a model Christian settlement in the new world.
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King George’s War
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North American theater of Europe’s War of Austrian Succession that once again pitted British colonists against their French counterparts in the North. The peace settlement did not involve any territorial realignment, leading to conflict between New England settlers and the British government.
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royal colonies
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Colonies where governors were appointed directly by the King. Though often competent administrators, the governors frequently ran into trouble with colonial legislatures, which resented the imposition of control from across the Atlantic.
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Albany Congress
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Intercolonial congress summoned by the British government to foster greater colonial unity and assure Iroquois support in the escalating war against the French.
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regulars
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Trained professional soldiers, as distinct from militia or conscripts. During the French and Indian War, British generals, used to commanding experienced regulars, often showed contempt for ill-trained colonial militiamen.
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Glorious Revolution
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Relatively peaceful overthrow of the unpopular Catholic monarch, James II, replacing him with Dutch-born William III and Mary, daughter of James II. William and Mary accepted increased Parliamentary oversight and new limits on monarchical authority.
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Acadians
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French residents of Nova Scotia, many of whom were uprooted by the British in 1755 and scattered as far south as Louisiana, where their descendants became known as “Cajuns”.
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