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Period 2: What’s Inside 1607–1754

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MODULE AP THEMATIC FOCUS
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2.1 The first contact between Native Americans and Europeans in the fifteenth century and early
Contextualizing sixteenth century caused enormous changes to both European and Native societies. The
Copyright (c) 2024 Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers.
Period 2 Columbian Exchange of the sixteenth century extended these changes and led to the beginnings
of the African slave trade. The period 1607 to 1754 saw the consolidation of European colonial
control in North America. This period also saw conflict between European colonial powers for
control over the continent, which often divided native peoples among European rivals. Also during
this period, transatlantic trade in enslaved African people become a source of labor for many of
the European colonies. By the end of this time period, the British controlled much of the eastern
seaboard of North America.
2.2 Migration and Settlement
European Throughout the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, the English, French, and Dutch
Colonization established colonies that challenged Spanish control in North America.
2.3 Geography and the Environment
The Regions of The earliest English colonies sought profit through agriculture and the cash crop tobacco, which
British Colonies became a valuable commodity in the Atlantic world.
The first English settlers in New England, mostly Puritans, established an economy based on
agriculture and commerce within a society of independent family farms and small towns. Distance
from Great Britain led to self-governing towns that contained elements of democratic practice.
These democratic elements included participatory town meetings and elected colonial legislatures.
Starting in the 1660s, the English began to colonize the Middle Atlantic region in North America
and build economies based on trade and societies built generally on religious and ethnic tolerance.
Throughout the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, the colonies of the southern
Atlantic coast and the British West Indies developed plantation societies that depended on the
labor of enslaved Africans to harvest crops such as rice and sugar for export.
2.4 Strictly for use with its products. NOT FOR REDISTRIBUTION.
Work, Exchange, and Technology
Transatlantic Trade During the eighteenth century, the Atlantic economy became increasingly complex, leading
to increasing attempts by European powers to impose trade policies advantageous to home
countries. These trade policies shaped the lives of colonial subjects in North America.
2.5 America in the World
Interactions Starting in the seventeenth century, British North American colonists were pulled into a series
between American of conflicts with other European colonists and their Native American allies as European nations
Indians and increasingly sought control over the Western Hemisphere.
Europeans
2.6 Work, Exchange, and Technology ■ Social Structures
Slavery in the Slavery shaped the economy and society of British North America. While slavery was more
British Colonies prevalent in the southern colonies, its existence in the middle and northern colonies proved
significant as well. Despite often harsh living conditions, enslaved Africans and African Americans
found overt and covert ways to rebel against slavery and maintain their families and culture.
2.7 American and Regional Culture ■ American and National Identity
Colonial Society Inspired by religious movements and new political ideologies, British North Americans developed
and Culture a sense of distinctness from England while, at the same time, experiencing fragmentation within
the colonies themselves.
2.8 This time period offers opportunities for comparison between the different regions of British North

Comparison in America, between the various European powers that vied for control of North America, among
Period 2 native nations and European colonizers, and between Africans in the Western Hemisphere, both
enslaved and free, and the European colonists.
Support and • Practice thinking and writing historically in each module.
Practice • See the Period Review of key concepts, events, people, and dates after the last module.
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• Try the AP Exam Practice at the end of the period.

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