Key terms and concepts from Chapter 2 of the American Pageant.
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| 1614983778 | nationalism | Fervent belief and loyalty given to the political unit of the nation-state. England's renewed sense of nationalism when Elizabeth I took the throne after the upheaval of the Protestant Reformation led it to become Spain's new colonial rival. | 0 | |
| 1614983779 | primogeniture | The legal principle that the oldest son inherits all family property or land. The laws of primogeniture in England forced younger sons to seek their fortunes abroad. | 1 | |
| 1614983780 | joint-stock companies | An economic arrangement by which a number of investors pool their capital for investment. Joint-stock companies were the forerunners of the modern corporation and provided the financial means for colonial expansion into the Americas. | 2 | |
| 1614983781 | charter | A legal document granted by a government to some group or agency to implement a stated purpose, and spelling out the attending rights and obligations. The monarch of England gave these out to either joint-stock companies before they went overseas or to "squatters'" settlements that weren't officially colonies yet. | 3 | |
| 1614983782 | feudal | Concerning the decentralized medieval social system of personal obligations between rulers and ruled. Lord Baltimore (founder of Maryland) hoped that his colony would revive the feudalistic system of lords and vassals. | 4 | |
| 1614983783 | indentured servant | A poor person obligated to a fixed term of labor. In the early days of the colonies, indentured servants made up about 80% of all immigrants to the Americas. They were penniless and landless in England, but hoped that after they served their term, they could earn enough money through their freedom dues to buy land and start their own farms. | 5 | |
| 1614983784 | toleration | Originally, religious freedom granted by an established church to a religious minority. Not many colonies had religious freedom, especially in New England, where the rigid theology of Puritanism was strictly enforced. However, colonies like Maryland and Pennsylvania were created for the main purpose of granting religious freedom to Catholics and Quakers, respectively. | 6 | |
| 1614983785 | squatter | A frontier farmer who illegally occupied land owned by others or not yet officially opened for settlement. These squatters made up the aforementioned squatter colonies which were either granted charters (Rhode Island), or absorbed by larger colonies. | 7 | |
| 1614983786 | melting pot | Popular term for an ethnically diverse population that is presumed to be "melting" towards some eventual commonality. Melting pot, or very diverse, communities were mostly common in the South, where Scots-Irish and German immigrants as well as black slaves made up a lot of the population. However, in New England, the population was almost exclusively Puritan Englishmen and women. | 8 | |
| 1614983787 | Roanoake Island | One of the first English settlements in the Americas, it lasted only 4 or 5 years before failing miserably; the entire colony disappeared without a trace. | 9 | |
| 1614983788 | Virginia Company | The Virginia Company was one of the joint-stock companies operating out of England and was responsible for the creation of Jamestown. | 10 | |
| 1614983789 | the Anglo-Powhatan Wars | Two wars, the first in 1614 and the second in 1644, between the Powhatan Indians and the colonists of Jamestown. In the end, the settlers banished the Indians from their lands and formally separated the two cultures. | 11 | |
| 1614983790 | Act of Toleration | Passed in Maryland in 1649, this Act granted religious toleration to all Christians but also decreed death for those who denied the divinity of Jesus (Jews and Atheists). | 12 | |
| 1614983791 | Barbados slave code | One of the many infamous slave codes which denied even basic human rights to black slaves, who were considered non-humans and were under the complete control of their masters. | 13 | |
| 1614983792 | Tuscaroa War | In 1711 a band of Tuscaroa Indians attacked a settlement in North Carolina and the settlers responded by crushing the Indians in the Tuscaroa War. They sold hundreds of Indians into slavery and the rest were left to seek the aid of the Iroquois Confederacy. | 14 | |
| 1614983793 | Yamasee Indians | In 1715, the South Carolinians did much the same to the Yamasee Indians, leading to the complete devastation of all the coastal Indian tribes by about 1720, though the Iroquois Confederacy remained a strong force again English settlers in the Appalachians | 15 |
