AP U.S. History Practice Test 13
10 free AP U.S. History practice questions in the real exam format, covering the official content areas, with an explanation for every answer.
Question 1 of 10
Period 2: 1607-1754Source 1
English colonization in North America differed from that of its European rivals chiefly in its hunger for land. Spain sought labor and converts, and France sought furs; both needed Native peoples to remain on the land. English colonists, by contrast, arrived as families in large and growing numbers, built farms, and fenced pastures. In New England and the Chesapeake, this demand for land repeatedly pushed settlement into Native territory and produced devastating wars, from the conflicts with the Powhatan Confederacy to Metacom’s War in the 1670s. The English rarely sought to bring Native peoples into colonial society; more often they sought to remove them. The distinctive feature of English colonization was not its cruelty, which all empires shared, but its drive to replace Native communities rather than rule them.
Interpretation written for PrepBanq practice (secondary source, historian’s perspective)
Source 2
It is tempting to describe colonial North America as a contest among European empires, but for most of the 1600s and early 1700s American Indian nations held the balance of power. Europeans of every nationality depended on Native allies for trade goods, food, military aid, and knowledge of the land. Native leaders played rival colonizers against one another, choosing trading partners and shifting alliances to protect their own interests. The Iroquois Confederacy, for instance, negotiated with the French and the English to preserve its position between them. Even Spanish authority in New Mexico was reshaped after the Pueblo peoples rose against it in 1680. Colonization, in this view, was a process of negotiation as much as conquest, and its outcomes were often decided in Native councils rather than European courts.
Interpretation written for PrepBanq practice (secondary source, historian’s perspective)
Questions 12–14 refer to the two passages.
Which of the following pairs of developments would best illustrate the main emphasis of each source?