Unit 2

• The first European to go to America was the Portuguese explorer Christopher Columbus in 1492
• Britain started to send privateers (pirates given permission by the king/queen) to steal from other countries' boats and materials
• John Hawkins


  First British man involved in the slave trade, nicknamed "the father of the slave trade"
• The slave trade lasted from 1562 to 1833
• Triangular slave trade


  Britain takes developed goods to West Africa, trades for enslaved people, who are taken to the Americas, products from the Americas are shipped back to Britain
• Britain made millions of pounds from the slave trade, with an approximate figure of 600 million
• In 1620, a group of strict Protestants (Puritans) went to Massachusetts on the Mayflower to have religious freedom
• Jamestown in Virginia was established for economic reasons, with plantations of tobacco and cotton farmed by enslaved people
• Walter Raleigh is credited with bringing the potato to Europe
• In 1500, there were over 500,000 Native Americans in British territories, but this number halved to 280,000 within 200 years due to European diseases
• The Boston Tea Party in 1773 was a protest by American colonists against British taxes, sparking the War of Independence
• George Washington


  First president of the USA, leader of the American army in the War of Independence
• The War of Independence lasted 8 years, with America declaring independence from Britain in 1776
• After losing America, Britain's focus shifted to India, which became the "jewel in the crown" of the British Empire
• In 1572, 70,000 Protestants (Huguenots) were killed in the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre in France, leading 50,000 to migrate to Britain by 1650
• The Huguenots brought skills and industries like watchmaking and paper-making to Britain, and included figures like Winston Churchill
• The Ulster Plantation in the 1600s saw King James I send Protestant settlers to Northern Ireland, leading to the separation of Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland
• The Highland Clearances from 1750-1860 saw the English brutally remove people in the Scottish Highlands, leading to a diaspora of Highlanders