APUSH Unit 2

• The time period covered in this video is 1607 to 1754
• Joint stock company


  A new economic model of funding where a group of investors pooled their money together and shared the financial risk
• The purpose of the Jamestown colony was to make a profit for the investors
• Jamestown colony


  1. Digging for gold and silver

  2. Constructing a military fort

  3. Cultivating tobacco
• Famine, disease, and cannibalism nearly killed half the Jamestown colonists in the first two years
• Indentured servants


  Folks who couldn't afford the passage across the Atlantic and signed a seven-year labor contract to pay off their settlement fees
• Increased demand for tobacco


  Farmers needed more land, leading to tension and violence with Native Americans
• Bacon's Rebellion was led by angry farmers and indentured servants against the Native Americans and the elite planter class
• Spanish colonization


  • Established shock colonies in the Americas to extract wealth, primarily through agriculture and mining of gold and silver
  • Subjugated native population under the encomienda system to do the farming and mining
  • Introduced a caste system that reshaped society into hierarchical levels based on racial ancestry
  • Attempted to convert natives to Christianity through the mission system
• After Bacon's Rebellion, the elite planters sought a new source of labor, leading to the use of enslaved Africans
• Pilgrims


  Protestant settlers who were unhappy with the Church of England and sought to emigrate to live by their own conscience
• The Pilgrims did not primarily come to America for religious freedom, but for economic reasons
• New England colonies


  • Migrated largely as family groups, focused on agriculture and commerce
• British West Indies colonies

  Established in the 1620s, focused on the production of sugarcane, leading to a spike in demand for enslaved Africans
• South Carolina


  Tried to replicate the society of the British West Indies on the mainland
• Middle colonies


  • Situated by the sea with rivers and streams, developed an export economy based on cereal crops, had a diverse population with an emerging elite class
• Pennsylvania


  Founded by the Quaker William Penn, recognized religious freedom and negotiated with Native Americans for land
• The British colonies developed distinct societies, but had unusually democratic systems of governance
• The colonies were largely self-governing due to the distance from Britain, with representative bodies dominated by the elite
• French colonial efforts


  • Interested in finding a water route through the Americas to access trade in Asia
  • Established permanent settlement in Quebec in 1608
  • Focused more on trade, especially the fish and fur trade, rather than conquest
  • Relatively few French colonizers arrived, mostly establishing trading settlements
  • Some French traders married native women to have kinship ties to trading networks
• Dutch colonization


  • Sent Henry Hudson to find a water-based passage, which he did not find
  • Established the colony of New Amsterdam in 1624 to facilitate economic goals
  • Differed from Spanish in that they had no interest in converting natives to their beliefs
• The Spanish fundamentally altered the society of the Americas by introducing a caste system which reordered people based on their racial ancestry
• The Spanish perspective was that the native Americans were only good for labor and religious conversion
• The Spanish established Santa Fe as the capital of New Mexico in 1610
• British colonization


  • Motivated by economics, as the English economy had changed due to the Columbian Exchange and wars
  • Nobles sought new economic opportunities, while peasantry needed land and religious freedom
  • English colonizers arrived as family groups to establish new homes, unlike the French and Dutch
  • Initially peacefully coexisted with natives, but tension and violence increased as settlers encroached on native lands
• Spanish interactions with Pueblo Indians


  1. Employed coercive and brutal measures to convert them to Christianity

  2. Led to the Pueblo Revolt

  3. Pueblo sought to purge the Spanish from their territory

  4. Spanish returned 12 years later and reconquered Santa Fe
• Europeans rarely saw the natives of America as equal to themselves
• Because the natives in North America lived in diverse and sometimes warring groups, the Europeans rarely had to worry about a unified resistance
• American Indians did their best to figure out how to live with the new European reality, some allied with one group against another, others migrated to lands not yet settled by Europeans
• Triangular trade


  Merchant ships followed a three-part journey which when being sketched out roughly makes a triangle
• Triangular trade route


  Merchant ships start in New England, carry rum to West Africa, trade rum for enslaved laborers, sail the middle passage, arrive in British West Indies, trade enslaved Africans for sugarcane, return to New England to trade sugarcane for rum
• The diagram of the middle passage was a reform image, as the British parliament passed the slave trade act in 1788 which limited the number of enslaved people that could be stuffed into the hull of a ship
• Mercantilism


  The dominant economic system in Europe during this time, which assumed there was only a fixed amount of wealth in the world measured in gold and silver
• Goals of mercantilism


  • Maintain a favorable balance of trade (more exports than imports)
  • Establish colonies to access raw materials and create markets for manufactured goods
• Navigation acts


  Laws requiring merchants to engage in trade with English colonies exclusively in English ships, and certain valuable trade items to pass through exclusively British ports where they were taxed
• Transatlantic trade


  • Generated massive wealth for the elites (merchants, investors, plantation owners)
  • Transformed America's seaports into thriving urban centers
  • Fueled the consumer revolution in North America, where societal status was more tied to financial success and a refined lifestyle rather than family pedigree
• The transatlantic trade created a truly global trade network fueled by the principles of mercantilism that fundamentally altered the societies in which it functioned
• The British colonies in North America participated in and benefited from the African slave trade
• The increased demand for colonial agricultural goods combined with the shortage of indentured servants led to an explosion of demand for enslaved laborers from Africa
• Distribution of enslaved Africans in the British colonies

  • Fewer in New England
  • More in the Middle colonies
  • Significant numbers in major port cities
  • Far more in the Chesapeake and Southern colonies
  • Greatest portion in the British West Indies