Summer Assignment Terms and Essays
AP History
www.chsapus2015.wordpress.com
Welcome to the world of Advanced Placement American History!
The first question that you have to ask is WHY ARE YOU TAKING THIS COURSE? Is it
because…
 it will look good on your transcript?
 it was the next honors level course in history?
 your parents made you do it?
 your friends are taking it?
 you want the challenge of a demanding, nearly impossible course?
 you love the History Channel?
 you don’t need sleep and love writing essays and answering impossible
multiple-choice tests?
 you want to get a 5 on the AP Test and brag about it to your friends and relatives
via Facebook and Twitter?
Whatever your reason for enrolling in the class, congratulations for taking this step.
Now for the summer assignment…
1. Email your name and barcode number found on inside cover
(sikorama@champaignschools.org) by June 20th.
(All of the following items must be emailed together and by the first day August
16, 2015)
2. Type the Presidents of the United States and their years of service in
chronological order.
3. Create a map of the United States; label each state and its capital, major
landmasses and waterways, as well as major cities (it can be computer
generated as well)
4. Please complete one outline for each of the first six chapters of the text. Your
outlines must cover each section of the chapter in your own words.
5. Highlight (with a highlighter) each of the following terms inside of those
outlines. Please note, they go left to right and then down.
6. Complete the chapter questions that follow the identification list.
7. Complete the short paper that follows the chapter questions.
Marco Polo
Francisco Pizzaro
Juan Ponce De León
Hernando De Soto
Montezuma
Christopher Columbus
Hernán Cortés
Francisco Coronado
Renaissance
mestizos
Treaty of Tordesillas
“three sister” farming
Great Ice Age
Canadian Shield
Mound Builders
Spanish Armada
Black legend
conquistadores
Aztecs
Pope’s Rebellion
Pueblo Indians
Lord De La Warr
Walter Raleigh
Pocahontas
James Oglethorpe
Powhatan
Humphrey Gilbert
Handsome Lake
Oliver Cromwell
John Rolfe
John Smith
Lord Baltimore
nation-state
yeoman
joint-stock company
proprietor
slavery
longhouse
enclosure
squatter
House of Burgesses
primogeniture
royal charter
indenture servitude
slave codes
starving time
First Anglo-Powhatan War
Restoration
Second Anglo-Powhatan War
Act of Toleration
Savannah Indians
Barbados Slave Code
Iroquois Confederacy
Virginia Company
Ireland
John Calvin
Thomas Hooker
Anne Hutchison
William Penn
Roger Williams
John Winthrop
Henry Hudson
King Philip
William Bradford
John Cotton
Peter Stuyvesant
Sir Edmund Andros
William Laud
the “elect”
“visible saints”
franchise
conversion
patroonship
doctrine of a calling
predestination
covenant
freemen
antinomianism
Protestant Reformation
Puritans
Pilgrims
General Court
New England Confederation
Dutch West India Company
Calvinism
Separatists
Massachusetts Bay Company
Bible Commonwealth
Dominion of New England
Quakers
Institutes of the Christian Religion
Mayflower
Navigation Laws
Protestant Ethic
great Puritan Migration
Mayflower Compact
Glorious Revolution
Fundamental Orders
William Berkeley
Nathaniel Bacon
indentured servants
jeremiads
slave codes
middle passage
headright system
Bacon’s Rebellion
Half-Way Covenant
Leisler’s Rebellion
Jonathan Edwards
John Peter Zenger
Benjamin Franklin
Phillis Wheatley
Michel-Guillaume de Crevecoeur
John S. Copley
George Whitefield
Paxton Boys
old and new lights
Great Awakening
triangular trade
Catawba nation
Molasses Act
rack-renting
Scots-Irish
Regulator movement
naval stores
Melting pot
sect
Agitators
stratification
Mobility
elite
Almshouse
gentry
Tenant farmer
penal code
Veto
apprentice
Speculation
revival
Secular
Samuel de Champlain
James Wolfe
William Pitt
Edward Braddock
Antoine Cadillac
Pontiac
Robert de La Salle
Huguenots
Iroquois
French and Indian War
New France
Acadians
Proclamation of 1763
War of Spanish Succession
Cajun
Albany Congress
Edict of Nantes
Please answer each of the following items from Chapter One through Chapter Six
Chapter One
1. Describe the geological and geographical conditions that set the stage for North
American history.
2. Describe the origin and development of the major Indian cultures in America.
3. Explain the developments in Europe and Africa that led up to Columbus’s voyage to
America.
4. Explain the changes and conflicts that occurred when the diverse worlds of Europe,
Africa, and the Americas “collided” after 1492.
5. Describe the Spanish conquest of Mexico and South America and identify the major
features of Spanish colonization and expansion in North America.
Chapter Two
To understand historical events, we frequently compare one set of conditions with
another so as to illuminate both similarities and differences. In this chapter, there are
comparisons of English colonization in North America with (a) England’s imperial
activity in Ireland (p. 26), (b) Spanish colonization (pp.26-27), and (c) England’s colonies
in the West Indies (pp.34-36). Examine these three comparisons, and then answer the
following questions.
1. What similarities developed between the English attitude toward the Irish and the
English attitude toward Native Americans?
2. What characteristics of England after the victory over the Spanish Armada were
similar to Spain’s condition once century earlier?
3. How was the sugar economy of the West Indies different from the tobacco
economy of the Chesapeake?
4. State the factors that led England to begin colonization.
5. Describe the development of the Jamestown colony from its disastrous beginnings to
its later prosperity.
6. Describe the cultural and social changes that Indian communities underwent in
response to the English colonization.
7. Describe changes in the economy and labor system in Virginia and other southern
colonies.
8. Indicate similarities and differences among the southern colonies of Virginia,
Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia.
Chapter Three
1. Describe the Puritans and their beliefs and explain why they left England for the New
World.
2. Explain the basic governmental and religious practices of the Massachusetts Bay
Colony.
3. Explain how conflict with religious dissenters, among other forces, led to the
expansion of New England.
4. Describe the changing relations between the English colonists and the Indians.
5. Explain why New York, Pennsylvania, and the other middle colonies became so
ethnically, religiously, and politically diverse.
6. Describe the central feature of the middle colonies and explain how they differed
from New England.
Write your interpretation of John Winthrop’s comment that Massachusetts Bay was to
be “as a city upon a hill” and “a beacon to mankind.” In your opinion, do Americans
still hold this view of their nation’s role in the world? Why or why not?
Some historians have argued that Puritanism was especially suited for life in the
wilderness of the seventeenth-century America. Do you agree or disagree?
Chapter Four
1. Describe the basic population structure and social life of the 17th century colonies.
2. Compare and contrast the different populations and ways of life of the southern
colonies and New England.
3. Explain how the problems of indentured servitude led to political trouble and the
growth of African slavery.
4. Describe the slave trade and the character of early African-American society.
5. Explain how the New England way of life centered on family, town, and church, and
describe the changes that affected this way of life.
6. Describe the various conditions affecting women and family life in the 17th century
colonies.
7.
Why does discontented white indentured labor lead the way to slavery?
8.
How are the importation of slaves and the slave system linked to the development
of prejudice and how does prejudice justify slavery?
9.
Why was family life in New England so different from family life in the South?
10. Why did slavery grow to be such an important institution in colonial America?
What were the effects of slavery on the Africans who were brought to the New
World?
11. What was attractive and unattractive about the close knit New England way of life?
12. Were the Salem witch trials a peculiar, aberrant moment in an age of superstition,
or did they reflect common human psychological and social anxieties that could
appear in any age? How harshly should those who prosecuted the “witches” be
condemned?
13. How did African Americans work to adapt their native traditions under the
conditions of New World slavery? What kinds of traditions were most successfully
preserved?
14. What enabled African-Americans in the Chesapeake region to develop societies
where – unusual for the history of slavery – the population reproduced and grew
through natural increase? What does this suggest about the nature of families under
slavery? How might these circumstances have affected the relationship between
slaves and slaveholders?
Chapter Five
1. Describe the basic population and social structure of the eighteenth-century colonies
and indicate how they had changed since the seventeenth century.
2. Explain how the economic development of the colonies altered the patterns of social
prestige and wealth.
3. Explain the causes and effects of the Great Awakening.
4. Describe the origins and development of education, culture, and the learned
professions in the colonies.
5. Describe the basic features of colonial politics, including the roles of various officials
and informal institutions.
6.
Understand the economic activities and relationships of the different parts of the
colonial “social pyramid” discussed in the text (pp. 87, 90). Explain especially the
trend toward greater hierarchy with a wealthy elite on the top and the “jayle birds”
and others on the bottom. How might this tendency concern the “middle class” of
the colonies?
7.
Understand how the Great Awakening marked a key transition from the lukewarm
style of religion fostered by “established” (tax-supported) colonial churches to the
strong commitment required by the “voluntary” (member-supported) churches that
became the American norm. Are there arguments for the contention that the Great
Awakening played a prominent role in promoting the American Revolution?
8.
Look at the issue of racial, ethnic and religious diversity in the colonies. How
diverse were the colonies really, since the ethnic groups were all northern European
– except blacks – and the religious groups almost all Protestant?
9.
In what ways was colonial life attractive, and in what ways would it seem tedious
and dull to the average 21st century American?
10. From the Scots-Irish
a. What characteristics did the Scots-Irish develop from their history before
arriving in America? How did their American experience relate to that earlier
history?
b. Why were the Scots-Irish likely to be especially fervent patriots in the American
Revolution? What issues might separate them from other Americans
revolutionists, like the New Englanders or the Virginia Planters?
Chapter Six
1. Explain why France and Britain engaged in their great contest for North America and
why Britain won.
2. Explain how the series of wars with France affected Britain’s American subjects and
helped pave the way for their later rebellion against the mother country.
3. Describe France’s North American empire and compare it with Britain’s colonies.
4. Explain how North American political and military events were affected by
developments on the larger European stage.
5. Why is Quebec more important than, say, Fort Duquesne in relation to the St.
Lawrence River and the Atlantic Ocean?
6. Why was it essential to capture Louisbourg before attacking Quebec?
7. What was the strategic situation of remaining French forces in the Great Lakes area
once Montreal and Quebec were captured?
8.
Explain how and why the British won the French and Indian War. The focus might
be on the reasons for the early French successes as well as the reasons for the
eventual British triumph.
9.
Examine the French and Indian War, and the other colonial struggles, from the
perspective and the historical of the Indians. Consider how they viewed the
struggles between European powers, and how they tried to make tensions between
settlers and colonial governments work to their advantage.
10.
Explain the key paradox: Britain’s victory over France – which the British
colonists officially supported – actually created new sources of tension between
Americans and the mother country.
11.
Examine French relations with the Indians compared with British (and perhaps
Spanish), and consider why most Indians supported France against Britain.
12.
Illustrate the double role of the colonists as both “British subjects” and
“Americans.” Explain how Washington’s status as a colonial underling clashed
with his status as a young Virginia aristocrat – and reflected all the colonists’
frustrations with their subordinate role.
13.
Should the French and Indian War be considered one of the major causes of the
American Revolution? Why or why not?
Finally, the last part of the assignment needs no research. Please write a two page essay
on a person or event that changed American History (for example, the impact of the
telegraph, William Gates, Martin Luther King Jr., Gloria Steinam, Cesar Chavez,
Alexander Hamilton, 9/11, etc). Do not research any information for this. I want your
opinion. Please email your paper to me (sikorama@champaignschools.org) by August
16, 2015.
There will be an exam in the first week of school over the terms and concepts given
above.
Summer Assignment Checklist
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Name and bar code (June 20) (15)
List of Presidents (15)
Map of the United States (20)
Ch. 1-6 outlines (100)
Ch. 1-6 extended response (100)
Most influential essay (10)