Period 2 runs from 1607 to 1754 - from Jamestown to the eve of the Seven Years' War. Its central question is why European colonies turned out so differently from one another.

Each empire wanted something different, and that goal shaped everything else:

• Spain extracted wealth from the land, developing institutions built on subjugating 征服 native populations - the encomienda system carried over from Period 1.
• France and the Netherlands sent relatively few Europeans and relied on trade alliances 贸易同盟 with American Indians, especially in fur 毛皮.
• Britain attracted a comparatively large number of male and female migrants 男女移民, who came to settle and farm rather than only to extract.

That last difference matters most. Because British colonists arrived as families and wanted land, they displaced native peoples rather than trading with them - which made British-Indian relations more violent than French ones.

British North America was not one place. Four regions developed distinct societies.

• The Chesapeake 切萨皮克 and North Carolina grew prosperous exporting tobacco 烟草, a labour-intensive crop. Labour came first from indentured servants 契约仆役 and increasingly from enslaved Africans.
• The New England colonies, initially settled by Puritans 清教徒, developed around small towns with family farms 家庭农场, a mixed economy, and unusually high life expectancy.
• The middle colonies supported a flourishing export economy based on cereal crops 谷物, and attracted the broadest range of European migrants, producing the most ethnically and religiously diverse 族群与宗教多元 region.
• The colonies of the southern Atlantic coast and the British West Indies used long growing seasons for rice 稻米 and sugar 蔗糖, cash crops so labour-hungry that enslaved Africans became a majority of the population in places.

One political feature was shared. Distance from London, and Britain's initially lax attention 松散管理, let the colonies create self-governing institutions 自治机构 - colonial assemblies that later shaped resistance to imperial control.

An Atlantic economy 大西洋经济 developed in which goods - and enslaved Africans and American Indians - were exchanged around the ocean rim. Continuing trade increased the flow of goods in and out of American Indian communities, changing them too.

From the mid-seventeenth century, the British government tried to bring its colonies into a coherent imperial system, driven by mercantilism 重商主义 - the belief that colonies exist to enrich the mother country. The Navigation Acts 航海条例 required colonial trade to move in British ships through British ports.

Enforcement was loose for decades, a practice later called salutary neglect 有益的忽视. Colonists grew used to trading freely and governing themselves, which is exactly why tightening the rules after 1763 provoked such anger.

Contact produced both accommodation 调适 and conflict 冲突, and the balance differed by empire and region.

Where trade mattered most - New France, the Dutch fur trade - alliances and intermarriage were common. Where land mattered most, conflict followed. British expansion led to sustained military conflict 军事冲突 with American Indians over land, resources, and boundaries.

Resistance took organised forms. The Pueblo Revolt 普韦布洛起义 of 1680 drove the Spanish out of New Mexico for over a decade and forced lasting changes in Spanish policy - the clearest example in the course of native resistance succeeding.

All the British colonies participated in the Atlantic slave trade to varying degrees, because land was abundant and labour scarce.

As chattel slavery 动产奴隶制 became the dominant labour system in many southern colonies, colonial legislatures wrote new laws creating a strict racial system 严格的种族制度. Slavery became hereditary, lifelong, and defined by race - a legal structure, not merely a practice.

Enslaved Africans developed overt and covert means of resistance 公开与隐蔽的反抗: escape and revolt, and also the maintenance of family ties, languages, religious practices, and skills. The exam expects both kinds; an answer that mentions only rebellion misses most of the evidence.

Two opposite processes ran at once.

Toward diversity: the presence of different European religious and ethnic groups produced a significant degree of pluralism 多元并存, most visibly in the middle colonies.

Toward similarity: the colonies experienced a gradual Anglicization 英国化, adopting British goods, print culture, legal norms, and political ideas even as they developed autonomous political communities.

Transatlantic exchange also brought the Enlightenment 启蒙运动 and, in the 1730s and 1740s, the religious revivals of the First Great Awakening 第一次大觉醒, which encouraged colonists to question established authority - religious first, political later.

The goals of European leaders and colonists increasingly diverged 分歧, and colonists' resistance to imperial control drew on local experience of self-government and evolving ideas about rights.

The unit ends with comparison 比较, the reasoning skill this period is built to teach: the regions differ enough that almost any claim about "the colonies" needs qualifying.

Worked example (a real AP exam question). The 2025 exam asked, as part A of a short-answer question, "Briefly describe one political development in British North America from 1607 to 1753." A full-mark answer is one specific development, named and located in time: "Colonial assemblies such as the Virginia House of Burgesses developed powers over taxation and spending, which gave colonists practical experience of representative self-government before 1754." Notice the shape: Briefly describe wants a specific development stated accurately - not a list, not an evaluation, and not an essay. Marks are lost here by writing too much about the wrong thing, or by staying vague ("colonies became more independent").

• Answer the why behind regional difference: geography set the crop, the crop set the labour system, and the labour system set the society.
• Never treat "the colonies" as one place. A comparison question wants New England against the Chesapeake, with evidence from each.
• Mercantilism is the theory, the Navigation Acts are the policy, and salutary neglect is the lax enforcement that made later enforcement feel like tyranny.
• For slavery, give both overt and covert resistance; and note that slave codes made slavery racial and hereditary, which is the change being tested.
• The Pueblo Revolt is the go-to example of successful native resistance; British-Indian conflict is the go-to contrast with French trade alliances.
• Match your answer to the task verb. Briefly describe takes one or two accurate sentences, while Evaluate the extent needs a thesis that takes a position.