agricultural revolution the period from the mid-seventeenth century on in Europe during which great agricultural progress was made and the fallow was gradually eliminated. (p. 633)

Atlantic slave trade forced migration of millions of Africans to work in servitude during the eighteenth century. By the peak decade of the 1780s, shipments of black men and women averaged about 80,000 per year. (p. 650)






common lands the open meadows maintained by villages for public use. (p. 631)

cottage industry "domestic industry," a stage of rural industrial development with wage workers and hand tools that necessarily preceded the emergence of large-scale factory industry. (p. 641)

Creoles people of Spanish blood born in America. (p. 654)

crop rotation the system by which farmers would rotate the types of crops grown in each field as to not deplete the soil of its natural resources. (p. 633)






debt peonage a system which allowed a planter or rancher to keep his workers/slaves in perpetual debt bondage by periodically advancing food, shelter, and a little money; it is a form of serfdom. (p. 654)






economic liberalism based on the writings of Adam Smith, it is the belief in free trade and competition. Smith argued that the "invisible hand" of free competition would benefit all individuals, rich and poor. (pp. 655-6)

enclosure the idea to enclose individual share of the pastures as a way of farming more effectively. (p. 633)






famine foods the foods eaten by a desperate population - chestnuts, bark, dandelions and grass - in attempts to escape starvation. (p. 630)






mercantilism system of economic regulations aimed at increasing the power of the state. (p. 645)

mestizos the offspring of Spanish men and Indian women. (p. 654)






Navigation Acts the result of the English desire to increase both military power and private wealth, required that goods imported from Europe into England and Scotland be carried on British-owned ships with British crews or on ships of the country producing the article etc. (p. 645)






open-field systems a system of village farming developed by peasants where the land was divided into several large fields which were in turn cut into strips. There were no divided fences or hedges and it was farmed as a community. (p. 630)






proletarianization the transformation of large number of small peasant farmers into landless rural wage earners. (p. 637)

putting-out system term used to describe the 18th century rural industry. (p. 641)