AP US History (APUSH)
Advanced Placement US History aligned with the College Board CED: nine chronological periods from pre-contact Indigenous societies (1491) through the modern era (present), covering colonization, revolution, the early republic, civil war, industrialization, world wars, the Cold War, civil rights, and contemporary America.
Ämne: Historia · Nivå: Gymnasium (16–19) · 456 kort
Innehåll
- Before European contact, the Americas were home to an estimated 50-100 million people speaking hundreds of languages, organized into diverse societies ranging from small bands of hunter-gatherers to complex empires like the Aztec and Inca.
- The Three-Sister agriculture (maize, beans, squash) developed in Mesoamerica spread north and supported large settled populations across eastern North America, including the Mississippian mound-builders (c. 800-1600 CE) centered at Cahokia.
- Christopher Columbus reached the Caribbean in 1492 sponsored by Spanish monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella, initiating sustained European contact with the Americas and inaugurating the Columbian Exchange.
- The Columbian Exchange was the transatlantic transfer of plants, animals, people, diseases, and ideas between the Old and New Worlds after 1492. Old World diseases (smallpox, measles) devastated Indigenous populations, reducing them by an estimated 90% in some regions.
- The Treaty of Tordesillas (1494), brokered by the Pope, divided newly discovered lands outside Europe between Spain and Portugal along a meridian 370 leagues west of the Cape Verde islands.
- The encomienda system granted Spanish colonists the right to demand labor and tribute from Indigenous peoples in exchange for Christianizing them, functioning effectively as forced labor and contributing to Indigenous population collapse.
- The casta system in Spanish America was a racial hierarchy classifying people by ancestry: peninsulares (Spain-born) at top, then criollos (American-born Spanish), mestizos (Spanish-Indigenous), mulattos (Spanish-African), Indigenous peoples, and enslaved Africans.
- Bartolomé de las Casas, a Dominican friar, denounced Spanish abuses of Indigenous peoples in works like 'A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies' (1542), influencing the New Laws (1542) that restricted the encomienda system.
- St. Augustine, Florida (founded 1565) is the oldest continuously inhabited European-established settlement in the present-day United States, established by Spanish colonists under Pedro Menéndez de Avilés.
- Pueblo peoples of the Southwest (Hopi, Zuni, Acoma) lived in permanent adobe and stone villages, irrigated arid land, and developed complex matrilineal societies long before Spanish contact in the 1540s.
- The Iroquois Confederacy (Haudenosaunee) united five nations — Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca — under the Great Law of Peace c. 1450-1600, creating a sophisticated political alliance later cited as an influence on the US federal system.
- Joint-stock companies pooled investor capital to finance colonial ventures while limiting individual risk, enabling private English colonization at Jamestown (Virginia Company, 1607) and Plymouth (Plymouth Company).
- Jamestown, founded 1607 in Virginia, was the first permanent English settlement in North America. Early years saw starvation and conflict with the Powhatan Confederacy; John Rolfe's tobacco cultivation (1612) made it economically viable.
- The headright system in Virginia granted 50 acres of land to anyone who paid passage for a settler or indentured servant. It concentrated land in the hands of wealthy planters and fueled demand for indentured labor.
- The House of Burgesses, established 1619 in Virginia, was the first elected legislative assembly in English North America. Combined with arrival of the first enslaved Africans the same year, 1619 is a pivotal year for the colonial era.
- The Mayflower Compact (1620), signed by Pilgrim leaders aboard the Mayflower off Cape Cod, established a self-governing covenant for the Plymouth Colony and is an early example of consent-based government in the colonies.
- The Massachusetts Bay Colony, founded 1630 by Puritans under John Winthrop, became a 'city upon a hill' as a Puritan model society. It maintained a strict religious orthodoxy and the Congregational Church.
- Roger Williams, banished from Massachusetts Bay for advocating separation of church and state and fair dealing with Native Americans, founded Rhode Island (1636) as a haven of religious tolerance.
- Anne Hutchinson was banished from Massachusetts Bay in 1638 for antinomianism — teaching that salvation came through individual grace, not adherence to the established church — and for challenging clerical and gender hierarchies.
- The Pequot War (1636-1638) and King Philip's (Metacom's) War (1675-1676) were devastating conflicts between New England colonists and Indigenous nations. King Philip's War caused proportionally one of the highest casualty rates in American history.
- Bacon's Rebellion (1676) in Virginia was an uprising of frontier settlers and indentured servants (both white and Black) led by Nathaniel Bacon against Governor William Berkeley. It accelerated the colonial shift from indentured servitude to chattel slavery.
- The Middle Passage was the brutal transatlantic voyage that brought approximately 12.5 million enslaved Africans to the Americas between the 1500s and 1800s. Roughly 388,000 came directly to mainland North America; about 15% died at sea.
- The Stono Rebellion (1739) in South Carolina was the largest slave uprising in the 13 colonies before the Revolution. Roughly 20 enslaved Africans killed white colonists and tried to flee to Spanish Florida; harsh slave codes followed.
- Mercantilism was the dominant European economic theory in colonial America: colonies existed to enrich the mother country by supplying raw materials and consuming finished goods. Britain enforced it through the Navigation Acts (1651-1673).
- Salutary neglect describes Britain's loose enforcement of trade laws on the American colonies from c. 1690 to 1763, which allowed colonial economies, assemblies, and a degree of self-rule to flourish.
- The Great Awakening (c. 1730s-1740s) was a wave of religious revivals led by preachers like Jonathan Edwards ('Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God') and George Whitefield. It emphasized personal conversion and weakened established churches.
- The Enlightenment brought to colonial America by figures like Benjamin Franklin emphasized reason, natural rights, and the social contract — ideas drawn from Locke, Montesquieu, and Rousseau — and laid intellectual groundwork for the Revolution.
- The French and Indian War (1754-1763), the North American theater of the global Seven Years' War, ended with British victory and the Treaty of Paris (1763). France ceded Canada and lands east of the Mississippi to Britain.
- The Proclamation of 1763 forbade colonial settlement west of the Appalachian Mountains, intended to stabilize relations with Native Americans after Pontiac's Rebellion. Colonists resented it as restriction on westward expansion.
- The Stamp Act (1765) was Britain's first direct tax on the American colonies, requiring stamps on all printed material. Colonists protested with 'no taxation without representation' and the act was repealed in 1766.
- The Boston Massacre (March 5, 1770) saw British soldiers fire on a Boston crowd, killing five colonists including Crispus Attucks. Patriot leaders, especially Paul Revere's engraving and Samuel Adams, used it as propaganda.
- The Boston Tea Party (December 16, 1773) saw Sons of Liberty, disguised as Mohawks, dump 342 chests of British East India Company tea into Boston Harbor to protest the Tea Act. Britain responded with the Coercive (Intolerable) Acts.
- The First Continental Congress (September 1774) convened delegates from 12 colonies in Philadelphia to coordinate resistance to the Intolerable Acts, agreeing on a boycott of British goods and committees of inspection.
- Lexington and Concord (April 19, 1775) marked the start of armed conflict in the American Revolution. British troops attempting to seize colonial arms exchanged fire with militia in the 'shot heard 'round the world.'
- Thomas Paine's pamphlet 'Common Sense' (January 1776) sold ~150,000 copies in months, arguing in plain language for independence from Britain and republican government. It transformed public opinion in favor of independence.
- The Declaration of Independence (July 4, 1776), drafted primarily by Thomas Jefferson, drew on Lockean natural rights, asserted that 'all men are created equal' with rights to 'Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,' and listed grievances against George III.
- The Battle of Saratoga (October 1777) was the decisive turning point of the Revolution. American victory persuaded France to ally formally with the US (Treaty of Alliance, 1778), bringing crucial military and financial aid.
- The Treaty of Paris (1783) ended the Revolution: Britain recognized US independence, set the western boundary at the Mississippi, granted fishing rights off Newfoundland, and required honoring of debts owed British creditors.
- The Articles of Confederation (ratified 1781) were the first US national framework. Weaknesses included no power to tax, no executive, no national court, no commercial regulation, and unanimous consent required for amendment.
- The Northwest Ordinance (1787) under the Articles set rules for organizing territories north of the Ohio River into states, prohibited slavery in the region, guaranteed civil liberties, and required public support for education.
- Shays' Rebellion (1786-1787) was an uprising of indebted Massachusetts farmers led by Daniel Shays, demanding tax relief and an end to debtor's prison. It exposed weaknesses of the Articles and spurred calls for stronger central government.
- The Constitutional Convention (Philadelphia, summer 1787) drafted the US Constitution. The Great Compromise resolved the dispute over representation by creating a bicameral Congress: House by population, Senate equal per state.
- The Three-Fifths Compromise (1787) counted each enslaved person as three-fifths of a person for purposes of representation and direct taxation, boosting Southern political power in the House of Representatives.
- The Federalist Papers (1787-1788), 85 essays by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay under the pen name 'Publius', argued for ratifying the Constitution. Federalist No. 10 (Madison) addressed the problem of factions.
- The Bill of Rights, ratified December 1791, comprises the first ten amendments to the Constitution. It was added at the insistence of Anti-Federalists to safeguard individual rights against federal overreach.
- Hamilton's financial program as Treasury Secretary (1790s) included assumption of state debts, a national bank, a tariff, and excise taxes — a strong-central-government vision opposed by Jefferson and Madison.
- The first political parties emerged in the 1790s: Federalists (Hamilton, Adams) favored strong central government, commerce, pro-British foreign policy. Democratic-Republicans (Jefferson, Madison) favored states' rights, agrarianism, pro-French sympathy.
- Washington's Farewell Address (1796) warned the nation against permanent foreign alliances and the dangers of political parties (factions). It shaped US foreign policy of avoidance of entangling alliances into the 20th century.
- The Alien and Sedition Acts (1798) under President John Adams allowed deportation of foreigners and criminalized 'false, scandalous, malicious' writings against the government. Critics saw them as Federalist attacks on Democratic-Republican press.
- The Louisiana Purchase (1803), bought from Napoleon for $15 million, doubled the size of the United States. President Jefferson, a strict constructionist, set aside concerns about constitutional authority to make the deal.