Unit 2: 1607-1754

Four empires planted colonies in North America. The English colonies developed into three regions with different labor systems, trade tied them to an Atlantic economy, and new ideas about liberty began to strain against British control. This guide covers Topics 2.2 through 2.7.

2.2 European Colonization

Four European powers colonized North America, and their projects looked nothing alike. Spain built missions and labor systems in the Southwest and Florida. France built trade and alliances, culminating in the Great Peace of Montreal of 1701, a treaty conference with some 1,300 Indigenous participants that shows how central diplomacy was to the French model. The Dutch built New Netherland through patroonships, granting landholders manorial rights to populate the colony. England built the colonies that would become the United States, and the rest of this unit follows them.

Jamestown came first and nearly failed. John Smith's 1624 Generall Historie describes the founding of Jamestown in 1608, his encounters with the Powhatan leader Powhatan, and the famous rescue story involving Pocahontas. The account is useful, but it also needs to be read carefully because Smith wrote to promote the colony. A generation later, John Winthrop's 1630 sermon A Model of Christian Charity, preached to migrants bound for Massachusetts Bay, pictured New England as a city on a hill bound in covenant with God. Smith focused on survival at Jamestown, while Winthrop focused on the religious purpose of Massachusetts Bay.

Spanish institutions reached beyond the missions. The Genizaros were detribalized Indigenous people, many of them captives ransomed or taken in war, who lived as servants and laborers within Spanish New Mexico and formed their own communities, like the pueblo at Abiquiu. The repartimiento was a rotating forced-labor draft that assigned Indigenous workers to Spanish enterprises; it appears in the record through a governor's petition asking the crown to enlarge his share. The surviving sources often name these institutions without explaining how they worked. They show that coerced labor was part of colonial society, even when the details are incomplete.

Keeping the four empires distinct will help you answer comparison questions. Spain's Southwest and Florida project ran on missions and labor institutions. They included the Genizaros incorporated into colonial New Mexico, known through their pueblo at Abiquiu, and the repartimiento, a labor and tribute institution visible in a governor's petition to enlarge his share. The surviving sources often name these institutions without explaining them fully. France's model was trade and diplomacy, and it culminated in the Great Peace of Montreal in 1701, a treaty conference with some 1,300 Indigenous participants. The Dutch ran New Netherland through patroonships, granting manorial rights to landholders like Kiliaen van Rensselaer, whose 1630 instructions to his agent at Fort Orange show the system working. The rest of this unit follows England's settler colonies. The English sources also need to be read carefully. John Smith's 1624 Generall Historie of Jamestown promotes the colony, so his Pocahontas rescue story serves that purpose. John Winthrop's 1630 sermon A Model of Christian Charity presented New England as a city on a hill in covenant with God and emphasized religious mission rather than survival.

2.3 The Regions of British Colonies

The English colonies developed into three regions. Each region's economy created a demand for a particular kind of labor, and those labor systems helped shape its society.

The Chesapeake colonies, around the bay and including North Carolina, grew rich exporting tobacco, a labor-intensive cash crop. The first workers were indentured servants, mostly white men bound by contract, and when their numbers fell short, planters turned to enslaved Africans. That order matters because it is one of the most tested facts in the unit. Plantation economies also defined the Southern Atlantic coast colonies and the British West Indies, where long growing seasons supported rice and sugar, enslaved Africans often formed the population majority, and enslaved communities built their own cultural and religious autonomy.

The New England colonies were settled by Puritans and organized around small towns, family farms, and a mixed economy of agriculture and commerce. Distance and British inattention let them build self-governing institutions, with participatory town meetings that gave ordinary colonists direct experience in government. The Middle colonies ran a flourishing export economy on cereal crops, which attracted a wide range of European migrants and produced the most diverse and tolerant societies, including Quakers in Pennsylvania and French Huguenots who fled after Louis XIV repealed the Edict of Nantes in 1685.

The regions shared some institutions. Virginia's House of Burgesses and the Massachusetts General Court were elected assemblies that trained colonists in representative government. On rice plantations, the task system gave enslaved workers more control over their own time than the gang labor of the Chesapeake. Enslaved people kept culture alive through practices like the ring shout, a devotional dance blending African and Christian elements, and through religions such as Vodun, recorded among enslaved Haitians.

The shift from indentured servants to enslaved Africans happened for specific reasons. Indentured servants, mostly white men bound by contract, cultivated the first Chesapeake tobacco. Three pressures brought that period to an end. Servants became harder to obtain, abundant land made labor the scarce factor, and European demand for colonial goods rose. Planters turned to enslaved Africans, and a temporary contract system hardened into a permanent racial one. Section 2.6 covers the laws that made slavery hereditary, which were part of the same change. The other regions followed different patterns. New England's mixed economy of small farms and commerce ran on family labor, so the sequence never started there. The Middle colonies' cereal export economy attracted free European migrants instead, producing diversity and tolerance. In each region, the main crops influenced the labor system, and the labor system influenced the kind of society that developed. Unit 1 showed a similar connection between environment and society in the spread of maize agriculture.

The regions also shared institutions that help explain how colonists later responded to British control. Virginia's House of Burgesses and the Massachusetts General Court trained colonists in elected, representative government, and New England's participatory town meetings gave ordinary colonists direct experience of rule. The details differed on plantations. The task system organizing South Carolina rice cultivation gave enslaved workers more control over their own time than the Chesapeake's gang labor, a distinction that matters because it bears on the question of autonomy under slavery. Enslaved communities also maintained cultural practices. The ring shout blended African and Christian devotion, and Vodun was practiced among enslaved Haitians. Both are examples of the religious autonomy enslaved communities maintained.

2.4 Transatlantic Trade

The colonies did not trade with each other so much as with an ocean. The Atlantic economy moved goods, and enslaved Africans and American Indians, through extensive trade networks linking Europe, Africa, and the Americas. Colonial economies organized themselves around producing commodities Europe valued and finding new sources of labor to produce them.

Britain managed this system through mercantilism, which placed the colonies in a coherent, hierarchical imperial structure that served British trade. The Navigation Acts were the laws that regulated colonial trade toward that end. For a long stretch, though, enforcement was lax. Salutary neglect, Britain's erratic enforcement of its own policies, let the colonies develop the unusually democratic self-governing institutions described in the last section. Some colonists filled the gap with smuggling.

Trade with Europeans carried a cost beyond goods. Epidemic diseases spread through continuing trade into Indigenous communities and caused radical demographic shifts, continuing the devastation that began in Unit 1.

Resistance also appeared when Britain tried to enforce its authority more directly. In 1676 Nathaniel Bacon led Bacon's Rebellion against Virginia governor William Berkeley, whose trade monopoly with Indigenous communities and whose handling of frontier conflict enraged the settlers. The rebellion drove Berkeley from the capital. A decade later, news that Parliament had driven the Catholic James II from the throne reached Boston, and colonists overthrew his appointed governor Edmund Andros in the Boston Revolt of 1689. Andros had run the Dominion of New England, the centralized royal government imposed in 1685. In both cases, colonists who had experience governing themselves resisted efforts to tighten imperial control.

It helps to separate the policy from how it was enforced. Britain intended the Navigation Acts to place colonial trade within an imperial system that served British interests. In practice, enforcement was lax and erratic, a pattern called salutary neglect. Colonists used that gap to smuggle goods and build the unusually democratic self-governing institutions that distance allowed. Exam questions often focus on the difference between the policy and its enforcement. When Britain later tried to tighten control, colonists treated enforcement as an attack on rights they believed were theirs.

Bacon's Rebellion and the Boston Revolt of 1689 both show colonists resisting imperial authority long before the Revolution. In 1676 Nathaniel Bacon rose against Virginia governor William Berkeley, enraged by Berkeley's trade monopoly with Indigenous communities and his handling of frontier conflict, and drove Berkeley from Jamestown. Thirteen years later, Bostonians overthrew Edmund Andros, the royal governor James II had imposed over the Dominion of New England in 1685, after word arrived that Parliament had driven the Catholic king from the throne. Although they happened in different colonies and decades, both involved colonists with self-government experience resisting tighter imperial control. These revolts show that resistance to imperial control had precedents long before the Revolution.

2.5 Interactions Between American Indians and Europeans

Contact between Europeans and Indigenous peoples in this period included cooperation and war, and exam questions can ask about either. Trade partnerships, military alliances, and diplomacy sat alongside land seizures and armed conflict, often between the same parties.

Two conflicts are the main examples of military conflict. Metacom's War, also called King Philip's War, was the 1675 to 1676 New England confrontation between British colonists and American Indians over land, resources, and political boundaries. The war followed the trial and execution of three Wampanoag men for the murder of the informer John Sassamon, after which the Wampanoag sachem Metacom, called King Philip by the English, led a coalition that burned frontier towns across Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut. It was the costliest war in American history relative to population, and it ended with Metacom's death in August 1676, though fighting sputtered on in the north into 1678. In the Southwest, the Pueblo Revolt of 1680 was Indigenous resistance to Spanish colonizing efforts, led by the Tewa religious leader Pope and coordinated across the Pueblo towns of New Mexico. The rebels killed hundreds of colonists and drove the Spanish all the way to El Paso, the most complete Indigenous victory of the colonial era, and when the Spanish reconquered New Mexico in the 1690s they governed with a lighter hand, accommodating aspects of Pueblo culture. The CED does not give a date for either conflict. It focuses on what the conflicts were about and what they show about land and boundary pressure in New England and Spanish colonial demands in the Southwest. The dates help place the conflicts, but the exam focus is on their causes and meaning.

Diplomacy had its own landmarks. The Covenant Chain alliance between the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Confederacy and British colonial governors was renewed at a 1722 conference. In Pennsylvania, the Walking Purchase of 1737 was a different kind of encounter. Officials stretched a 1686 agreement, land a man could walk in a day and a half, into a land grab from the Delaware. In the 1740s and 1750s a Spanish-Ute alliance settled the Southwest after earlier Indigenous alliances fractured. And in the south, South Carolina's Colonel James Moore used Queen Anne's War as cover for 1704 raids on Florida missions to enslave Indigenous people.

The English record of early Virginia shows the turn from contact to conflict. Opechancanough, a Powhatan leader, first appears in John Smith's 1608 account showing interest in English technology and seeking alliance, then in the Virginia Company's 1622 report on the Powhatan Confederacy's attack on the colony's settlements. Together, the documents show a relationship that changed from attempted alliance to armed conflict.

The two Opechancanough documents show why you should compare sources instead of relying on one account. John Smith's 1608 account shows the Powhatan leader interested in English technology and seeking alliance. The Virginia Company's 1622 report shows the Powhatan Confederacy attacking the colony's settlements. The documents describe the same leader in different ways, and the difference comes from their dates, authors, and purposes. One source should not be treated as a complete account of the relationship. The Walking Purchase of 1737 shows a similar problem in a European agreement. Pennsylvania officials stretched a 1686 agreement, the land a man could walk in a day and a half, into a grab of Delaware land. Diplomacy lasted longer where the parties' interests overlapped. The Covenant Chain between the Haudenosaunee Confederacy and British governors was renewed at a 1722 conference, and a Spanish-Ute alliance settled the Southwest in the 1740s and 1750s. The period included cooperation, broken agreements, and war.

2.6 Slavery in the British Colonies

The Atlantic slave trade carried enslaved Africans to the British colonies and the wider Americas, with the great majority sent to the West Indies. Every British colony participated to some degree, driven by abundant land, rising European demand for colonial goods, and the shortage of indentured servants. In many southern colonies the result was chattel slavery, a labor system that treated enslaved people as property.

Colonial laws established slavery and made it permanent. New colonial statutes created a strict racial system that prohibited interracial relationships and defined the descendants of African American mothers as black and enslaved in perpetuity. Several laws show how this happened. Maryland's 1664 law described enslavement as permanent, Virginia's 1691 law prohibited intermarriage, and New York's 1702 slave code restricted assembly, testimony, and movement while punishing those who sheltered fugitives. Status passed from an enslaved mother to her children and continued through later generations.

Enslaved people resisted by every means available, overt and covert. The record includes uprisings and escapes, including the Stono Rebellion in South Carolina, led by a man named Cato and preserved in his family's oral history; the New York Conspiracy of 1741, known through a judge's account of the trials; the First Maroon War in Jamaica, where Africans who escaped slavery fought Britain to a treaty recognizing their freedom in 1739; and Fort Mose in Florida, the 1738 Spanish town that welcomed Black fugitives from English colonies. Resistance also included maintaining cultural practices. The Gullah culture of the Carolinas and Georgia blended West African practices into new forms, and sweetgrass baskets carried West African weaving and rice knowledge into the fields.

The legal architecture of slavery was built statute by statute, and the exam tests it as a process. Maryland's 1664 anti-amalgamation law was among the first in North America to describe enslavement as a permanent condition. Virginia's 1691 law, titled as an act for suppressing outlying slaves, empowered authorities to imprison runaways and illegalized interracial sexual relations and marriage. New York's 1702 slave code legalized physical punishment, restricted enslaved people's assembly, testimony, and movement, and punished white people who sheltered fugitives. Taken together, these laws made status pass through the mother, so the descendants of African American mothers were defined as black and enslaved in perpetuity. Slavery became hereditary and racial through legislation rather than by accident.

Resistance took several forms, including cultural survival, flight, and open revolt. Culture survived in Gullah communities of the Carolinas and Georgia, where West African instruments, naming patterns, and weaving endured, and in sweetgrass baskets that carried West African rice knowledge into the fields. Some enslaved people escaped to Fort Mose, the 1738 Spanish town two miles north of St. Augustine, which welcomed Black fugitives from the English colonies. Open revolt flared in the Stono Rebellion led by Cato, in the First Maroon War that ended with Britain's 1739 treaty recognizing maroon freedom in Jamaica, and in the New York Conspiracy of 1741. The available CED sources for Stono and the 1741 conspiracy are limited. Stono is preserved through Cato family oral history, and the conspiracy is preserved through a judge's account. The sources do not provide many details, but they do show that resistance continued.

2.7 Colonial Society and Culture

By the mid-1700s, the colonies were adopting more English cultural and institutional patterns while also developing stronger local institutions. Anglicization is the name for the colonies growing more English in culture and institutions. Intercolonial commerce, a transatlantic print culture that carried newspapers like the Boston News-Letter, founded by Boston postmaster John Campbell, across the ocean, and the spread of Protestant evangelicalism all tied the colonies to English models while building autonomous political communities.

Two movements changed colonial ideas. The First Great Awakening was a wave of Protestant revivalism, with Jonathan Edwards preaching Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God in 1741 and the itinerant George Whitefield drawing crowds to open-air sermons. Ordinary people took part as well. A farm woman's diary records her embrace of the revival after hearing Whitefield. The Enlightenment brought European ideas about reason, rights, and government, which fed the colonists' evolving ideas of liberty. Together, the two movements increased pluralism, the colonies' religious and ethnic diversity, and sharpened the language of resistance to imperial control.

Liberty had its legal landmarks. The Maryland Toleration Act of 1649 promised religious freedom to Christians. The Concessions and Agreements of West New Jersey of 1676, signed by more than 150 men including William Penn, guaranteed religious freedom as a civil liberty. Roger Williams founded Rhode Island on the principle and argued for it in print. Penn's 1701 Pennsylvania Charter of Privileges paired religious freedom with representative government. And when New York printer John Peter Zenger stood trial in 1735, his lawyer Andrew Hamilton argued that publishing the truth could not be libel, advancing freedom of the press.

There were also direct clashes over imperial control. The Knowles Riot of 1747 erupted in Boston when a British admiral ordered the impressment of sailors into forced naval service. Colonists objected to a distant authority imposing a local cost, a complaint that appeared again during the imperial crisis in Unit 3.

The First Great Awakening and the Enlightenment influenced colonial ideas of liberty in different ways. Through Jonathan Edwards preaching Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God in 1741, George Whitefield drawing crowds to open-air sermons, and ordinary hearers like the farm diarist Hannah Heaton embracing revival, the First Great Awakening challenged religious authority from below and spread Protestant evangelicalism through the colonies. The Enlightenment challenged political authority with ideas about reason, rights, and government. Both enhanced pluralism and both fed the colonists' evolving ideas of liberty, which is why the exam pairs them, but they are different causes and the exam tests the difference. Legal protections for religious freedom and representative government also developed during the century. They included the Maryland Toleration Act of 1649 promising religious freedom to Christians, the West New Jersey Concessions of 1676 signed by more than 150 men including William Penn, Roger Williams's Rhode Island, Penn's 1701 Charter of Privileges pairing religious freedom with representative government, and John Peter Zenger's 1735 trial, where Andrew Hamilton argued that publishing the truth could not be libel. These documents show that colonists were using the language of rights long before independence.

Your 20-minute plan for this unit

• Minutes 0-5. Skim the guide once, then open the Unit 2 flashcards in Rycal and run the Core cards first, region by region, covering Chesapeake, New England, Middle, and Southern Atlantic. Say the labor system for each before you flip.
• Minutes 5-12. Use one Brain Dump prompt and trace how a tobacco leaf connects Chesapeake planters, the Atlantic economy, mercantilism, and the shift from indentured servants to enslaved Africans. Then check the guide for links you missed.
• Minutes 12-18. Work the AP-style questions for Unit 2 in Rycal. Read every explanation, even for questions you answered correctly, because the wrong options show common ways to misread the material.
• Minutes 18-20. Pick an FRQ drill and outline a comparison of two colonial regions, labor systems included. Include one thesis, one similarity, and one difference.

Where students lose points

The table below lists mistakes that appear often in answers about this unit and explains how to correct them.

Practice Questions

Original questions written for this guide in the style of the AP exam. Try each question before reading the answers and explanations that follow.

Answer Key

1. C. C is correct because tobacco was the labor-intensive cash crop of the Chesapeake, first grown by white indentured servants and later by enslaved Africans, and that shift is central to the region's labor history. A uses the wrong labor system because the task system organized South Carolina rice cultivation, not Chesapeake tobacco. B reverses the cause because a shortage of indentured servants pushed planters toward enslaved African labor, not away from it. D assigns tobacco plantations to New England, but New England ran a mixed economy of small farms, towns, and commerce.

2. B. B is correct because both the revivalist preaching of the Great Awakening and Enlightenment political thought fed the colonists' developing ideas of liberty and their resistance to imperial control. A reverses the pattern because salutary neglect let self-government grow, and resistance flared when Britain ended the neglect and enforced control. C confuses the mechanism because mercantilism was the policy of folding the colonies into Britain's trade hierarchy, and colonists resisted it, sometimes by smuggling. D misplaces the institution because town meetings and assemblies were colonial self-government, not imperial enforcement.

If you missed either question, make a flashcard for the distinction you got wrong and drill it in Rycal spaced over several days. Rereading the explanation once will not fix the mix-up.

Six questions to answer without looking

Say each answer out loud or write it down before checking the guide. If you look first, you are mostly recognizing the words on the page instead of recalling the ideas.

1. Name the three colonial regions and the labor system that defined each.
2. What was salutary neglect, and why did its end matter more than its existence?
3. Explain the sequence from indentured servants to enslaved Africans in the Chesapeake.
4. Name two Indigenous-European conflicts and two Indigenous-European alliances from this period.
5. How did colonial laws turn slavery into a permanent, inherited condition?
6. What is Anglicization, and what two movements of ideas fed colonial pluralism?

Any answer you could not say out loud goes into the Unit 2 flashcards in Rycal. Add the card now and let the spaced reviews bring it back over the next several days.

Key terms for this unit

Genízaros, Repartimiento, Great Peace of Montréal, Patroonships, John Smith, John Winthrop, Chesapeake colonies, Indentured servants, New England colonies, Puritans, Middle colonies, Southern Atlantic coast colonies and British West Indies, Participatory town meetings, Self-governing institutions, Plantation economies, Tobacco, Cash crops, Huguenots, Edict of Nantes, Louis XIV, Quakers, Ring shout, Task system, Vodun, House of Burgesses, Massachusetts General Court, Atlantic economy, Mercantilism, Epidemic diseases, Navigation Acts, Salutary neglect, Bacon's Rebellion, Nathaniel Bacon, William Berkeley, Boston Revolt of 1689, Edmund Andros, Dominion of New England, James II, Metacom's War (King Philip's War), Pueblo Revolt, Opechancanough, Powhatan Confederacy, Queen Anne's War, Walking Purchase, Covenant Chain, Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Confederacy, Spanish-Ute Alliance, Atlantic slave trade, Chattel slavery, Strict racial system, Maryland Anti-Amalgamation Law of 1664, New York Slave Code of 1702, Virginia anti-intermarriage law of 1691, First Maroon War, Fort Mose, New York Conspiracy of 1741, Stono Rebellion, Gullah, Sweetgrass baskets, First Great Awakening, Enlightenment, Anglicization, Protestant evangelicalism, Transatlantic print culture, Pluralism, Maryland Toleration Act of 1649, Concessions and Agreements of West New Jersey, Roger Williams, Boston News-Letter, John Campbell, Jonathan Edwards, George Whitefield, Hannah Heaton, William Penn, Pennsylvania Charter of Privileges, Knowles Riot, John Peter Zenger, Andrew Hamilton.

Questions students ask about Unit 2

How is the APUSH exam structured?

Section I: 55 multiple-choice questions in 55 minutes (40% of the score), then 3 short-answer questions in 40 minutes (20%). Starting with the May 2027 exam, all 3 short-answer questions are required, no choosing, and each includes a specified kind of source. Section II: one document-based question with 7 documents in 60 minutes, including a 15-minute reading period (25%); the 2027 DBQ draws evidence from a wider stretch of the course. Then one long essay in 40 minutes (15%), a single required prompt instead of a choice of three. Total exam time is 3 hours 15 minutes.

How much of the exam is Unit 2?

Unit 2 is 6 to 8 percent of the AP exam. It is also important in essays because the colonial regions, labor systems, and ideas of liberty tested here became causes of the Revolution in Unit 3.

Can I use the term triangular trade on the exam?

Use the framework's terms when you answer. The triangular trade was a three-legged circuit in the Atlantic slave economy. Ships carried manufactured goods from Europe to Africa, enslaved Africans across the Atlantic to the Americas, and plantation goods back to Europe. The Middle Passage was the middle leg, the ocean crossing on which enslaved people were packed into ships under horrific conditions, with disease and death as routine. The CED describes extensive trade networks linking Europe, Africa, and the Americas but never names triangular trade or the Middle Passage in this unit, so describe the Atlantic economy instead and you match the exam's language.

Which wars do I need to know for Native-European conflict in this period?

Metacom's War (King Philip's War), the 1675 to 1676 New England war in which the Wampanoag sachem Metacom led a coalition against colonial expansion, ending with his death and a staggering death toll on both sides. And the Pueblo Revolt of 1680, in which Pope led the Pueblo towns of New Mexico in driving the Spanish out entirely, the most complete Indigenous victory of the colonial era. Both were Indigenous military conflicts over land, resources, and boundaries. The CED does not date either, so on the exam describe what they were about in the CED's terms; the dates and the stories are how you remember the pattern.

Is the Great Awakening the same thing as the Enlightenment?

Not exactly. The First Great Awakening was Protestant revivalism with preachers like Edwards and Whitefield. The Enlightenment was a movement of ideas about reason and liberty. Both increased pluralism and fed colonial resistance, but they are different causes.

What is the relationship between salutary neglect and the Navigation Acts?

Salutary neglect was Britain's lax enforcement of its trade laws, which let the colonies build self-governing institutions. The Navigation Acts were the trade laws themselves. The two ideas are connected. While enforcement was lax, colonists had room to govern themselves. When Britain enforced the laws more strictly, colonists resisted.

Why does the guide tell fuller stories than the CED's bare terms?

The stories give you a concrete way to remember the patterns. The CED is specific about what it requires. Many of this unit's famous details, Bacon's Rebellion, the Boston Revolt, Stono, the First Maroon War, are optional-source examples, which the CED says are not required course content, and it gives no dates for Metacom's War or the Pueblo Revolt and never names triangular trade or the Middle Passage here. This guide tells fuller stories behind those terms so the patterns are easier to remember. The main patterns are resistance to imperial control, the construction of slavery, and Native-European conflict. The exam still tests the concepts in the CED's own terms, so use the stories to remember the material and use the CED's terms in your answers.

Where to go next

Turn every missed item from the practice questions and the recall checks into a flashcard and drill those cards spaced out over several days rather than in one sitting. In Rycal, use the Unit 2 flashcards under AP U.S. History. The deck covers the terms used in this guide, and the Unit 2 practice questions in Rycal target the same traps named in the trap boxes and in Where students lose points.