Colonies take root.
What started as 105 desperate settlers at Jamestown becomes, by 1754, a string of distinct colonial societies — Chesapeake, New England, Middle, and Southern — each shaped by who came, what they grew, who did the work, and how God was supposed to work in their lives.
The English were late to the Americas. By 1607 the Spanish had been there a century and the French were already pushing inland from the St. Lawrence. What made English colonization different: religious dissenters, joint-stock companies, indentured servitude that gradually shifted to chattel slavery, and a level of distance from London that bred a peculiar kind of self-government — colonial assemblies, town meetings, and a flexible, regionally-varied relationship with imperial authority. The Atlantic slave trade became the engine of the southern and Chesapeake economies. The Great Awakening (1730s–40s) gave the colonies their first shared experience. By 1754, when France and England started fighting over the Ohio Valley, “American” was just starting to mean something distinct from “English.”
Read Unit 2 alongside this period.
Pages 32–83 (52 pp.) cover topics 2.1–2.8 — all 8 CED topics for the 1607–1754 window.
The site’s topic accordions match AMSCO’s numbering (1.1, 1.2…). Read AMSCO’s overview for each topic, then expand the matching accordion below for the site’s study notes, key terms, and exam-focus tips.
The CED, topic by topic.
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2.1
European Colonization of North America
Different European powers, different colonization models.WOR · GEO · SOC
What to studySpain, France, the Dutch, and the English brought different motives, labor systems, and relationships with native peoples. Spain extracted silver and converted souls. France traded furs and intermarried with indigenous nations. The Dutch ran New Amsterdam as a commercial outpost. The English came to settle — first 105 colonists at Jamestown (1607), saved by John Rolfe’s tobacco; then Pilgrims at Plymouth (1620) and Puritans at Massachusetts Bay (1630), seeking a religious commonwealth. Each model produced different conflicts with native peoples.
Key termsJamestown · Tobacco · House of Burgesses · Mayflower Compact · Puritans · John Winthrop · New Amsterdam · Coureurs de boisExam focusComparison questions love this topic — Spanish vs. French vs. English models. Anchor each comparison in a specific colony, not generalizations.Primary sourceJohn Smith, A Description of New England, 1616 — Project Gutenberg
Smith promotes English colonization with detailed accounts of the New England coast — the foundational text recruiting settlers to North America.Whose story is missing?“The English who came first to this country were but a handful of people, forlorn, poor and distressed. My father was then sachem. He relieved their distresses in the most kind and friendly manner. He gave them land to plant and build upon.” — Metacom (King Philip), Wampanoag leader, 1676 (recorded by John Easton)
AP narratives frame colonization as European imperial competition over land, but Indigenous peoples governed, traded, and diplomated across North America for millennia before contact. Metacom’s account—one of the only surviving Indigenous critiques of early colonization recorded in English—reveals that the Wampanoag understood the English as guests who violated a relationship, not settlers filling empty land. The “wilderness” Europeans colonized was already someone’s homeland, managed and inhabited. Read the source →
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2.2
The Regions of British Colonies
Chesapeake, New England, Middle, and Southern — four colonial regions, four economies.GEO · SOC · WXT
What to studyBy 1750 the British colonies had differentiated into four distinct regional economies and societies. Chesapeake (Virginia, Maryland) — tobacco plantations, indentured servants giving way to enslaved Africans after Bacon’s Rebellion (1676), Anglican gentry. New England — small farms, fishing, shipbuilding, town-meeting democracy, Puritan congregations. Middle (Pennsylvania, NY, NJ) — wheat, religious diversity (Quakers, Germans, Dutch, Scots-Irish), commercial ports. Southern (Carolinas, Georgia) — rice and indigo, Caribbean-style plantation society with Black majority populations in some areas.
Key termsIndentured servitude · Bacon’s Rebellion (1676) · Headright system · Quakers · William Penn · Stono Rebellion (1739) · Triangular tradeExam focusWhen asked about “colonial society,” pick TWO regions and contrast — broad generalizations about “the colonies” lose evidence points.Primary sourceThe Mayflower Compact, 1620 — Yale Avalon Project
The Separatists’ self-governance covenant at Plymouth — an early precedent for consent of the governed across the British colonial regions.Whose story is missing?“I have nothing to comfort me, nor is there nothing to be gotten here but sickness and death, except that one had money to lay out in some things for profit. But I have nothing at all.” — Richard Frethorne, indentured servant, Virginia, 1623
AP exams compare colonial regions by economic system, but the workers who built those economies—indentured servants under legal bondage, enslaved Africans, and tenant farmers—left almost no records. Frethorne’s letter home, one of the only surviving indentured servant accounts, reveals that colonial “opportunity” was brutally stratified by class from the start. Most migrants arrived poor and stayed that way; the regional diversity AP describes was also a rigid hierarchy. Read the source →
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2.3
Slavery, Resistance, and Cultural Exchange in the Colonies
Race-based chattel slavery institutionalized — and resisted from day one.MIG · SOC · NAT
What to studyRoughly 12.5 million Africans were forcibly transported across the Atlantic between 1500 and 1866; ~388,000 came to British North America (about 4% of the total — most went to the Caribbean and Brazil). Slavery hardened into a hereditary, race-based institution as colonial law codes (the 1705 Virginia slave codes) defined who counted as human property. Resistance took every form available — work slowdowns, sabotage, escape (maroon communities, eventually the Underground Railroad), and outright revolt (Stono Rebellion 1739, NY conspiracy 1741). African cultural retention produced Gullah, ring shouts, syncretic Christianity, and foodways that shape U.S. culture today.
Key termsMiddle Passage · Chattel slavery · Slave codes · Stono Rebellion · Maroon communities · Gullah · Olaudah Equiano · Atlantic creolesExam focusAlways frame slavery as both an economic AND a cultural-political system. Resistance is not a side note — it’s central to the topic.Primary sourceOlaudah Equiano, The Interesting Narrative, 1789 — Project Gutenberg
Equiano’s memoir of the Middle Passage and enslavement is the period’s most powerful account of the transatlantic slave trade and African resistance.Whose story is missing?“All my labor was taken from me, by the hand of violence and robbery. It was not possible that I could gain any satisfaction or justice.” — Venture Smith, A Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Venture, 1798
AP exam content centers slavery’s economic function and its legal institutionalization, but the story AP graders also want is about African cultural survival and active resistance. Venture Smith was born in West Africa, survived the Middle Passage, and purchased his own freedom—evidence that enslaved people maintained identity, planned resistance, and worked toward freedom even within a system designed to erase all three. Slavery was not only an institution; it was a contest of wills that enslaved people never stopped fighting. Read the source →
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2.4
Mercantilism & the Atlantic Trade System
The colonies existed, in London’s view, to enrich the mother country — and the Navigation Acts enforced it.WXT · WOR · NAT
What to studyMercantilist economic theory held that nations should accumulate wealth (gold and silver) by exporting more than they imported — and colonies existed to feed that surplus. Britain’s Navigation Acts (starting 1651) required all colonial trade to use British ships, with key goods (tobacco, sugar, indigo) sold only to Britain. The triangular trade — manufactured goods from Britain to Africa, enslaved people from Africa to the Americas, raw materials from the Americas back to Britain — generated profits at every leg, and the labor coercion at the middle leg killed millions. Colonial merchants frequently smuggled (Dutch and French goods, molasses from non-British Caribbean) — Britain’s loose enforcement (“salutary neglect”) made the system tolerable until tightening enforcement after 1763 helped trigger the Revolution.
Key termsMercantilism · Navigation Acts · Triangular trade · Middle Passage · Salutary neglect · Smuggling · Molasses Act · Indigo · SugarExam focusWhen asked about colonial-British economic relations, frame mercantilism as the LOGIC and the Navigation Acts as its ENFORCEMENT MECHANISM. Both terms in one sentence earns easy specificity points.Primary sourceThe Navigation Act of 1696 — Yale Avalon Project
Parliament’s mercantile legislation confining colonial trade to English ships — the legal backbone of the Atlantic trade system colonists would later resist.Whose story is missing?“I was sold and carried away… I now saw myself deprived of all chance of returning to my native country, or even the least glimpse of hope of gaining the shore.” — Olaudah Equiano, The Interesting Narrative, 1789
Mercantilism’s triangular trade is often taught as a flow chart of goods—tobacco, cloth, enslaved people—but Equiano’s narrative names what the “slave trade” column on that chart meant to the humans inside it. The mercantilist system that enriched British merchants and colonial planters was built on the forced labor of millions of people who had no say in the trade that consumed them. Profit and human trafficking were not separable economic categories—they were the same transaction. Read the source →
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2.5
Colonial Governance & the Glorious Revolution
Colonial assemblies developed habits of self-government — and 1688 changed everything.PCE · ARC · NAT
What to studyBy 1700, every British colony had a representative assembly (Virginia’s House of Burgesses, founded 1619, was first) that controlled colonial taxation and budget. These assemblies developed self-governance habits Britain would later struggle to override. The Glorious Revolution (1688) — when Parliament deposed James II in favor of William and Mary — established parliamentary supremacy in Britain and inspired colonial revolts (Leisler’s Rebellion in NY, Coode’s Rebellion in MD) that overthrew unpopular royal governors. The English Bill of Rights (1689) established the principle that monarchs governed with the consent of representatives. Colonial Americans came to view their assemblies as analogous to Parliament — a view Britain rejected after 1763 with disastrous consequences.
Key termsHouse of Burgesses · Mayflower Compact · Glorious Revolution (1688) · English Bill of Rights · Leisler’s Rebellion · Salutary neglect · Self-governance · Royal governorExam focusCausation prompts about the Revolution want this CHAIN: colonial self-governance habits + Glorious-Revolution constitutional principles → conflict with post-1763 British assertion of parliamentary supremacy. Trace it explicitly.Primary sourceEnglish Bill of Rights, 1689 — Yale Avalon Project
The settlement ending the Glorious Revolution — colonists invoked its limits on royal power when arguing against Parliamentary overreach decades later.Whose story is missing?“She came to desire a vote and a voice in this Assembly, she having deeds of land and bills of exchange in her hands.” — Maryland Assembly minutes recording Margaret Brent’s petition, 1648
The colonial assemblies that AP identifies as seeds of self-government excluded women, landless men, servants, and enslaved people—most of the colonial population. Margaret Brent, one of Maryland’s largest landowners, was denied a vote in the assembly she had effectively managed as executor of the governor’s estate. Her 1648 demand for representation illustrates that “colonial self-government” was, from its origins, a selective privilege defined by gender and property, not a broad democratic project. Read the source →
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2.6
The Great Awakening & Enlightenment in the Colonies
Two intellectual currents from opposite directions reshape colonial thought.ARC · SOC · CDI
What to studyThe First Great Awakening (1730s–1740s) was a religious revival led by preachers like Jonathan Edwards (“Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” 1741) and George Whitefield, who drew massive crowds across the colonies. It emphasized personal religious experience over established church authority — democratizing religion and weakening the social authority of established ministers. Simultaneously, the Enlightenment imported European rationalist thought (Locke on natural rights, Montesquieu on separation of powers, Newton on natural law) through educated elites like Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson. The two movements coexisted uneasily — one emphasized faith and emotion, the other reason and skepticism — but BOTH undermined deference to traditional authority and laid groundwork for the revolutionary rhetoric of the 1770s.
Key termsFirst Great Awakening · Jonathan Edwards · George Whitefield · Enlightenment · John Locke · Natural rights · Benjamin Franklin · Deism · Newtonian scienceExam focusStrong essays explain how Awakening + Enlightenment, despite different premises, BOTH eroded deference to authority. That convergence is the key intellectual precondition for the American Revolution.Primary sourceJonathan Edwards, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, 1741 — University of Nebraska Digital Commons
Edwards’ Enfield sermon — the defining text of the Great Awakening that democratized religious experience and challenged established clerical hierarchies.Whose story is missing?“In every human breast, God has implanted a principle which we call love of freedom; it is impatient of oppression and pants for deliverance.” — Phillis Wheatley, letter to Reverend Samson Occom, 1774
The Great Awakening is taught as a democratizing religious movement, but Phillis Wheatley—enslaved in Boston and the first African American to publish a book of poetry—turned Awakening theology directly against slavery. Her 1774 letter pointed out the contradiction between colonial cries for liberty and the continued enslavement of Africans with devastating clarity. The Enlightenment ideas that fired the Revolution were available to everyone; the Revolution’s promises were not extended to the people who saw through it most clearly. Read the source →
Connect to the bigger picture
Era page: The Early Modern World
APWH cross-links: Topic 4.4 Maritime Empires Established · Topic 4.7 Changing Social Hierarchies
Next: Period 3 — Revolution & Republic
Try this in 3 minutes.
B. Explain ONE way that distinction shaped the political development of the southern colonies.
C. Explain ONE similarity between the two regions despite their economic differences.Practice in the SAQ Lab
