AMSCO 1.7 Causation in Period 1 Notes

Overview

AMSCO Topic 1.7, Causation in Period 1, is the skills chapter that closes Unit 1, asking you to explain the causes and effects of transatlantic voyages between 1491 and 1607. Instead of introducing new events, this chapter teaches you the historical reasoning skill of causation and walks you through two model source analyses: a primary source from John Brereton (1602) and a secondary source from historian Walter A. McDougall (2004). It ties together everything from contextualizing Period 1 through the cultural interactions in Topic 1.6, and it previews exactly the kind of thinking the AP exam rewards on short-answer and essay questions.

What Causation Means in APUSH Period 1

Causation is the reasoning skill of explaining why something happened and what happened because of it. AMSCO names it as the suggested focus for evaluating Period 1 content, and it cuts in two directions.

Causes you need to be able to explain:

• Why Native Americans developed diverse societies across North America. The short answer: different environments. Native peoples adapted to and transformed the lands they settled through innovations in agriculture, resource use, and social structure, which produced increasingly complex and distinct societies.
• Why Europeans launched explorations in the 15th and 16th centuries. AMSCO highlights two big motives as examples: the desire to spread Christianity and the desire for economic gain.

Effects you need to be able to explain:

• Causation implies that an event had an effect. The major result of European-American contact is the Columbian Exchange, which had both short-term and long-term impacts on people on both sides of the Atlantic, and really throughout the world. The Columbian Exchange and Spanish conquest chapter covers those specifics.

Understanding where Native American societies stood in 1491 is what lets you explain what changed when Europeans showed up to explore what they called a "new world."

Not All Causes Are Equal

Here's the move that separates a decent essay from a great one: weighing causes. A historian's job isn't just listing causes; it's deciding how much emphasis each one deserves. AMSCO points out that the most common debates among historians are over whether one cause mattered more than another. Was religion or profit the bigger driver of exploration? Reasonable historians disagree, and the exam wants you to take a position and defend it with evidence.

The same goes for effects. Given how many peoples were involved on both sides of the Atlantic, you can argue about which effects were the most historically significant. That argument IS the essay.

Analyzing a Primary Source: John Brereton (1602)

The chapter models primary source analysis using John Brereton's The Discovery of the North Part of Virginia (1602), an Englishman's account of a voyage to "the north parts of Virginia," which is actually Massachusetts. Brereton describes standing ashore "like men ravished at the beauty and delicacy of this sweet soil," with clear freshwater lakes and large green meadows. He claims the climate kept his whole company so healthy that not one man fell sick, and they returned "much fatter and in better health" than when they left England.

AMSCO breaks the analysis into the categories you'll use for document-based questions:

Content

• Key point: New England has a healthy environment.
• Why it's useful: it captures one early European impression of New England, which helps explain why Europeans wanted to colonize the region.

Author's Point of View

• The author is John Brereton, an Englishman who clearly thinks New England is a wonderful place.
• His religious references ("God be thanked") show he believes in God.
• How reliable is he? You can't know without additional research. That honest "we'd need more evidence" answer is itself good historical thinking.

Purpose

• Brereton wrote because others were interested in his experiences in land that was new to them.
• Reliability check: he could be biased toward encouraging investment in colonization. A glowing travel report from someone who wants colonies funded should make you suspicious.

Audience

• Written for people in England who were looking for opportunities for success in the Americas.
• Because his audience wanted good news, the document likely emphasizes positive information.

Historical Context

• Produced in England in the early 17th century, when many people wanted to encourage and profit from new colonies.

Format and Limitations

• Format: a first-person narrative.
• Key limitation: the document says nothing about the indigenous people already living in the region. What a source leaves out can be as revealing as what it includes.

This is essentially the HIPP analysis (historical context, intended audience, point of view, purpose) you'll do on every DBQ document. Brereton is the practice run.

Analyzing a Secondary Source: Walter A. McDougall (2004)

The chapter's secondary source is from historian Walter A. McDougall's Freedom Just Around the Corner (2004). McDougall argues that English colonists came for diverse reasons: "For most the goal was material. . . . For some the goal was spiritual." His famous framing is that every colonist was "either hustlers or hustled." Either they knew the hardships ahead and were courageous, desperate, or faithful enough to face them anyway, or they were taken in by the propaganda of sponsors. All of them left a "swarming competitive country that heralded self-improvement but offered limited opportunities for it."

Content and Argument

• Main idea: English settlers came to America for diverse reasons, not one single motive.
• Supporting evidence: McDougall gives examples of both religious Puritans and profit-seeking adventurers as settlers.
• Challenging evidence: many people did not choose to come at all. Enslaved people and convicts were forced to settle in America, which complicates the "hustlers or hustled" framing.
• His interpretation: opportunities for prosperity and religious freedom were far greater in the colonies than in the Europe colonists left behind.

Point of View and Historiography

• McDougall wrote in 2004, long after the English colonies became the United States. The size and power of the modern US might have led him to focus on how the colonies lacked those traits.
• Another historian could view the same events differently, for example by emphasizing a single dominant factor instead of multiple factors.

That last point is the heart of historiography. Two trained historians, same events, different emphasis. When an exam question asks how interpretations differ, this is the kind of contrast it means.

How to Use Causation on the Exam

When a question asks you to "explain the effects of the development of transatlantic voyages from 1491 to 1607," structure your answer around cause-and-effect chains pulled from the whole unit. The chapter reviews Unit 1's big ideas, which map onto earlier AMSCO chapters:

• Native societies developed distinct, complex societies by adapting to and transforming diverse environments (agriculture, resource use, social structure).
• European expansion into the Western Hemisphere generated intense social, religious, political, and economic competition and changes within European societies. The motives behind that expansion are covered in European exploration in the Americas.
• The Columbian Exchange and the Spanish Empire produced extensive demographic, economic, and social changes, including the labor and caste systems covered in the Spanish colonial system notes.
• Europeans and Native Americans asserted divergent worldviews about religion, gender roles, family, land use, and power, the focus of cultural interactions in the Americas.

A strong causation response does three things: identifies multiple causes or effects, distinguishes short-term from long-term, and argues which one mattered most.

Key Terms to Know

Practice and Next Steps

Pair these notes with the Topic 1.7 Causation in Period 1 course study guide for the College Board framing, and browse the full set of AMSCO chapter notes to review the rest of Unit 1. To put the causation skill to work, try guided multiple-choice practice, then write a causation-focused response and get instant feedback with FRQ practice. The key terms glossary is a fast way to drill the vocabulary in the table above before a quiz.