Unit 1 · Topic 1.1 · about 30 minutes · 7 parts · 11 scored checks, 4 of them multiple choice
AP U.S. History 1.1: Contextualizing Period 1
Unit 1: 4 to 6% of the multiple-choice section
What you'll be able to do
- Explain the context for European encounters in the Americas from 1491 to 1607, and identify and describe the historical context for a specific development of those years.
Key vocabulary
| Term | What it means | The exam trap |
|---|---|---|
| Contextualization | Describing the larger situation around a historical development that helps explain why it happened as it did. | Context is a situation you connect to the development, not a list of facts from the same years. |
| Columbian Exchange | The movement of plants, animals, people and diseases across the Atlantic after Columbus's voyages of 1492 and later. | Name the item and the direction it moved; a vague mention of trade does not show the exchange. |
| Charter | A written grant from a ruler giving a person or company rights, such as the right to claim land or found a colony. | A charter states what a ruler claimed or allowed, not what happened afterward. |
| Worldview | A set of beliefs about how the world works and what is right, covering matters such as religion, land, family and power. | One document shows the worldview of the people who wrote it; it cannot speak for the people it describes. |
| Demographic change | A change in the size or makeup of a population. | Demographic is about people, so a change in wealth or land alone is not a demographic change. |
Tap to open the picture full sizePart 1 Think first Why plan for gold?
Commit to a guess first. Being wrong now makes the right idea stick better.
Predict first
On April 10, 1606, King James of England chartered a colony in Virginia. The charter let the colonists "dig, mine, and search for all Manner of Mines of Gold, Silver, and Copper," and it kept for the king "the fifth Part only of all the same Gold and Silver." Why do you think the king expected gold and silver in Virginia?
In short. Period 1, from 1491 to 1607, runs from a North America of many distinct Native societies, each adapted to its own environment, through a century of European expansion that brought rivalry among European kingdoms, the Columbian Exchange, the Spanish Empire and clashes between very different worldviews.
- Before 1492, Native peoples across North America had developed distinct and increasingly complex societies by adapting to and transforming their environments.
- European expansion set Spain, Portugal and later England competing for land, wealth and converts, and it changed European societies themselves.
- The Columbian Exchange and the Spanish Empire changed populations, economies and societies, while Europeans and Native Americans asserted different views of religion, land, family, gender roles and power.
Part 2 Learn it The big picture, 1491 to 1607
2a. North America in 1491
Period 1 starts in 1491, the year before Columbus reached the Caribbean, so that it begins with the people who already lived here. Native peoples had migrated and settled across North America over thousands of years. They were not one culture. They built distinct societies, and many grew more complex over time, with larger towns, more kinds of work and more ranks of leaders.
Each society adapted to its environment, and many also transformed it. Some grew maize and dug canals to water their fields in dry country. Some moved with the seasons to hunt and gather where farming was hard. Some built permanent villages beside rivers or the ocean. Their ways of farming, of using resources and of organizing society differed because their lands differed, and because people made their own choices about how to use them.
Topic 1.2 goes region by region. For now, hold on to the big picture: when Europeans arrived, they met many peoples, not one.
Quick check · Multiple choice
Which statement best describes the native peoples of North America in 1491?
2b. Europe reaches out, and Europeans compete
In the 1400s and 1500s European kingdoms looked overseas for new sources of wealth. On April 30, 1492, Spain's monarchs, Ferdinand and Isabella, sent Christopher Columbus "to discover and subdue some Islands and Continent in the ocean." Discovery came paired with conquest.
Competition followed at once. In the Treaty of Tordesillas, June 7, 1494, Spain and Portugal agreed on a line from pole to pole "three hundred and seventy leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands." Newly found lands to the west would go to Spain, lands to the east to Portugal. No other kingdom signed it.
Later rivals pushed in. After the Protestant Reformation, England was Protestant and Spain Catholic, so their rivalry was religious as well as political. In the 1490s England's Henry VII licensed John Cabot to find lands "which before this time haue bene vnknowen to all Christians" (spelling as printed). On March 25, 1584, Elizabeth I licensed Walter Raleigh to hold "remote, heathen and barbarous lands, countries, and territories, not actually possessed of any Christian Prince, nor inhabited by Christian People." The test had changed from lands no Christian knew to lands no Christian ruler actually held. Historians read that change as a challenge to the 1494 division: lands Spain claimed but did not hold were open to England.
Sources, all from the Avalon Project: grant to Columbus, 1492; Treaty of Tordesillas, 1494; letters patent to Cabot; charter to Raleigh, 1584.
Quick check · Put it in order
Put these documents in the order they were issued, earliest first.
2c. The Columbian Exchange and the Spanish Empire
Contact joined two halves of the world that had been apart for thousands of years. The Columbian Exchange is the movement of plants, animals, people and diseases across the Atlantic after 1492. Maize became a food crop in Europe and Africa, and potatoes in Europe. Horses, cattle, pigs and wheat came to the Americas.
Diseases crossed too. Smallpox and other illnesses, new to the Americas, killed huge numbers of Native people, who had no immunity to them. That fall in population was a demographic change on an enormous scale.
Spain built an empire on this exchange. Its conquests gave it gold and, above all, silver from American mines. That wealth made Spain one of the strongest powers in Europe, and it drew England and other kingdoms into Atlantic trade and colonization in the hope of the same riches. Spanish colonists forced Native peoples to work, and they brought enslaved Africans as well. The colonies became societies of Spaniards, Native peoples, Africans and people of mixed ancestry, with sharp lines of rank between them.
So contact changed both sides of the Atlantic, from who lived in the Americas to what Europeans ate and which European kingdoms grew rich.
Quick check · Sort it
Each card names something that crossed the Atlantic after 1492. Tap a card, then the direction it moved.
From the Americas to Europe and Africa
From Europe and Africa to the Americas
2d. Different worldviews, and what context is
Europeans and Native Americans held different ideas about religion, land, family, gender roles and power, and each side asserted its own.
English charters show the European side. The 1606 Virginia charter praised the venture for "propagating of Christian Religion to such People, as yet live in Darkness and miserable Ignorance of the true Knowledge and Worship of God." It hoped to bring "the Infidels and Savages, living in those parts, to human Civility, and to a settled and quiet Government." The king granted English colonists the lands, woods, rivers and mines there, as if they were his to give.
Many Native societies saw it otherwise. Land was often held by a community for its people's use, not owned by one person or granted by a distant king. In many farming societies of the Northeast, women grew the crops, a division of work that many Europeans, who expected men to farm, looked down on.
Context is the larger situation around a development that helps explain it. To describe it, look at what came before and what was happening at the time, then say how it shaped the development.
Quick check · Match
Match each piece of evidence to the issue on which Europeans and Native Americans held different views.
Part 3 Watch it done Describe the context for the Raleigh charter
Watch each step, then do the last one yourself.
On March 25, 1584, Elizabeth I of England licensed Walter Raleigh to find and hold "remote, heathen and barbarous lands, countries, and territories, not actually possessed of any Christian Prince, nor inhabited by Christian People." Describe a historical context that helps explain this wording.
Predict first
Before the steps, whose claims do you think the words about lands no Christian prince possessed were written around?
Step 1 · Look before the date
Go back almost a century. In 1492 Spain sent Columbus to discover and subdue lands across the ocean. In 1494 Spain and Portugal divided newly found lands between themselves along a line 370 leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands. England had no part in that treaty, and by 1584 Spain held a large and wealthy American empire.
Why this step?
Why look before 1584 instead of starting with the charter's words?
Context is the situation a document grew out of. The words tell you what Elizabeth claimed; what came before tells you whose claims she was answering.
Step 2 · Read the key word
The charter does not claim every land in the Americas. It claims lands no Christian prince "actually" possessed. A claim on paper, like a line on a treaty map, does not count under that wording; only lands a Christian ruler really held.
Your step · Decide and justify
Finish it. Which context best explains the charter's wording?
Which evidence best supports your answer?
Part 4 Try it Context on your own
Now describe context for two documents the lesson has not worked through: the 1606 Virginia charter, and the 1494 treaty itself.
Try it · Spot the error
A student writes a context paragraph for the 1606 Virginia charter. Which line is the first to go wrong?
Try it · Multiple choice
Which development is the best context for the Treaty of Tordesillas of June 7, 1494?
Part 5 Explain it Write it like a document-based answer
Nothing you type leaves this page. Check your answer against the model and each scoring point.
Free-response practice · Question 1 style
A short practice in the shape of the document-based question: three documents instead of seven, and a thesis with one body paragraph instead of a full essay.
Evaluate the extent to which European goals in the Americas stayed the same from 1492 to 1606.
Document 1. Privileges granted by Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain to Christopher Columbus, April 30, 1492: Columbus is going "to discover and subdue some Islands and Continent in the ocean."
Document 2. Charter of Elizabeth I of England to Walter Raleigh, March 25, 1584: Raleigh may find and hold "remote, heathen and barbarous lands, countries, and territories, not actually possessed of any Christian Prince, nor inhabited by Christian People."
Document 3. First Charter of Virginia, granted by James I to a group of investors including "Adventurers of and for our City of London," April 10, 1606: the venture may serve the "propagating of Christian Religion to such People, as yet live in Darkness and miserable Ignorance of the true Knowledge and Worship of God." The colonists may "dig, mine, and search for all Manner of Mines of Gold, Silver, and Copper," paying the king "the fifth Part only of all the same Gold and Silver."
Write a thesis, one sentence of historical context, and one paragraph that uses at least two documents and explains the purpose, audience, point of view or situation of one of them.
Model answer
Thesis: From 1492 to 1606 the main European goal in the Americas stayed largely the same: to claim and hold land across the ocean for a crown and profit from it. What changed was who pursued it, as England came to challenge the claims Spain had made first.
Context: after 1492 Spain built an American empire that drew great wealth from gold and silver, and in 1494 Spain and Portugal divided newly found lands between themselves, leaving other kingdoms to compete for what remained.
In 1492 Spain sent Columbus "to discover and subdue" lands across the ocean (Document 1), and in 1584 Elizabeth licensed Raleigh to find and hold lands of his own (Document 2); in both, a crown set out to take possession of land. Spain's later wealth from American mines helps explain why the 1606 charter let colonists "dig, mine, and search" for gold and silver before any had been found (Document 3). What changed was who pursued these goals. The 1584 charter limited itself to lands "not actually possessed of any Christian Prince" (Document 2), wording historians read as England's way of claiming lands Spain claimed but did not hold. Document 3 was written by the crown to license a company of investors, so it states the venture's religious purpose in its noblest form, while the king's claim to a fifth of all gold and silver shows what the crown expected to gain.
Score your own answer. This is a self-check, not a grade. Tick each point your answer makes.
Part 6 Check yourself Two documents, ninety years apart
The case questions use the two documents. The others mix the ideas from the whole lesson.
One document comes from Spain and Portugal, the other from England, ninety years later. Sources: Treaty of Tordesillas, 1494 (Avalon Project); Charter to Raleigh, 1584 (Avalon Project).
| Document | What it says |
|---|---|
| Treaty of Tordesillas, between Spain and Portugal, June 7, 1494 | A line is drawn from pole to pole, "three hundred and seventy leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands." Newly found lands west of it belong to Spain, lands east of it to Portugal. |
| Charter of Elizabeth I to Walter Raleigh, March 25, 1584 | Raleigh may find and hold "remote, heathen and barbarous lands, countries, and territories, not actually possessed of any Christian Prince, nor inhabited by Christian People." |
Case question 1 · Multiple choice
What does the change from the 1494 document to the 1584 document best show about European expansion?
Case question 2 · Multiple choice
What do both documents suggest about how these European rulers viewed the lands of the Americas?
The rest stand on their own and do not use the case.
Check yourself · Select all
Which two were results of the Columbian Exchange and the growth of the Spanish Empire? Select two.
Select 2 answers, then check.
Check yourself · Fill the statement
Complete the sentences about North America before 1492.
Native peoples migrated and settled across North America over thousands of years. Their societies grew distinct from one another because each to its own environment, and many also those environments, for example by digging canals to water their fields.
Part 7 Keep it Bring back earlier ideas
This is the first lesson of the course, so there is nothing earlier to bring back yet. Later lessons will ask these questions again.
In three lines
- In 1491 North America was home to many distinct Native societies, each adapted to and shaping its environment.
- From 1492, Spain, Portugal and later England competed for American lands, wealth and converts, and the Columbian Exchange and the Spanish Empire changed both sides of the Atlantic.
- Europeans and Native Americans held different views of religion, land, gender roles and power, and context means the situation that explains a development.
Exam strategy for this topic
- Section I Part A, Multiple Choice: 55 questions in 55 minutes.
- Section I Part B, Short Answer: 3 questions in 40 minutes.
- Section II, Document-Based Question and Long Essay: 2 questions in 100 minutes.
- This lesson's Explain it is shaped like free-response question 1, Document-based.
When a question asks for context, name a specific development from before or during the event, then say in one clause how it shaped that event.
Questions students ask
Why does Period 1 start in 1491 instead of 1492?
Starting the year before Columbus reached the Caribbean lets the period open with North America as it was, home to many Native societies, rather than with the arrival of Europeans.
Why does Period 1 end in 1607?
In 1607 colonists sent under the 1606 Virginia charter founded Jamestown, England's first lasting colony in North America. Period 2 picks up the story from there.
Why does the 1492 grant call Queen Isabella Elizabeth?
The English translation on the Avalon Project gives her name as Elizabeth, the English form of Isabel. She is the same queen, who ruled with Ferdinand.
How long is a league?
It was an old measure of distance at sea, and its length varied from place to place. The 1494 treaty sent ships with pilots and sailors from both kingdoms to fix where the line fell.
Where can I read these documents in full?
Each excerpt links to its full text at the Avalon Project at Yale Law School, the primary-source collection this lesson was checked against.
Course alignment, for teachers
AP U.S. History topic 1.1, Unit 1: Period 1: 1491–1607.
- Skill 4.A: Identify and describe a historical context for a specific historical development or process.
This lesson maps all 6 essential knowledge statements of the topic, and the one learning objective with none of its own, to the part that teaches each one: 7 are checked by a scored question. The map is in the lesson file.