Essay Example about Ap Us History

1) The English Civil War- The English Civil War took place during the years 1642-1646. The English Civil War was the conflict between King Charles I of England and a large body of his subjects, generally called the “parliamentarians,” that culminated in the defeat and execution of the king and the establishment of a republican commonwealth. The parliamentary army’s leader, Oliver Cromwell, during the so-called Commonwealth period ruled. But after his death Parliament decided to restore the monarchy if Charles I’s son and heir, Charles II agreed to restrictions on his authority.

2) James, Duke of York- James II was Charles II’s younger brother and he quickly benefited from his brother’s generosity. In 1644, Charles gave James the region between the Connecticut and Delaware Rivers, including the Hudson Valley and Long Island. James immediately organized an invasion fleet. In August, James’s warships anchored off Manhattan Island and demanded New Netherlands’s surrender. Thus James had acquired a heterogeneous possession, which he renamed New York.

3) Quakers- Quakers are members of the Society of Friends. The new, small sect rejected earthly and religious hierarchies. Quakers believed that anyone could be saved by directly receiving God’s “inner light” and that all people were equal in God’s sight. Quakers allowed anyone, male or female, to speak in meetings or become a “public friend” and travel to spread God’s word. Many did not welcome Quakers and they were very much persecuted, and some were even hanged for preaching the Quaker doctrine.

And finally in 1681, they obtained their own colony, given to them by Charles II. It was located between Maryland and New York; it was given to William Penn, one of his good friends and a prominent member of the sect.4) William Penn- William Penn was a prominent member of the Quaker sect. Penn was given land so that he could establish a colony by his good friend Charles II. He was thirty-seven years old at the time when he held the colony as a personal proprietorship, one that earns profits for his descendants until the American Revolution.

Penn offered land to all comers on liberal terms, and promised toleration of all religions. Penn’s activities and the Quaker’s attraction to his land gave rise to a migration whose magnitude equaled the Puritan exodus to New England in the 1630s5) Witchcraft accusations and trials in New England 1650-1690- The small yet densely populated New England communities experienced a new phenomenon after approximately 1650, burgeoning witchcraft accusations and trials. Most seventeenth century people believed that witches existed. They were considered allies of the devil who were thought to harness invisible spirits for good or evil purposes. A witch might engage in fortunetelling, prepare healing potions or charms, or harm others by causing the death of a child or valuable animal. Yet for some reason New England witnessed many trials of accused witches about one hundred in all before 1590.

Most of the accused were middle-aged women who had angered their neighbors. And although many were accused, few were convicted, and even fewer were executed, because judges still remained skeptical of all the charges.6) The Beaver Wars- The war with the Hurons in the 1640s initiated a series of conflicts with other Indians known as the Beaver Wars, in which the Iroquois fought to achieve control of the lucrative peltry trade. Iroquois warriors did not themselves trap beaver, instead they raided other villages in search of catches of pelts or attacked Indians from the interior as they carried furs to the European outposts. Then the Iroquois traded that for European-made blankets, knives, guns, alcohol, and other desirable items. The Iroquois thus became the center of dominance of that type of trade.

7) The Pueblo revolt of 1680- The Pueblo revolt constituted the most successful and longest-sustained Indian resistance movement in colonial North America. Years under Spanish domination, the Pueblo peoples had added Christianity to their religious beliefs while still retaining traditional rituals, engaging in syncretic practices as had Mesoamericans. But as decades passed Franciscans adopted increasingly brutal and violent tactics in order to erase all traces of the native religion, and many began placing heavy labor demands on the population.8) Bacon’s Rebellion- was an uprising in 1676 in the Virginia Colony, led by Nathaniel Bacon, a wealthy planter. It was the first rebellion in the American colonies in which discontented frontiersmen took part; a similar uprising in Maryland occurred later that year.

The uprising was a protest against Native American raids on the frontier; some historians also consider it a power play by Bacon against the Royal Governor of Virginia, William Berkeley, and his policies of favoring his own court. Their alliance disturbed the ruling class, who responded by hardening the racial caste of slavery. While the farmers did not succeed in their goal of driving Native Americans from Virginia, the rebellion did result in Berkeley's being recalled to England.9) The Atlantic Slave trade- The elaborate Atlantic economic system is commonly called the triangular trade.

The traffic of slaves from Africa to the Americas had become known as the middle passage because it constituted the middle leg of such a theoretical triangle. People and products did not move across the ocean in easily diagrammed patterns. Instead, their movements created a complicated web of exchange that inextricably tied the peoples of the Atlantic world together. The triangle worked because the Europeans would buy slaves for steel, metal, guns, and knives. They would trade the slaves to the Americas for things such as sugar, tobacco, indigo, and dyes. This trade went in a triangular pattern from Europe to Africa to the Americas.

10) The Middle Passage- The middle passage refers to the forcible passage of African people from Africa to the New World, as part of the Atlantic slave trade. Ships departed Europe for African markets with commercial goods, which were in turn traded for kidnapped Africans who were transported across the Atlantic as slaves; the enslaved Africans were then sold or traded as commodities for raw materials, which would be transported back to Europe to complete the "triangular trade".11) Mercantilism- Like other European nations, England based its commercial policy on a series of assumptions about the operations of the world’s economic system. Collectively, these assumptions are usually called mercantilism, although neither the term itself nor a unified mercantilist theory was formulated until a century later. The theory viewed the economic world as a collection of national states, whose governments actively competed for shares of a finite amount of wealth. What one nation gained, another nation automatically lost.

Each nation sought to become as economically self-sufficient as possible while maintaining a favorable balance of trade with other countries, by exporting more than in was importing.12) The Navigation Acts- The major acts passed between 1651 and 1673 established three main principles. First, only English or colonial merchants and ships could engage in trade in the colonies. Second, certain valuable American products could only be sold in the mother country or in other English colonies.

Many of these goods included, wool, sugar, tobacco, indigo, ginger, and dyes. Later the acts added rice, masts, spar, pitch, tar, and turpentine, copper, and furs to the list. Third, all foreign goods destined for sale in the colonies had to be shipped by way of England, paying English import duties. Some years later, a fourth principle was added. The colonies could not export items such as wool, clothing, hats, or iron that competed with English products. The Navigation Acts aimed at forcing American trade to center on England.

13) Rice and Indigo cultivation in South Carolina- English people knew little about the techniques of growing and processing rice. They failed at their first attempts to raise the crop, for which there was a strong demand of in Europe. Slaves imported from Africa contributed greatly to the success of producing rice in South Carolina. Many Africans were very good at raising rice; many had spent their whole lives working in rice fields.

Also, the amount of slaves held on rice farms were enormous, they were far larger than the amount of tobacco cultivators in the Chesapeake region. Rice was South Carolina’s first major cash crop. South Carolina’s second cash crop was in the production of indigo. Indigo was the only source of blue dye for the growing English textile industry, and was very much prized.

Indigo grew on high ground, and rice was planted in low-lying swamps. Rice and indigo also had different growing seasons. The two crops complemented each other. Indigo plantations flourished because it was a crop that was in great demand. These crops made South Carolina a very successful colony.14) The Glorious Revolution- The Glorious revolution was when James was replaced on the throne in late 1688 by his daughter Mary and her husband, the Dutch prince William of Orange.

When Parliament offered the throne to the Protestants William and Mary, the Glorious Revolution affirmed the supremacy of both Parliament and Protestantism. The Glorious Revolution emboldened people for revolt.15) The Salem Village witchcraft crisis- Witchcraft accusations had occurred before in the New England region, but the Salem crisis was large because almost everyone in the small village was accused of witchcraft. Before the crisis ended, 14 women and 5 men were hanged, 1 man was pressed to death with heavy stones, 54 people confessed to being witches, and more than 140 people were jailed, some for many months.

The crisis began when a group of young girls charged a group of older women who had supposedly forced them to join them in some sort of ritual thing. Many people confessed and it seemed these people were always in trouble. Witches were considered the devils allies.