AP United States History, AP exams, 6–8%

Unit 2: Period 2, 1607–1754

Period 2 follows the establishment of European colonies in North America and the emergence of sharply different regional societies within British America. Labor systems, religion, trade regulation, and relations with Native nations drive the unit's causation questions. Regional comparison is the analytic skill the exam most often tests here.

Position: 2 of 9 units
Published weighting: 6–8% in the official framework
Topics covered: 6 topics in this guide

What is covered

Topics inside this unit.

These topics describe the scope students most often review for this part of AP United States History. Treat them as a study checklist rather than an exhaustive list of what a single exam form can sample.

Comparing colonizing powers: Spanish, French, Dutch, and British colonization differed in economic goals, settlement patterns, and relations with Native peoples.
The British colonial regions: New England, the Chesapeake, the Middle Colonies, and the Southern and West Indian colonies contrasted in economy, demography, and religion.
Transatlantic trade and mercantilism: Navigation Acts, the Atlantic economy, and the practical limits of imperial control before 1754.
Interactions between American Indians and Europeans: Trade alliances, land pressure, and conflicts such as the Pueblo Revolt, Bacon's Rebellion, and Metacom's War.
Slavery in the British colonies: The hardening of chattel slavery into law, regional variation in enslaved labor, and persistent forms of resistance.
Colonial society and culture: The Enlightenment, the First Great Awakening, print culture, and the growth of colonial self-government.

Study tips

How to practice Period 2.

Section-specific guidance that follows from how this material is usually tested.

Build one regional comparison grid covering economy, labor, religion, and government, then reproduce it from memory.
Attach each colonial conflict to the land or labor pressure that caused it rather than memorizing dates alone.
Practice short-answer responses that cite a specific colony as evidence; naming a place beats a general claim.

Where this fits

Unit 2: Period 2, 1607–1754 is 2 of 9 units in the AP United States History guide, and it carries a published weighting of 6–8% in the official framework. Use the full guide to balance it against everything else you have to review.

Back to the AP United States History guide Official exam information

Sample Period 2 questions

Practice questions, not yet expert-reviewed

Original practice questions written to the published framework for this section. No expert has reviewed them, and they are not taken from any official exam. Try each one before you open the answer.

Question 1Foundational
Which cash crop became the economic foundation of seventeenth-century Virginia and Maryland and drove their demand for bound labor?
1. ACotton
2. BTobacco
3. CRice
4. DSugar
Show answer
Answer: B. Tobacco
Tobacco exports organized Chesapeake settlement, scattering plantations along navigable rivers and pulling in a stream of English indentured servants and, later, enslaved Africans. Cotton is the tempting distractor because it dominated the later South, but it did not become a mass staple until the cotton gin appeared in 1793.
Key insight: Ask what a colony sold, and the rest of its labor system and settlement pattern usually follows.
Question 2Foundational
Which set of English laws required colonial trade to move in English ships and forced listed colonial goods to be shipped only to England?
1. AThe Navigation Acts
2. BThe Intolerable Acts
3. CThe Townshend Acts
4. DThe Stamp Act
Show answer
Answer: A. The Navigation Acts
The Navigation Acts wrote mercantilist theory into law, reserving colonial carrying trade to English and colonial ships and requiring enumerated goods such as tobacco and sugar to pass through England. The Intolerable Acts are the tempting distractor because they also restricted colonists, but Parliament passed them in 1774 to punish Massachusetts after the Boston Tea Party.
Key insight: Mercantilism treated colonies as suppliers of raw materials and captive markets for the mother country.
Question 3Intermediate
Which 1676 Virginia uprising joined frontier settlers, indentured servants, and some enslaved people against the colonial governor over western land and policy toward Native nations?
1. AMetacom's War
2. BThe Pueblo Revolt
3. CBacon's Rebellion
4. DThe Stono Rebellion
Show answer
Answer: C. Bacon's Rebellion
Nathaniel Bacon's followers demanded aggressive expansion onto Native land, burned Jamestown, and alarmed the planter elite by uniting poor white and enslaved men against the government. Metacom's War is the tempting distractor because it broke out at nearly the same moment, but it was a war in New England between colonists and the Wampanoag and their allies rather than a revolt against a governor.
Key insight: The rebellion pushed planters toward a labor force of enslaved Africans instead of land-hungry indentured servants.
Question 4Intermediate
Which religious revival swept the British colonies in the 1730s and 1740s, carried by itinerant preachers such as George Whitefield, and weakened the authority of established churches?
1. AThe First Great Awakening
2. BThe Second Great Awakening
3. CThe Enlightenment
4. DThe Puritan Great Migration
Show answer
Answer: A. The First Great Awakening
Revival preaching drew huge intercolonial crowds, split congregations between New Lights and Old Lights, and taught colonists that they could judge religious authority for themselves. The Second Great Awakening is the tempting distractor because it was also a mass revival, but it belongs to the early nineteenth century and fed reform movements such as temperance and abolition.
Key insight: The Awakening was the first shared experience that crossed colonial borders, which is why historians link it to later political mobilization.
Question 5Advanced
A 1662 Virginia statute settled the status of children born to enslaved women by declaring that a child followed the condition of which parent?
1. AThe father
2. BThe mother
3. CWhichever parent had been born in Africa
4. DNeither, because all children were born free
Show answer
Answer: B. The mother
The statute broke with English common law, under which status followed the father, and provided that children were bond or free according to the condition of the mother. Making slavery hereditary through the maternal line gave slaveholders a direct financial interest in the children of the women they enslaved.
Key insight: Colonial assemblies built racial slavery statute by statute rather than inheriting it whole from England.

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Unit 2: Period 2, 1607–1754