APUSH Unit 2

• The time period covered is 1607 to 1754
• Major themes of this unit


  • Comparing the different motives and methods that Europeans used to colonize the Americas
• Conquistador


  Spanish conquerors in the Americas
• Spanish colonial policies


  • Established colonies to extract wealth in the form of cash crops and precious metals
  • Tried to convert native populations to Christianity
  • Introduced a caste system based on racial ancestry
• French colonial policies


  • More interested in trade, especially the fish and fur trade
  • Relatively few French settlers
  • Some French traders married Native American wives to strengthen trading relationships
• Dutch colonial goals


  • Mainly economic, like the French
  • Established fur trading center on the Hudson River
  • Showed little interest in converting natives to Christianity
• British colonial motivations


  • Seeking new economic opportunities and lands
  • Some sought religious freedom and improved living conditions
• Joint stock company


  Private business entity where multiple investors pool money and share profits
• Founding of Jamestown


  1. Financed by a joint stock company

  2. Colonists divided time between searching for gold/silver and building military force

  3. Disease and famine killed nearly half the settlers in the first two years

  4. Discovery of tobacco cultivation led to a reversal of fortunes
• Indentured servants


  People who couldn't afford passage to the New World and signed labor contracts to work for 7 years in exchange
• Increasing demand for tobacco land


  Led to taking land from native populations, increasing tensions
• Bacon's Rebellion


  1. Settler Nathaniel Bacon led attack on Indians and then turned militia toward plantations of Governor Berkeley

  2. Rebellion was ultimately squashed
• Consequence of Bacon's Rebellion


  Planter elites became more reliant on African slavery instead of indentured servitude
• New England colonies


  • Settled by Pilgrims migrating in family units to establish a society, not a profit-seeking enterprise
  • Had a thriving colonial economy including agriculture and commerce
• British West Indies and Southern Atlantic Coast colonies


  • Grew cash crops like tobacco and sugarcane
  • Increasing demand for African slaves to work the sugarcane plantations
• Middle colonies (New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania)


  • Diverse populations, thriving export economies of cereal crops
  • Emerging elite class of wealthy urban merchants
  • Significant population of enslaved Africans
  • Pennsylvania founded by Quaker William Penn, recognized religious freedom
• Colonial governance


  • Self-governing structures like the Mayflower Compact and House of Burgesses
  • Dominated by elite classes like wealthy landlords and planters
• In the late 17th and early 18th centuries, trade became truly global with the uptick of colonization in the Americas
• Mayflower Compact


  • Pilgrims signed this before they disembarked from their ship the Mayflower, which organized their government on the model of a self-governing church congregation
• House of Burgesses in Virginia


  • A representative assembly which could levy taxes and pass laws
• Representative assemblies throughout the colonies were dominated by the elite classes
• New York assemblies were dominated by wealthy landlords
• In the southern colonies, these assemblies were dominated by elite planters
• Spanish efforts to extract wealth from the land led them to develop institutions based upon subjugating native populations, converting them to Christianity, and incorporating them along with enslaved and free Africans into Spanish colonial society
• Triangular trade


  A three-part journey of merchant ships: from New England carrying rum to West Africa to trade for enslaved people, then the dreaded Middle Passage to the West Indies to trade the slaves for sugar cane, then back to New England to sell the sugar cane
• Silver, gold, and sugar were the money makers for the Spanish in Mexico, Peru, and the Caribbean
• Encomienda system


  • Exploited native labor
  • Catholic missions converted indigenous people to Catholicism
• Mercantilism


  An economic system where the goal was to gain as much wealth (measured by gold and silver) as possible, by maintaining a favorable balance of trade (more exports than imports)
• When native labor was no longer able to meet the demand, African slaves were brought into the Spanish colonial system
• Navigation Acts


  • Set of laws requiring merchants to engage in trade with English colonies and English-owned ships, and certain valuable trade items to pass exclusively through British ports where they could be taxed
• French and Dutch colonial efforts


  • Relatively few Europeans
  • Relied on trade alliances and intermarriage with American Indians
  • Acquired furs and other products for export to Europe
• The newly established Atlantic trade system generated massive wealth for the elites like merchants, investors, and plantation owners, and turned America's seaports into thriving urban centers
• France established its first permanent settlement in North America with the founding of Quebec


  1608
• Between 1700 and 1808, about 3 million enslaved Africans were carried on British ships across the Middle Passage, the majority sold into the hands of planters in the British West Indies
• French colonization


  • Relied on development of trade with local native people, especially in the fur trade
  • Relations between the French and local natives were relatively friendly
• Every British colony participated in the slave trade mainly because of the extraordinary wealth they gained by coerced labor in the export economies dedicated to tobacco, sugar cane, and indigo
• Dutch colonization


  • Paid for by a joint stock company
  • Relied on trade alliances with various native groups
  • Colony was one of the most religiously and racially diverse regions in North America
• Comparatively, New England farmers held relatively few slaves, while the Chesapeake and southern colonies held lots of slaves
• English colonization efforts


  • Attracted a comparatively large number of male and female British migrants as well as other European migrants
  • Colonists focused on agriculture and settled on land taken from native Americans, living separately from them
• Strict slave codes were introduced in Virginia, the Carolinas, and Barbados, defining slaves as chattel (property)