Transcript COLONIALISM

COLONIALISM
NOTES
Key Terms
Magna Carta (1215 England) – english document that
limited the power of government (1st example of limited
gov’t)
2. Parliament = Britain’s Congress (legislative body)
3. Prime Minister = Britain’s President
4. Mercantilism – colonial economic system where one country
exploits a territory to make large profit (big bully system)
5. Proclomation of 1763 – an attempt to prevent westward
expansion of the colonies
6. Northwest ordinance (1787) – the plan used for adding new
states to the west of the colonies
7. Plantations – large southern farming estates (slave labor)
1.
13 colonies
A.
B.
Refer to map
3 colonial regions
1. New England colonies
a. ship building, shipping and trade
2. Middle colonies
3. Southern colonies
a. Agrarian – means they farmed for a living;
plantations and slaves
b. staple crop is tobacco
I. Our first governments in America
Jamestown – House of Burgesses
1. representative democracy – 22 elected men to
represent Jamestown colony
B. Plymouth – Mayflower Compact
1. Direct Democracy – all 41 males participated in
town meetings to rule Plymouth colony
**these are the earliest form of democracy in
American history
A.
II. British laws and taxes that made us
MAD!
A. Navigation Act – law that said colonies could only
trade with Britain
B. Stamp Act – tax on stamps
- “taxation without representation” – having to pay
taxes without voting rights or representation
C. Intolerable Act – allowed British soldiers to search
and even take people’s homes.
D. Townshend Act – tax on imports such as glass or tea
III. What are the colonists gonna do
about it?
A. Boston Tea Party – colonists protest taxes by
dumping over 300 chests of tea in to Boston
harbor
B. 1774 – 1st Continental Congress – wrote a letter
to King George III demanding more rights
C. 1775 – 2nd continental congress – begin talks of
independence from Britain
IV. Guys you need to know
A. Thomas Paine – Common Sense – propaganda to
convince colonists to support independence
- Why? Britain is 3000 miles away; we should rule
ourselves
B. Shay’s rebellion – Shay rebelled against the state of
Massachusetts because of high state taxes.
- states had too much power
- emphasized the weakness of the Articles of
Confederation (our country’s 1st constitution)