● Specialized Colonies: region-specific characteristics
● Natives/Slave Relations: increased contact, direct impact on economic characteristics, severe effect on culture
● Discovery of New World
● Exploration Era: mainly Spain, France, and Great Britain
○ Spain: Latin America, South America regions
■ Purpose: gold and silver mining
■ Mainly solo males traveled due to the mining purposes
○ France: West of what would later become the U.S. region
■ Purpose: fur trade, alliance with Natives
■ Mainly solo males traveled
○ Great Britain: East side of what would later be U.S. territory
■ Purpose: agricultural colonies
■ Whole families migrated over
● Social/Cultural Effects
○ Social Structure
■ Fluid in Spain and France due to intermarriage → solo males!
● Creoles, mulattoes, etc.
■ Rigid in Great Britain: families migrated over, so rare intermarrige to indigenous people
■ Native Americans and African Americans quickly placed at the bottom
○ Cultural Blending:
■ Natives: voodoo religion (their religion mixed with Christianity), mixed languages
○ Conflicts with Natives
■ Result of land encroachment
● Separate Colonies
○ Different economies → Different life norms
North (New England Colonies, Breadbasket Colonies)
● Farms grew grain crops
○ Not as labor intensive
○ Did not need slaves to farm
● Close-knit towns due to smaller farms
South (Chesapeake Region, Southern Colonies)
● Farms grew tobacco, indigo, rice
○ Labor intensive crops
○ Used slaves
● Large farms with aristocratic societies
○ Isolated farms → people not as close-knit
***Note: These differences pave the way for the conflict and tensions in Period 5
***These are often asked about in DBQs; know their cause and effects!
○ Columbian Exchange: transfer of animals, plants, slaves across Atlantic region
○ First English settlement in Americas
○ Purpose: gold
○ Starvation: rich, spoiled solo males migrated to mine gold, no women to fulfill domestic tasks
○ Captain John Smith: fostered relations with Natives
■ Natives taught them how to plant crops, saved them from starvation
○ Settlement started by Puritans
○ Puritans: believed in Calvinist predestination; wanted to purify the Anglican church
○ Massachusetts Bay Colony
○ Religion and state tied together
■ Leaders of Puritan communities were often religiously devoted; laws governing their communities were religion-based
○ Named after its leader, Nathaniel Bacon
○ Rebellion due to large amount of unsatisfied, newly freed indentured servants
○ The colonies were limited to a certain amount of land east of the Mississippi River. Indentured servants were allowed to find their own land and farm, once they were freed from their masters. Soon enough, there wasn’t enough land to go around, and indentured servants were left with no land and starving.
○ Result: indentured servants were no longer trusted as a good source of labor
○ Led by escaped slaves
○ Slaves rose up and killed their masters, tried to escape to Spain’s Florida territory but were caught and executed
○ Result: tightened and stricter slave codes
○ Inspired by Europe’s Enlightenment
○ Burst of protestant denominations
○ Negative sentiment towards “elect clergy”
■ Especially in Puritan communties when citizens were unhappy with corrupt political religious leaders
○ Big Idea: All people, no matter their status, can be saved
■ Contrasted the Puritan ideology of Calvinist predestination (in which God decides who will be saved before any person is born, so those at the top of the social structure go to heaven because of who they are. Those at the bottom will not be saved no matter what they do throughout their life because they are predestined to be condemned by God)
● Native Americans: constant conflict due to land encroachment, broken treaties
● New England Colonies: Northern most, such as the Massachusetts Bay Colony
● “Bread-Basket” Colonies: Middle Colonies, such as Pennsylvania and NJ
● Chesapeake Region: Maryland, Virginia, etc.
● Southern Colonies: Georgia, the Carolinas, etc.
● Encomienda System: essentially another form of slavery; used on Native American laborers
● Headright System: a landowner gets land for every “head” he pays to travel to the New World; Pay for someone else’s trip to America, and you get land
● Indentured Servitude: done with the citizens of Great Britain, especially for those who could not pay their trip over to the New World
○ A master pays for your trip to the New World, you work for him/her to pay off that money and once you do so, you are free and can start your own life away from your master.
● Chattel Slavery: a child born from an enslaved mother is enslaved by the same matter once he/she is born
○ Essentially a master breeding his own slaves from slaves he had already bought, making this form of labor the cheapest and most popular
● Kinship Ties: a sort of family connection between slaves, which rose as a result to families being separated during auctions
○ Represents resistance and strength against oppression
● Mercantilism: economic concept in which a “mother country” creates colonies with the purpose of obtaining raw materials from such colonies for the mother country’s benefit
○ The economic policy between Great Britain and her New world colonies
● Salutary Neglect: A period of relative colonial autonomy; not much control from Great
Britain over colonial affairs
○ The end of this period is what leads into the Revolution of Period 3
● Navigation Acts: acts passed by Parliament to regulate colonial trade, restricting colonial exports to only Great Britain
○ Largely ignored by colonists
○ Not strongly enforced by Great Britain
○ A great example of change/continuity (Period 3)
***Note: Understand how the political, economic, and societal characteristics of these periods are intertwined in a very complex way, leading to the organization of information seen above: key ideas, the more precise details, cause/effect, and important terms.