Unit 1: Documents to a Revolution

Geography
Andes Mountain range & Amazon Rainforest inhibited unification.

Europeans sent people to America for the three G's: glory, god, gold.

Vocabulary
Encomiento: a fudal system of land and labor ownership, in which people were served by Indians in order to gain gold.

Hacienda: Large estates for producing grain and meat

Bourbon Reforms:


 * Passed by three Bourbon princes; mixed French and Spanish ancestry


 * Preserved Catholicism


 * A mercantilist free-trade system

Creole: Spanish descendant in Latin America.

Peninsular: Native Spanish/Portuguese.

Mestizo: A person with mixed White/Indian descent.

Cortes: Spanish or Portuguese Parliament

New Spain = Mexico

New Grenada = Columbia

British Colonial System
Each colony had a governor. appointed usually by the king, who executed law, appointed minor officials, proposed legislation.

Colonies had a legislature. Aside from Pennsylvania, there were three houses: the lower house was elected and had general legislative power, and the upper house was chosen by the king (except Massachusetts, general court) and advised the governor.

Judges were appointed and dismissed by the king. Both judges and the upper house were chosen from local leaders, giving influence to colonists and allowing the lower house to dominate colonial government.

Privy Council
The Privy Council was the King's group that determined colonial policy. It did not proclaim principles to which all colonies must conform, but rather addressed each situation as it rose. Heavily outdated.

Board of Trade
The BoT advised the Privy Council, and exercised the power to nominate governors and other officials. It also reviewed colonial laws and rejected them if necessary, but did so with restraint. (~5% rejected) Its recommendations were usually accepted by the upper government.

Mercantilism
This was an economic policy that involved accumulating as much gold and silver as possible, thus allowing a country whatever they needed in hard times. This eventually evolved into a system focused on self-sufficiency, in which exports took precedence over imports in order to gain gold and silver.

Navigation Acts
The Navigation Acts were designed to bring money into the treasury and at the same time, limit colonial trade to only England. Colonial ships could only trade to England, and European products for the colonies must be brought to England first.

French and Indian War
The war between Eng and Fra for control of N.America began with territorial disputes between the two over the Ohio country, in present-day Pennsylvania. The French wiped out the colonists and set up a line of forts along the Penn. Line in Virginia Territory.

The French, who controlled the disputed territory, had the support of most of the Indians, with the remaining Indians sided with England and the colonies.

With the victory by the English, all of Canada changed hands, and the British effectively became masters of N.America with Spain gaining Louisiana and France only having a few islands.

Ft. Necessity/Ft. Duquesne
In the beginning of the war, these forts held strong, and the British sank to several defeats. In Ft. Duquesne, more than 1400 English troops were handily defeated by a much smaller French and Indian force.

However, as Pitt involved England more in the war, both forts eventually fell to the combined British and colonial onslaught.

William Pitt
Pitt was appointed head of the war effort in 1759, and he immediately put the might of the British army navy and treasury into the melee. His strategies pushed England back into the war, and practically won it for turn in N.America, at the cost of emptying the treasury.

Peace of Paris 1763
With the Treaty of Paris, France lost all of N. America except two Newfoundland, giving Canada to the British and Louisiana to Spain, thus losing almost all of their positions.

King’s Proclamation of 1763
Britain’s new dominion was now much more expensive to maintain, and Pitt had emptied the treasury in the war. To limit costs from expansion, the British declared that no settlers were to cross the Appalachian mountains, and that no one was to settle there.

Sugar Act
Britain attempted to raise revenue to offset the war costs by passing the Sugar Act, which place tariffs on sugar, coffee, wines and other imports. At the same time, enforcement became stricter, with violators being tried in admirality courts. This act caused much controversy because of the issue of taxation without representation.

Stamp Act
This act placed stiff duties on all printed material and was relatively cheap but most Americans refused to pay on the grounds that it infringed on their rights. Also, the Stamp Act was a direct tax not at all related to trade.

James Otis
A colonist who wrote a pamphlet on colonial rights, stating that “everyone should be free from taxes” except those that he consented to.

Thomas Paine
A pamphleteer and author of "Common Sense", which emphasized the need for independence from the British monarchy, and which was extreme popular in Revolutionary America.

Thomas Jefferson
A patriot and member of the continental congress, who condemned the monarchy and King George III.

John Locke
British statesman and philosopher who had a profound effect on the Enlightenment and maintained that all humans are born with natural rights of life, liberty and property, and that no authority has the right to deprive any of those rights.

Jean Jacques Rousseau
French philosopher and Enlightenment influence, who states that lower classes are oppressed by the upper aristocrats and big governments; thus the polis is ideal for society.

Declaratory Acts
In response to the Virginia Stamp Act resolutions, parliament passed the Declaratory Acts, which state that the colonies are subordinate unto the British parliament, who could pass whatever laws they wanted on the Americans.

Quartering Act
This act required legislatures to feed and house British troops that arrive in the colonies, which put strain on the job market and on the colonists purses, since there was no enemy near America.

Townshend Acts
Charles Townshend, Chancellor of the Exchanger(?) introduced taxes on glass, lead, paints, and paper (imports) in response to colonial assertion that they were only against direct taxation. This caused a string of protests and a boycott of British goods.

Boston Massacre
A strong resentment in Boston and many fights.

March 5, 1770, crowd began throwing snowballs at the British troops; the crowd became a mob and the troops open fired.

The Townshend Acts repealed as a result.