APUSH UNIT ONE GUIDE
“Colonial America, 1492-1776”
- AREA OF EMPHASIS: Pre-Columbian Societies; Transatlantic Encounters and Colonial Beginnings, 1492-1690; Colonial America, 1690-1754; The American Revolutionary Era,1754-1789
- TEXT READING: Brinkley, American History. Chapters 1-4 ( all pages must be read for the multiple-choice tests and unit essays)
- KEY TERMS:Each term below contributes to a comprehensive understanding of American history. As you read the chapter and create an outline be sure these items are included in your outlines, you may even want to highlight them in your outline. Once you finish reading and outlining a chapter look over the terms on this reading guide for that chapter and highlight the TOP TEN TERMS a student absolutely could not live without if they were trying to understand this chapter.
Chapter 1 / Chapter 2 / Chapter 3 / Chapter 4
Christopher Columbus
Smallpox
Conquistadors
Missionaries
Pueblo
Spanish empire
African slave trade (asiento)
Dutch West India Co.
Enclosure movement
Merchant capitalism
Mercantilism
English Reformation
Puritans
Separatists
Plantation model of
colonization
Fur trade
Spanish Armada
Roanoke
Columbian Exchange / Jamestown
John Smith
Virginia Company
Virginia House of Burgesses
tobacco
Headright system
Indentured servants
Powhatan Indians
Pocahontas
Royal Colony
Proprietary Colony
Charter Colony
Bacon’s Rebellion
Plymouth Plantation
Mayflower Compact
Fundamental Orders
of Connecticut
William Bradford
John Winthrop
Massachusetts Bay Colony
Theocracy
Roger Williams
Anne Hutchinson
Pequot War
King Philip’s War
Maryland Act of Toleration
English Civil War
New York Colony
Quakers
William Penn
Carolina colonies
Pennsylvania colony
Georgia colony
Navigation Acts
Dominion of New England
Glorious Revolution
Leisler’s Rebellion
Coode’s Rebellion / indentured system
birth and death rates
midwives
patriarchal society
middle Passage
Royal African Co. of England
slave codes
Palatine Germans
Huguenots
Scotch-Irish
Catholics
Iron Act of 1750
Triangular trade
Consumerism
Plantation economy
Plantation slavery
Gullah
Stono Rebellion
Puritan community
Primogeniture
Salem Witch Trials
The Great Awakening
Enlightenment
Almanacs
Literacy rates
Harvard
Benjamin Franklin
Cotton Mather
Smallpox inoculation
Zenger Trial
Half-way covenant / Albany Plan
Louisiana and New Orleans
Iroquois Confederacy
French and Indian War
Acadians/Cajuns
Peace of Paris, 1763
Pontiac’s Rebellion
Proclamation of 1763
George III
George Grenville
Sugar Act of 1764
Currency Act of 1764
Mutiny (Quartering) Act of 1765
Stamp Act of 1765
North Carolina Regulators
Stamp Act crisis
Colonial boycotts
Sons of Liberty
Appeasement
Townshend Acts of 1767
Boston Massacre
Committee of Correspondence
Virtual representation
Tea Act of 1773
Daughters of Liberty
Boston Tea Party
Intolerable Acts
Quebec Act
First Continental Congress
Minutemen
Lexington and Concord
Unit One – AP Themes
Chapter 1 – The Meeting of Cultures
American Diversity: Pre-English colonization in the Americas points particularly to the influence of the Spanish, French, Native Americans, and Africans in North America. Early settlement explains the presence of these cultures in the U.S.
Culture: The cultural diversity represented in early America created both synthesis and tension. All groups adopted ways of the others, whether wittingly or not, but conflict was perhaps more prevalent between the groups. Non-European cultures were subsumed, but more commonly almost destroyed by their contact with the English; the French and Spanish made greater attempts to accommodate non-Europeans.
Religion: The introduction of Catholicism to the Americas is the most significant religious development, followed by the Treaty of Tordesillas dividing the Americas between the Spanish and the Portuguese. Catholicism on the continents has lured Catholics to the Americas as well as creating religious conflict in both politics and society.
Slavery: The introduction of slaves to the Americas by the Dutch and the Portuguese established a model that was followed by the North American colonies. Acceptance of a racial hierarchy provided the Americas with an ample labor supply but its legacy of white supremacy did, and continues to, contradict principles upon which the nation was founded.
EXAM TIPS: Don’t spend a great deal of time with this chapter. The AP Exam will not have significant content of America before the 17th c. Know the general characteristics of the major civilizations, especially the Native Americans of North America, and the French and Spanish societies in America. Your time can be put to better use than learning significant detail from this chapter. Free Response Questions (FRQs) dating from this era can focus on relations between Indians and Europeans. Note the major characteristics of the various Native American and European cultures and how they interacted with one another.
Chapter 2 – Transplantations and Borderlands
Religion: Religion or its absence played an important role in the settlement of all the North American colonies. Religious freedom was not a dominant feature of the early colonies, but Rhode Island was founded with that as a principle. The many denominations founded in the post-Reformation era assured that diversity would characterize religion in the Americas.
Demographic Changes: The contrast between success in New England and Virginia is most evident in demographic data. New Englanders emigrated in family groups, settled in a relatively healthy climate with compact settlement, and enjoyed a long life expectancy. In contrast, Virginians were mostly male, settled in a disease-ridden environment with dispersed settlement, and suffered high mortality. Immigration continued throughout the 17th c. and westward migration continued as the century progressed.
American Identity: The Puritan idea of creating a “city on a hill” as an example to a corrupt England embedded a sense of mission into the American identity. The Puritans wished to transmit their idea of utopia to the rest of the world. Other distinct characteristics established during this early period were slavery, democratic foundations, and ethnic and religious diversity.
American Diversity: Although England sponsored settlement in the North American colonies, settlers came from throughout Europe, the Caribbean and Africa to live with Native Americans. Africans quickly became an underclass upon which a system of white superiority was based throughout the colonies. The Scot-Irish, resistant to authority in their European homes, settled in western frontier areas away from imperial and colonial control. In the middle and southern colonies a variety of people from mainland Europe settled and created a heterogeneous population.
Environment: The abundance of land differentiated America from Europe. It led Americans to use and then abandon resources rather than to conserve and reuse them. Coastal lands were abandoned and farmers moved to the west. Population growth and the clearing of lands eliminated forests and created pollution in the increasingly densely populated seaports.
EXAM TIPS: The early colonial FRQs often explore problems of settlement, relations with Native Americans, imperial relations with England, religion, and comparisons between colonies of France, England, and Spain.
Chapter 3 – Society and Culture in Provincial America
American Identity: Contradictory trends were taking place in the American colonies to the mid-18th c. Colonists had come to America for a variety of reasons, but many had been forced out of their countries because of economic hardships and political and religious persecution. These migrants harbored antiauthoritarian characteristics and often settled in regions with others of like-minds. The grasp of both English culture and authority over the colonies was strengthening; the Crown attempted to increase its control as English goods and fashions came into the colonies. Both autonomy and integration were taking place simultaneously.
Culture: Continued immigration injected various cultural streams into the American colonies, this is particularly the case with religion, where European sects joined colonial dissenters to form new denominations. Puritans in New England placed a stronger emphasis on education than the southern colonies. The hubs of learning and scientific inquiry were cities such as Cambridge, which hosted the first college in America. The Massachusetts School Act, passed in 1647, provided public education for white Americans only.
Demographic Changes: An increasing stream of immigrants flowed to the American colonies by the end of the 17th c. Deteriorating conditions in mainland Europe pushed Germans and French Protestants to the colonies, and Scot-Irish began to replace the English as economic conditions in England improved. Most significant was the increasing stream of black laborers from African and the Caribbean who replaced the declining number of indentured servants. Mortality rates decreased more so in the northern colonies than in the south, and by the mid-17thc New England’s population was increasing naturally. The southern colonies depended on immigration to grow until the 18th c. The American non-Indian population doubled nearly every 25 years.
Economic Transformation: After the early years when survival was the first order, a thriving colonial economy developed accompanied by a growing consumer culture. Throughout English America agriculture was the dominant economic activity, and in the Carolinas rice and later indigo became important crops. The Navigation Acts were a boon to shipbuilding in New England, and other manufacturing ventures using the region’s abundant water power developed there. Commercial farming in the middle colonies provided foodstuffs for New England, the Caribbean, and Europe, and the slave trade between Africa, the Caribbean, and America flourished. This occurred in the context of a complex trading network labeled the “triangular trade.”
Religion: Religion and religious intensity affected the various regions differently. The Anglican Church was most common in Virginia, but was not a commanding presence. Chesapeake Maryland’s conflict between Catholics and Protestants diminished in the late 17th c. In New England religious declension worried many and reactions to this ran from witchcraft hysteria to religious revivals during the Great Awakening. Both point to the fact that religion played an important role in people’s lives.
Slavery and Its Legacy in North America: As American society matured, the black population developed a distinct slave culture that blended both European and African traditions. The slave family grew beyond the nuclear family into an extended network of kin to provide for those left behind when families were broken up. The church and religion provided major solace, and hope for freedom – if not in this life, then in the next. Slaves also developed distinct cultural tools to help cope with slavery’s harsh realities. Languages forged from a mix of African and English were both signs of comfort and religion, and still exist today in some areas.
EXAM TIPS: FRQs focusing on this period often look at ties between society, culture, and economics, and the political changes taking place over the period. The establishment of new colonies with more heterogeneous populations, the Great Awakening and its tumultuous consequences for all the colonies, the development of slavery, and the integration of the American colonies into the Atlantic economy all combined to shape politics within the colonies and the relationships between the colonies and England. DBQs from this period most typically venture into the pre-Revolutionary era and consider the issues of American identity, unity, politics, and the economy. Try to make links between specific evidence and your thesis about the nature of America at the time.
Chapter 4 – The Empire in Transition
American Identity: During the French and Indian war and its aftermath, events led many American colonists to reassess what it meant to be British. For many colonists the war was the first close contact they had with the British individuals and they found it unsettling. With the end of salutary neglect, Americans began to question just how British they really were.
Economic Transformations: As political tensions heightened after 1763, Americans came to see economics as a tool of protest and began to see their economy as somewhat independent of Britain and powerful in its own right. Commercial warfare and the boycott became embedded in American diplomacy.
Politics and Citizenship: A wholesale reassessment of the colonial political system within the context of empire occurred in the dozen years after the French and Indian War. Issues of sovereignty and representation came to the fore as both the British and Americans questioned their status as subjects of the individual colonies and the Crown. An American political ideology emerged.
War and Diplomacy: This period was sandwiched between two wars, both of which transformed America’s place within the British Empire and its place in the world. The French and Indian War marked a shift in British policy toward its American colonies and ended the French presence on the North American continent. The beginning of the Revolutionary War marked a giant stride toward independence from England.
EXAM TIPS: This is an important chapter because the events after the French and Indian War leading to independence often find their way into exam questions. Pay particular attention to political ideology and its evolution as American moved toward independence. It is also important to keep in mind that even though protest was violent in this period, most Americans were loyal subjects of the king until just before Independence was declared in 1776. A question about relations between Indians and the three main European colonial cultures may be asked in the period before the Revolution. A good knowledge of the economic and political structure of the British Empire is import in answering FRQs and DBQs from this period.