APUSH Unit 2 REVIEW [Period 2: 1607-1754]—Everything You NEED to Know

APUSH Unit 2 Review: 1607–1754

Big Picture

Unit 2 covers the growth of the British colonies in North America, their relationships with other European empires and Indigenous nations, and the increasing tensions between Britain and its colonies. The period begins with Jamestown’s founding in 1607 and ends with the start of the French and Indian War in 1754.

European Colonial Empires

European powers built different kinds of colonies because they pursued different goals.

Spain: Wealth, Control, and Conversion

• Spain sought wealth first through mining gold and silver, and later through cash-crop exports such as sugar and tobacco.
• It established labor and social systems to control Indigenous people and meet colonial labor needs:
  • The encomienda system coerced Indigenous people into labor.
  • The hacienda system later emphasized agriculture, with landowners owning the land and Indigenous laborers tied to it through debt.
• Spanish missions organized settlements around Catholic churches and promoted conversion.
• Spanish efforts to suppress Indigenous beliefs met resistance. Some Pueblo people blended Christian and traditional practices, a process called syncretism.
• The Pueblo Revolt of 1680 drove the Spanish from the area temporarily. When Spain returned about 12 years later, it reestablished control but allowed some Pueblo land rights and cultural practices.
• The caste (casta) system ranked people by ancestry, placing those considered most Spanish at the top and Indigenous people and enslaved Africans lower down.

France and the Netherlands: Trade and Partnerships

• Both had relatively few settlers and focused more on trading posts and commercial ventures than on large-scale settlement.
• The French built partnerships with Indigenous peoples, especially for the beaver-fur trade. French traders sometimes intermarried with Indigenous people, while French missionaries made comparatively few converts.
• The Dutch also pursued trade, including the fur trade. New Amsterdam became a major, diverse port.
• Compared with Spain, these empires generally relied more on trade relationships and cooperation with Indigenous groups than on attempting to remake their societies.

Britain: Settlement and a Separate Society

More people migrated from Britain to North America than from the other European powers. Major motives included:

1. Social mobility and land: Primogeniture gave family land to the eldest son, encouraging younger sons to seek opportunities overseas.
2. Economic prosperity: Jamestown began as a profit-seeking colony. Gold was scarce, but tobacco eventually made the colony prosperous.
3. Religious freedom: Puritans hoped to reform the Church of England, while Separatists (later known as Pilgrims) wanted to leave it. Religious conflict and pressure from the Crown helped drive migration.
4. Improved living conditions: Population growth and the enclosure of common lands made life harder for many poor people in Britain.

British settlers generally aimed to create societies separate from Indigenous people, although the purpose of individual colonies varied.

The Four Regions of British Colonies

By 1754, Britain had 13 colonies along the eastern coast of North America. Their different economies, settlement patterns, and social structures reflected their geography and founding purposes.

New England

• Plymouth was founded in 1620 by Separatists who came in family groups to establish a religious community.
• The Mayflower Compact established a simple government based on majority rule.
• The Massachusetts Bay Colony, founded by Puritans in 1630, also aimed to create a religious society. Property-owning freemen could vote, but political participation was restricted to those meeting Puritan standards.
• Rocky soil and harsh winters limited large-scale farming. New England developed an export economy based on resources such as timber, fish, and furs.

Middle Colonies: New York, New Jersey, Delaware, and Pennsylvania

• The region was characterized by diversity, trade, and relatively high religious toleration.
• New York’s ports, rivers, and fertile soil supported trade and grain exports.
• William Penn founded Pennsylvania as a refuge for Quakers and other religious dissenters. It had an elected representative assembly and, especially early on, made greater efforts than many colonies to treat Indigenous people fairly.
• The region’s diverse population and productive farming supported a growing economy, including grain exports.

Chesapeake and North Carolina

• Jamestown, founded in 1607, initially attracted mostly single men seeking wealth rather than families seeking to establish a community.
• Tobacco cultivation generated wealth and encouraged large plantations, which left settlements relatively spread out.
• Indentured servants supplied much of the early labor. Over time, African slavery increasingly replaced indentured servitude.
• The Virginia House of Burgesses provided representative government, though political participation was generally limited to landowning men.

Southern Atlantic Colonies and the British West Indies

• The West Indies’ warm climate favored sugarcane, and sugar plantations created enormous demand for enslaved African labor.
• Enslaved people soon greatly outnumbered white settlers in the islands. In response, the Barbados Slave Code stripped Black people of rights and gave white planters extensive power over them.
• South Carolina’s economy was initially tied to supplying food to the West Indies. Settlers from the islands helped shape South Carolina’s plantation system and slave codes.
• South Carolina grew rice and indigo, and enslaved Africans’ knowledge of rice cultivation helped make slavery deeply entrenched.
• Wealthy planters dominated the social hierarchy and local politics.

Atlantic Trade, Mercantilism, and Indigenous Trade

Triangular trade was one of several transatlantic trade networks. One common route involved:

1. New England merchants shipping rum to West Africa.
2. Rum being exchanged for enslaved Africans.
3. Enslaved Africans being transported through the Middle Passage to the British West Indies.
4. Sugar or molasses being shipped to New England and used to make rum.

Trade also shaped Indigenous communities and relationships:

• Indigenous people were sold into slavery, especially after Metacom’s War.
• European goods—including firearms, metal tools, and cloth—entered Indigenous communities. These goods changed traditional economies and affected power relationships among Indigenous groups.
• Trade also spread European diseases such as smallpox, devastating some Indigenous populations.

Mercantilism shaped Britain’s approach to its colonies:

• It aimed to maintain a favorable balance of trade by maximizing exports and limiting imports.
• It treated wealth as finite and measured it largely in gold and silver.
• It was government-directed: colonies were expected to provide raw materials and buy finished goods from the imperial power.
• Britain used the Navigation Acts to direct colonial trade toward Britain and restrict colonial economic independence.
• Enforcement was often inconsistent because of Britain’s distance from the colonies and its wars with France. This lax enforcement became known as salutary neglect.
• Colonists grew accustomed to ignoring or evading trade restrictions, making later enforcement a source of resentment.

European–Indigenous Relations and Conflict

European–Indigenous relations involved both alliances and conflict. European powers entered into alliances with Indigenous nations, sometimes becoming involved in conflicts rooted in Indigenous political and territorial struggles.

Beaver Wars

• The Iroquois Confederacy sought new territory as beaver populations declined in its lands.
• The conflict involved the Ohio River Valley and Great Lakes region.
• France allied with several Indigenous groups, while the Dutch and British allied with the Iroquois.
• These alliances reflected the French emphasis on partnership and the British tendency toward settlement and separation.

Pueblo Revolt and Accommodation

After the Spanish returned and reasserted control following the Pueblo Revolt, they made some concessions, including land grants and greater tolerance of traditional Pueblo beliefs. This accommodation is presented as a practical response to the risk of renewed resistance, not as an end to Spanish colonial control.

Metacom’s War (King Philip’s War)

• New England settlers’ expansion into Wampanoag territory helped provoke the conflict.
• Metacom, called King Philip by the English, formed an alliance with other Indigenous groups and attacked English settlements, destroying about a dozen Puritan towns and killing hundreds of colonists.
• Metacom was eventually captured and killed. The war weakened Indigenous resistance and made further colonial expansion more likely.

Slavery and Resistance

• Slavery existed throughout the British colonies, though its concentration increased from north to south.
• Indentured servitude was initially a major labor source, particularly in the Chesapeake, but African slavery increasingly replaced it.

Bacon’s Rebellion

Bacon’s Rebellion (1676) contributed to the transition from indentured servitude to slavery:

• Former indentured servants expected land after completing their contracts, but many received undesirable frontier land as prime land became scarce.
• Virginia’s governor, William Berkeley, also restricted the voting rights of some of these men.
• Nathaniel Bacon led settlers in attacks on Indigenous communities and then challenged Berkeley’s government.
• After Bacon died, Berkeley returned with a militia and crushed the rebellion.
• The unrest frightened wealthy planters, who increasingly turned to enslaved African labor rather than indentured servants.

Colonial Slavery and Resistance

• Colonial slavery developed as chattel slavery, in which enslaved people were treated as property.
• Laws reinforced hereditary slavery and racial control. For example, Virginia made the children of enslaved women enslaved for life, while Maryland restricted interracial marriage.
• Enslaved people resisted in both covert and overt ways:
  • Covert resistance: maintaining family and cultural practices, working slowly, and breaking tools.
  • Overt resistance: the Stono Rebellion of 1739, in which enslaved people in South Carolina attacked white settlers and burned buildings. The militia suppressed the uprising, after which South Carolina made its slave codes more severe.

Colonial Society, Shared Identity, and Culture

• The colonies contained people from many backgrounds, including Germans, Scots-Irish, other Europeans, and people of African descent. This diversity became a significant feature of colonial identity.
• Two broad movements helped create shared ideas across the colonies:
  • The Great Awakening: Beginning in the 1730s, preachers such as Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield emphasized personal, emotional religious experience. The movement reached people across colonial regions and helped create a shared religious culture.
  • The Enlightenment: Ideas associated with writers such as John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau—including natural rights and the social contract—spread through transatlantic print culture and influenced colonial political thought.
• Both movements emphasized individuals’ ability to evaluate authority, contributing to suspicion of established elites.
• The colonies also became more Anglicized over time:
  • Wealthy merchants in New England and the middle colonies and wealthy southern planters began to resemble British elites.
  • As land became scarcer, poverty and class divisions increased.
  • Colonial governments shared a structure similar to Britain’s, with a governor and a two-house legislature, though local institutions gave colonists experience with a degree of self-government and autonomy.

Growing Tensions with Britain by 1754

Three major sources of tension foreshadowed later conflict.

1. Territorial Settlement

• Population growth and limited land within existing colonial boundaries encouraged settlers to move west into the Ohio River Valley.
• Britain feared renewed conflict with Indigenous peoples and a confrontation with France, whose claims overlapped the region.
• Britain restricted colonial settlement there, creating resentment.

2. Self-Rule and Impressment

• Salutary neglect had allowed colonists to become accustomed to making many local political and economic decisions.
• Britain’s use of impressment—forcing colonial men, especially those in seaports, into the Royal Navy—was deeply unpopular.
• In 1747, Boston residents rioted for three days against impressment during King George’s War. The episode reflected colonists’ growing belief in their rights and opposition to imperial interference.

3. Trade Restrictions

• The growing colonial population increased demand for British goods, while British markets could not absorb all colonial exports.
• Colonists wanted to trade with other countries, but the Navigation Acts restricted their options.
• Many smuggled goods to other markets, especially while enforcement was lax. Renewed British enforcement intensified resentment.

Speakers or Sources Featured

• Heimler — the video’s narrator and sole speaker.