# APUSH Periods 1–3 (1491–1800): Columbian Exchange, Colonial Regions, American Revolution & Early Republic

> AP US History Periods 1–3 (1491–1800): Pre-Columbian Indigenous societies, the Columbian Exchange, Spanish/French/Dutch/British colonization, Chesapeake vs. New England and Middle colonies, the American Revolution, the Articles of Confederation, and the Washington/Adams administrations.

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- **Level:** basic
- **Languages:** en → en
- **Total Cards:** 32

## Flashcards (32 Cards)

| # | Front (Term / Prompt) | Back (Definition / Answer) | Example | Multiple-Choice Options |
| :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- |
| 1 | Compare the demographic and economic structures of the early Chesapeake colonies (Virginia and Maryland) with New England colonies. | The Chesapeake relied on tobacco monoculture, young male indentured servants, high mortality, and scattered plantations; New England settled in family units centered on Puritan congregations, mixed economy (shipping, timber, small farms), and high life expectancy. |  |  |
| 2 | What provoked the Quasi-War with France, the Alien and Sedition Acts (1798), and the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions? | After the XYZ Affair sparked an undeclared naval war with France, the Federalist Congress passed the Alien and Sedition Acts to silence Democratic-Republican critics; Jefferson and Madison secretly authored the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions asserting the compact theory and state nullification. |  |  |
| 3 | What sequence of events linked the Tea Act of 1773 to the convening of the First Continental Congress in 1774? | Colonists protested the British East India Company tea monopoly with the Boston Tea Party; Parliament retaliated with the Coercive (Intolerable) Acts closing Boston Harbor and suspending Massachusetts self-rule, prompting 12 colonies to meet at the First Continental Congress. |  |  |
| 4 | What key arguments did Thomas Paine make in his January 1776 pamphlet 'Common Sense'? | Writing in plain, accessible language, Paine attacked hereditary monarchy and King George III, argued it was absurd for a continent to be ruled by a small island, and urged immediate independence and republican government. |  |  |
| 5 | What were the most significant biological and demographic consequences of the Columbian Exchange for the Americas and Europe? | Old World diseases (smallpox, measles) caused up to 90% mortality among Indigenous peoples, while New World crops (potatoes, maize, tomatoes) spurred massive European population growth and Old World livestock (horses, cattle, pigs) transformed American ecosystems. |  |  |
| 6 | Why was the Seven Years' War (French and Indian War, 1754–1763) a major turning point in British-colonial relations? | Although Britain expelled France from North America in the Treaty of Paris (1763), massive war debt led London to abandon Salutary Neglect, station a permanent standing army in America, and levy direct revenues on the colonies. |  |  |
| 7 | Why were Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony in the 1630s? | Roger Williams advocated complete separation of church and state, religious toleration, and fair payment to Native Americans for land; Anne Hutchinson preached antinomianism (salvation by grace alone rather than moral law) and challenged Puritan clergy authority, leading both to help found Rhode Island. |  |  |
| 8 | How did French and Dutch colonization patterns in North America differ from British colonization? | French and Dutch colonizers sent relatively few settlers, focused on fur-trading networks, and formed cooperative military and marital alliances with Native Americans (such as the Huron and Iroquois), whereas the British established dense agricultural settlements that displaced Indigenous populations. |  |  |
| 9 | What was the Stono Rebellion (1739), and how did South Carolina respond to it? | In the largest slave uprising in the British mainland colonies, enslaved people near the Stono River seized weapons and marched toward Spanish Florida; South Carolina responded by enacting the harsh Negro Act of 1740, banning slave assembly, literacy, and movement. |  |  |
| 10 | How did the British policy of Mercantilism and the Navigation Acts (beginning in 1651) regulate colonial trade? | They required colonial trade to be carried on English or colonial vessels, mandated that 'enumerated goods' (tobacco, sugar) be shipped exclusively to England, and funneled European imports through English ports to enrich the mother country. |  |  |
| 11 | Contrast the arguments of Bartolomé de las Casas and Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda in the Valladolid Debate (1550–1551). | Las Casas argued that Indigenous peoples had souls and natural rights and should not be brutally enslaved, whereas Sepúlveda invoked Aristotle's concept of 'natural slavery' to justify Spanish subjugation of Native Americans. |  |  |
| 12 | How did the First Great Awakening (1730s–1740s), led by Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield, impact colonial society? | It promoted emotional evangelical piety ('New Lights' vs. traditional 'Old Lights'), fractured established churches into Baptist and Methodist denominations, founded New Light colleges, and encouraged questioning of traditional religious and political authority. |  |  |
| 13 | What was 'Salutary Neglect,' and how did it influence American political development prior to 1763? | Under Prime Minister Robert Walpole, Britain loosely enforced the Navigation Acts so long as colonies remained economically profitable and loyal, allowing colonial legislatures to exercise autonomous power over local taxation and governance. |  |  |
| 14 | What were the four pillars proposed in Alexander Hamilton's Financial Plan, and what compromise secured assumption? | 1. Federal assumption of state war debts and funding national debt at par; 2. Creation of the First Bank of the United States; 3. Excise tax on distilled spirits (whiskey); 4. Protective tariffs to encourage manufacturing (the only part Congress largely declined to enact beyond modest revenue tariffs). Jefferson and Madison accepted debt assumption in exchange for locating the national capital on the Potomac River. |  |  |
| 15 | What caused the Pueblo Revolt (Popé's Rebellion) of 1680 in New Mexico, and what was its outcome? | Triggered by Spanish suppression of Indigenous religious practices, drought, and forced labor, Popé led Pueblo communities to expel the Spanish for 12 years; when Spain reconquered the region in 1692, it accommodated Pueblo culture and abolished the encomienda there. |  |  |
| 16 | Why did the Stamp Act of 1765 provoke far more unified colonial resistance than earlier trade duties? | Unlike external customs duties regulating trade, the Stamp Act was the first direct internal tax levied on legal documents, newspapers, and paper goods to raise revenue without the consent of colonial assemblies ('no taxation without representation'). |  |  |
| 17 | What was the Spanish encomienda system, and why did it gradually transition toward African chattel slavery? | The encomienda system granted Spanish colonists coerced Indigenous labor and tribute in exchange for nominal Christianization; catastrophic Indigenous population decline from Eurasian diseases and moral critiques (leading to the New Laws of 1542 and repartimiento) led Spanish colonizers to import enslaved Africans under the asiento system. |  |  |
| 18 | How did maize cultivation shape indigenous societies in the American Southwest (such as the Pueblo) before 1491? | Maize agriculture supported permanent adobe settlements, advanced irrigation systems, social diversification, and large sedentary populations in an arid climate. |  |  |
| 19 | What were the structural weaknesses of the Articles of Confederation, and what were its two greatest legislative achievements? | Weaknesses: No executive or judicial branch, no power to levy taxes or regulate commerce, and unanimous consent required for amendments. Achievements: Land Ordinance of 1785 (public education grid survey) and Northwest Ordinance of 1787 (banned slavery in the Northwest Territory and set rules for statehood). |  |  |
| 20 | What Enlightenment principles formed the core of the Declaration of Independence (July 1776), and what made the Battle of Saratoga (1777) the military turning point? | Jefferson drew on John Locke's natural rights (life, liberty, pursuit of happiness) and social-contract consent of the governed; the American victory at Saratoga convinced France to enter an open military and commercial alliance with the United States in 1778. |  |  |
| 21 | What were the causes and long-term effects of Bacon's Rebellion (1676) in Virginia? | Frontier backwoodsmen led by Nathaniel Bacon rebelled against Governor William Berkeley over lack of protection against Native American raids and elite domination; it convinced Chesapeake planters to shift away from rebellious white indentured servants toward hereditary African chattel slavery. |  |  |
| 22 | What caused Pontiac's Rebellion (1763), and how did the British Crown respond with the Proclamation of 1763? | Ottawa leader Pontiac united Great Lakes tribes against British post-war expansion and trade restrictions; Parliament responded with the Proclamation Line of 1763 prohibiting colonial settlement west of the Appalachian Mountains, infuriating land-hungry colonists. |  |  |
| 23 | How did Shays' Rebellion (1786–1787) catalyze the calling of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia? | Indebted Massachusetts farmers led by Daniel Shays shut down debtor courts to stop farm foreclosures; the Confederation government's inability to raise troops to quell the uprising convinced nationalists that a stronger federal government was urgently needed. |  |  |
| 24 | What did John Winthrop mean by a 'City upon a Hill' in his 1630 sermon 'A Model of Christian Charity'? | Winthrop envisioned the Puritan Massachusetts Bay Colony as a moral and religious covenant community that would serve as a visible exemplar of godly society to the rest of the world. |  |  |
| 25 | What was the significance of the Mayflower Compact (1620) and the Virginia House of Burgesses (1619)? | Both established early precedents for colonial self-government: the House of Burgesses was the first elected representative assembly in British North America, while the Mayflower Compact was a participatory social contract based on majority rule. |  |  |
| 26 | How did colonists resist the Stamp Act and Townshend Acts between 1765 and 1770? | Through the Stamp Act Congress, nonimportation boycotts organized by the Sons and Daughters of Liberty (spinning homespun cloth), crowd intimidation of tax collectors, and pamphlets like John Dickinson's 'Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania.' |  |  |
| 27 | What were the core warnings in George Washington's Farewell Address (1796)? | Washington warned Americans to avoid permanent 'entangling alliances' with European powers, shun destructive political factions (parties), and guard against sectional divisions between North and South. |  |  |
| 28 | What was 'Republican Motherhood' in the post-Revolutionary era? | The ideology that women played a vital civic role in the survival of the republic by educating and instilling republican virtue and morality in their sons, which expanded educational opportunities for white women. |  |  |
| 29 | What caused King Philip's (Metacom's) War (1675–1678) in New England, and what was its historical significance? | Wampanoag leader Metacom forged a pan-Indian alliance to resist English territorial encroachment; the war killed a high percentage of both populations and effectively ended major Indigenous military resistance in southern New England. |  |  |
| 30 | What were the distinguishing characteristics of the Middle Colonies (Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, Delaware)? | Known as the 'Breadbasket Colonies' for cereal grain exports, they featured high ethnic and religious diversity, flourishing urban commerce in Philadelphia and New York, and Quaker William Penn's 'Holy Experiment' of pacifism, religious toleration, and negotiated land purchases. |  |  |
| 31 | Why did Native American societies of the Great Basin and Great Plains remain largely mobile hunter-gatherers prior to European arrival? | Arid climates and lack of natural irrigation limited farming, leading them to rely on hunting bison and foraging across vast territories, later accelerated by the introduction of Spanish horses. |  |  |
| 32 | What was the Headright System in colonial Virginia, and how did it fuel social stratification? | It granted 50 acres of land to any planter who paid the passage of an indentured servant to Virginia, allowing wealthy gentry to amass vast tidewater estates while pushing freed servants onto frontier lands. |  |  |

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