REVIEW TEST #1 STUDY GUIDE

  1. European rulers sponsored exploration to increase their wealth and power. France, Holland and England grew envious of Spain’s power and wealth and sought to establish their own colonies in the New World
  1. France, England and Holland were looking for a Northwest Passage – an all water route through North America to Asia
  1. The encounter between Europe and the Americas led to the Columbian Exchange. Europeans benefited from new foods and products. New plants and animal were introduced to the Americas. Millions of Native American Indians died from new diseases, such as smallpox and measles, unintentionally introduced into the Americas by Europeanexplores.
  1. The first permanent English colony was established at Jamestown in 1607.
  1. England established thirteen colonies along the Atlantic coast. These colonies were established for political, economic, religious and social reasons.
  1. The Mayflower Compact and the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut encouraged the growth of representative government in the colonies.
  1. Different patterns of life developed in three regions of the colonies, based on differences in geography, climate and economic activities
  1. In New England, a short growing season, cooler climates, rocky soil and an influx of Puritan settlers encouraged the development of small farms and the growth of shipbuilding, fishing, whaling and trade.
  1. In Middle Colonies had a greater ethnic and religious diversity than either New England or the Southern Colonies. Some of these colonies had once been under Dutch rule and were conquered by England in 1664. The Middle Colonies had fertile soil and grew cash crops such as gains.
  1. In the Southern Colonies, a long growing season and warmer climate, encouraged the development of large farms that often grew cash crops for sale to England. Along large rivers, plantations developed.
  1. Part of the Southern Colonies’ economy was based on slave labor. Slaves grew labor intensive crops like tobacco, rice and indigo. They were taken by force from Africa and faced the horrific Middle Passage journeyacross the Atlantic.
  1. The colonies benefited from traditions of political liberty and representative government inherited from England. English subjects gained important rights in the Magna Carta (1215), the English Bill of Rights (1689). To these rights, the colonists added their own institutions of representative government in the Virginia House of Burgesses (1619), the Mayflower Compact (1620), New England town meetings, and the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut (1639).
  1. Religion played an important role in colonial life. Pilgrims and Puritans first came for religious reasons. Other colonies were also established as homes for England’s unpopular religious groups – Quakers went to Pennsylvania and Catholics to Maryland.
  1. Roger Williams left Puritan Massachusetts and established the principle of religious tolerance and separation of church and state in Rhode Island. Anne Hutchinson also left Massachusetts for religious reasons and went to Rhode Island.
  1. During the First Great Awakening, preachers like Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield preached to large crowds, stirring religious feelings.
  1. Mercantilism was the policy of using colonies to bring wealth to the “Mother Country”. Mercantilism stressed the idea that the colonists should sell cash crops to the Mother Country so the Mother Country could manufacture goods with the raw materials. Laws were put in place to ensure the mercantilism idea worked.
  1. Colonists brought sugar from the West Indies, turned it into rum in the colonies, shipped the rum to England and Africa, and obtained manufactured goods from England and slaves from Africa. This exchange across the Atlantic is referred to as Triangular Trades.
  1. The Enlightenment was a movement that began in Europe and stressed that science and reason were ways to understand the world and make society better.