APUSH Period 2: 1607–1754

Colonization involved competing empires and Native nations

English, French, Dutch, and Spanish colonization differed in settlement density, economic priorities, missionary activity, and relationships with Native peoples. French fur trading often depended on Native commercial and diplomatic partnerships, while substantial English settler populations increased pressure on land. These are patterns, not absolute rules: trade and conflict appeared within multiple empires.

Native nations pursued strategies within this competition rather than functioning as one unified bloc. Alliances could shift as groups sought security, trade, or advantages over rivals. When a question asks about European competition, include Indigenous decisions in the explanation. A treaty or trading relationship does not imply equality of power or permanent cooperation.

Three British regional patterns

New England’s economy combined farms, maritime trade, fishing, crafts, and shipbuilding. Towns and religious communities shaped settlement, though inhabitants did not all share identical beliefs. The middle colonies supported commercial agriculture and port cities, with greater ethnic and religious diversity. The Chesapeake and parts of the Lower South developed export-oriented plantation agriculture using labor under coercive systems.

Climate and geography influenced crops, but institutions and markets also mattered. Tobacco profitability, English demand, land availability, and labor policy together help explain the Chesapeake. Rice production in the Lowcountry drew on the agricultural knowledge and coerced labor of enslaved Africans. Avoid reducing regional history to “the North was free and the South was enslaved”: slavery existed in northern colonies and Atlantic commerce connected the regions.

From indenture toward racial slavery

Indentured servants worked for specified terms under restrictive contracts; enslaved people faced a system that increasingly made bondage lifelong, hereditary, and racialized. Colonial laws hardened those distinctions over the seventeenth century. Changes in labor supply, plantation expansion, the Atlantic slave trade, and planter interests contributed to the growth of slavery.

Bacon’s Rebellion in 1676 exposed tensions involving frontier settlers, the colonial elite, and warfare against Native peoples. It belongs in an explanation of colonial instability, but it should not become a single-cause story claiming that one rebellion created slavery. The system had already been developing and continued to change afterward. Distinguish an event that exposed tensions from a complete explanation of a long-term transformation.

People resisted and created communities

Enslaved Africans and their descendants resisted through escape, work resistance, preservation of family and cultural practices, and organized revolt. The Stono Rebellion of 1739 in South Carolina illustrates open resistance and the intensification of colonial controls afterward. Resistance did not require immediate success to demonstrate that coercion was contested.

Conflicts such as King Philip’s War in New England and the Pueblo Revolt against Spanish rule reveal different Native responses to colonial intrusion. The Pueblo Revolt took place in 1680, within Period 2 even though Spanish colonization began earlier. Read a colonial description of resistance with attention to the author’s interest in justifying punishment or territorial expansion.

Religion, ideas, and self-government

The First Great Awakening challenged some established religious authorities through evangelical preaching and an emphasis on individual religious experience. The Enlightenment emphasized reason and inquiry. These movements could overlap, but they were not the same movement and did not automatically produce political independence. Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield are useful evidence for revivalism; use political arguments and institutions when discussing political authority.

Colonial assemblies gave some colonists experience with representative government, but participation was limited by property, race, gender, and local rules. Puritan settlements were not models of modern religious pluralism. Dissenters such as Roger Williams challenged aspects of religious establishment. Explain the difference between a community’s pursuit of its own religious freedom and its willingness to extend freedom to others.

Mercantilism and the road to imperial conflict

British trade rules sought to organize colonial commerce for imperial advantage. Navigation Acts regulated trade and shipping, while uneven enforcement left colonists room to develop local practices and evade restrictions. “Salutary neglect” describes comparatively loose oversight in some contexts, not an absence of British law or authority.

By 1754, competition for North America—including the Ohio Valley—connected colonial, imperial, and Native interests. The French and Indian War opens Period 3. A good continuity/change claim might argue that imperial trade connections deepened while colonial political habits created expectations that later enforcement policies would challenge. Do not write as if colonists in 1700 already knew a revolution was inevitable.

Key developments

1. 1607 · Jamestown

   Conditions and causes: English commercial colonization

   Consequences: Tobacco and land expansion reshape the Chesapeake

2. 1620–1630 · Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay

   Conditions and causes: Religious goals and migration

   Consequences: Distinct New England settlements develop

3. 1676 · Bacon’s Rebellion

   Conditions and causes: Frontier conflict and colonial power struggles

   Consequences: Instability exposes planter and settler tensions

4. 1680 · Pueblo Revolt

   Conditions and causes: Spanish coercion and religious suppression

   Consequences: Pueblo forces expel Spanish rule temporarily

5. 1730s–1740s · First Great Awakening

   Conditions and causes: Evangelical challenges to established worship

   Consequences: Religious authority and participation are debated

6. 1754 · French and Indian War begins

   Conditions and causes: Imperial and local competition over territory

   Consequences: Wartime alliances set up a new imperial settlement