Ben Franklin's World

Between 1763 and 1848, revolutions swept across four continents. We tend to remember three of them — the American, the French, and the Haitian Revolutions. But what about all the rest? And what connected them to each other? In this episode, we're bringing back our conversation with Janet Polasky, Presidential Professor of History Emerita at the University of New Hampshire and author of Revolutions Without Borders: The Call to Liberty in the Atlantic World, and Paul Mapp, Associate Professor of History at William & Mary, who helps us understand why historians are increasingly looking at the American Revolution through an international lens.Together, they reveal why the Age of Revolutions happened when it did, how the American Revolution fit within this larger Atlantic-wide moment of upheaval, and how revolutionary ideas traveled across borders through people, print, and rumor. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/165 RECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODES🎧 Episode 161: Smuggling and the American Revolution🎧 Episode 428: Canal Dreamers🎧 Episode 432: How France & Spain Helped Win American Independence🎧 Episode 433: Haiti, France, and the American War for Independence🎧 Episode 438: The American Revolution and the Fate of the WorldSUPPORT OUR WORK🎁 Make a Donation to Ben Franklin’s WorldREQUEST A TOPIC📨 Topic Request Form📫 [email protected] YOU'RE READY🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter 👩‍💻 Join the BFW Listener Community🌍 Join the History Explorers ClubTAKE THE QUIZ🧭 Discover How You Explore History (under 2 minutes)👉 https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/quizLISTEN 🎧🍎 Apple Podcasts 💚 Spotify 🎶 Amazon Music🛜 PandoraCONNECT🦋 Liz on Bluesky👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn🛜 Liz’s WebsiteSAY THANKS💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts💚 Leave a rating on Spotify*Book links are affiliate links. Every purchase supports the podcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What if the American Revolution didn't just create the United States, but also created Australia? Most of us learned about the Revolution as a story of thirteen North American colonies pushing back against a distant king. But this episode reveals something far wilder: a genuinely global war whose consequences rippled across every inhabited continent — reshaping empires, forcing migrations, and planting the seeds of more than a hundred declarations of independence that would follow over the next two and a half centuries. Joseph Adelman joins historian Richard Bell to explore the American Revolution as a world war. They discuss: Why the Declaration of Independence was really a Declaration of Interdependence How Hyder Ali, the Muslim ruler of Mysore in southern India, became George Washington's ally by the logic of wartime coalitions How Spain's campaign to recapture Florida tied down thousands of British troops How Britain's convict crisis, caused by losing access to Maryland and Virginia, led to the founding of Australia at Botany Bay. Rick's Website | Book |Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/438 EPISODE OUTLINE00:00:00  Introduction00:06:28 Differences in Perception of the American Revolution00:09:00 Reframing the Declaration of Independence00:17:32 Molly Brandt and Haudenosaunee Diplomacy00:24:38 Baron von Steuben: A Mercenary's Tale00:29:15 The American Revolution: Myth vs. Reality00:35:02 The American Revolution and Florida00:43:39 The American Revolution's Impact on India00:50:24 The Connection Between the American Revolution and Australia00:56:50 Themes of the American Revolution00:59:16 The Time Warp00:62:00 Conclusion RECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODES🎧 Episode 141: A Declaration in Draft🎧 Episode 163: The American Revolution in North America🎧 Episode 238: Benedict Arnold🎧 Episode 348: Valley Forge🎧 Episode 325: Everyday People of the American Revolution🎧 Episode 437: The Home FrontSUPPORT OUR WORK🎁 Make a Donation to Ben Franklin’s WorldREQUEST A TOPIC📨 Topic Request Form📫 [email protected] YOU'RE READY🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter 👩‍💻 Join the BFW Listener Community🌍 Join the History Explorers ClubTAKE THE QUIZ🧭 Discover How You Explore History (under 2 minutes)👉 https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/quizLISTEN 🎧🍎 Apple Podcasts 💚 Spotify 🎶 Amazon Music🛜 PandoraCONNECT🦋 Liz on Bluesky👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn🛜 Liz’s WebsiteSAY THANKS💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts💚 Leave a rating on Spotify*Book links are affiliate links. Every purchase supports the podcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In September 1777, just fourteen months after declaring independence, Philadelphia fell to the British Army. For nearly nine months, the new nation's capital was occupied territory. But what did that actually mean for the people who lived there?  Not the generals, not the Congress: ordinary Philadelphians who had to decide whether to flee or stay, share their homes with British officers, watch their fences get chopped up for firewood, and figure out which neighbors to trust when it was all over. In this episode, Aaron Sullivan, a professor of History at Rider University, George Boudreau, a public historian and Executive Director of the Ebenezer Maxwell Mansion Museum in Germantown, PA, and historical interpreter Kalela Williams, now the Director of the Virginia Center for the Book, take us inside occupied Philadelphia. Together, they reveal how a city that was never fully committed to independence experienced nine months of British rule, and what the occupation cost everyone who lived through it: Quaker women negotiating with soldiers at their back gates, merchants whose fortunes rose on British hard currency while their neighbors went hungry, and Black Philadelphians who looked at the upheaval and asked whether it might open a door to freedom. Plus: the most extravagant party thrown in eighteenth-century America, staged while the city's almshouses overflowed. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/332RECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODES🎧 Episode 050: Betsy Ross & the Making of America🎧 Episode 306: The Horse's Tail🎧 Episode 325: Everyday People of the American Revolution🎧 Episode 333: Life in Occupied Yorktown🎧 Episode 380: The Tory's Wife🎧 Episode 437: Civilian Life in America's Occupied CitiesSUPPORT OUR WORK🎁 Make a Donation to Ben Franklin’s WorldREQUEST A TOPIC📨 Topic Request Form📫 [email protected] YOU'RE READY🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter 👩‍💻 Join the BFW Listener Community🌍 Join the History Explorers ClubTAKE THE QUIZ🧭 Discover How You Explore History (under 2 minutes)👉 https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/quizLISTEN 🎧🍎 Apple Podcasts 💚 Spotify 🎶 Amazon Music🛜 PandoraCONNECT🦋 Liz on Bluesky👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn🛜 Liz’s WebsiteSAY THANKS💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts💚 Leave a rating on Spotify*Book links are affiliate links. Every purchase supports the podcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The British Army is at your door. They need a room. What do you do? For thousands of civilians living in cities occupied during the American War for Independence — Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Newport, Charleston, Savannah — this wasn't a hypothetical. It was a reality that upended daily life and revealed a side of the revolution we rarely talk about. Lauren Duval, author of The Home Front: Revolutionary Households, Military Occupations, and the Making of American Independence, joins us to explore what the War for Independence actually looked like from inside the household. Women who negotiated quartering terms and held their ground. Men who came to blows over who controlled the parlor. Enslaved people who used the chaos of occupation to reunite families and reach British lines. The revolution didn't just happen on battlefields. It happened at kitchen tables, in back gardens, and on doorsteps.Lauren's Website | Book |Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/403 EPISODE OUTLINE00:00:00  Introduction00:01:38  The Home Front of the American Revolution00:05:24  The Gensis of the Revolutionary Household00:10:49  Why Focus on Urban Port Cities00:19:46  The British Occupation's Impact on City Life00:25:55  Quartering a British Officer: The Drinker Household00:33:38. Quartering Experiences in Male-Headed Households00:39:22  Lower-Class Experiences During British Occupation00:40:55  The Impact of British Hard Currency on Urban Labor Markets00:44:21  Black Experiences During British Occupation00:51:21  The Overall American Experience of the War for Independence00:54:01. The Time Warp00:59:47 ConculsionRECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODES🎧 Episode 050: Betsy Ross & the Making of America🎧 Episode 175: The War in Ben Franklin's House🎧 Episode 306: The Horse's Tail🎧 Episode 332: Experiences of Revolution: Occupied Philadelphia🎧 Episode 333: Experiences of Revolution: Occupied Yorktown🎧 Episode 380: The Tory's WifeSUPPORT OUR WORK🎁 Make a Donation to Ben Franklin’s WorldREQUEST A TOPIC📨 Topic Request Form📫 [email protected] YOU'RE READY🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter 👩‍💻 Join the BFW Listener Community🌍 Join the History Explorers ClubTAKE THE QUIZ🧭 Discover How You Explore History (under 2 minutes)👉 https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/quizLISTEN 🎧🍎 Apple Podcasts 💚 Spotify 🎶 Amazon Music🛜 PandoraCONNECT🦋 Liz on Bluesky👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn🛜 Liz’s WebsiteSAY THANKS💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts💚 Leave a rating on Spotify*Book links are affiliate links. Every purchase supports the podcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

250 years ago, the British evacuated Boston: driven out by cannon that had traveled 300 miles from Fort Ticonderoga. But where did the plan for those cannons take shape?In this Revisited episode, we return to our conversation with Garrett Cloer, now Program Manager for Interpretation and Visitor Experience at Saratoga National Historical Park, to explore the Longfellow House–Washington's Headquarters National Historic Site in Cambridge, Massachusetts.This Georgian mansion served as George Washington's home and headquarters for nearly nine months during the Siege of Boston. In this house, Washington forged the Continental Army and plotted the moves that liberated the city. Garrett reveals the house's Loyalist origins, life inside during the siege, and how poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow later transformed it into a literary landmark.A companion to Episode 436 on Henry Knox's Noble Train of Artillery. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/194RECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODES🎧 Episode 112: The Tea Crisis of 1773🎧 Episode 228: The Boston Massacre🎧 Episode 296: The Boston Massacre: A Family History🎧 Episode 409: The Battles of Lexington & Concord🎧 Episode 413: Dr. Joseph Warren & the Battle of Bunker Hill🎧 Episode 436: Fort Ticonderoga & Henry Knox's Noble Train of ArtillerySUPPORT OUR WORK🎁 Make a Donation to Ben Franklin’s WorldREQUEST A TOPIC📨 Topic Request Form📫 [email protected] YOU'RE READY🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter 👩‍💻 Join the BFW Listener Community🌍 Join the History Explorers ClubTAKE THE QUIZ🧭 Discover How You Explore History (under 2 minutes)👉 https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/quizLISTEN 🎧🍎 Apple Podcasts 💚 Spotify 🎶 Amazon Music🛜 PandoraCONNECT🦋 Liz on Bluesky👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn🛜 Liz’s WebsiteSAY THANKS💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts💚 Leave a rating on Spotify*Book links are affiliate links. Every purchase supports the podcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On March 17, 1776, the British evacuated Boston, driven out by cannon hauled 300 miles through winter wilderness from a crumbling fort in upstate New York. Join Matthew Keagle, Curator at Fort Ticonderoga, as we trace the fort's dramatic history from its French origins in the Seven Years' War, its chaotic capture by Ethan Allen and Benedict Arnold in May 1775, and Henry Knox's legendary expedition to move nearly 60 tons of artillery to George Washington's army. Discover the logistics, rivalries, and resourcefulness behind one of the Revolution's most remarkable feats. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/436 EPISODE OUTLINE00:00:00  Introduction00:06:26 British Withdrawl from Boston00:07:55 Fort Ticonderoga's Origins00:25:05 British Capture of Fort Ticonderoga, 175600:28:04 British Improvements to Fort Ticonderoga00:32:44 American Capture of Fort Ticonderoga, 177500:49:06 Henry Knox's Expedition01:04:46 Cannon on Dorchester Heights01:10:36 British Evacuation of Boston01:13:43 Legacy of Knox's Noble Train of Artillery01:17:36 Visiting Fort Ticonderoga01:24:65 ConclusionRECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODES🎧 Episode 130: Paul Revere's Ride Through History🎧 Episode 194: Longfellow House-Washington's Headquarters, NHS🎧 Episode 238: Benedict Arnold🎧 Episode 296: The Boston Massacre: A Family History🎧 Episode 409: The Battles of Lexington & Concord🎧 Episode 413: Dr. Joseph Warren & the Battle of Bunker HillSUPPORT OUR WORK🎁 Make a Donation to Ben Franklin’s WorldREQUEST A TOPIC📨 Topic Request Form📫 [email protected] YOU'RE READY🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter 👩‍💻 Join the BFW Listener Community🌍 Join the History Explorers ClubTAKE THE QUIZ🧭 Discover How You Explore History (under 2 minutes)👉 https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/quizLISTEN 🎧🍎 Apple Podcasts 💚 Spotify 🎶 Amazon Music🛜 PandoraCONNECT🦋 Liz on Bluesky👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn🛜 Liz’s WebsiteSAY THANKS💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts💚 Leave a rating on Spotify*Book links are affiliate links. Every purchase supports the podcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In January 1776, Thomas Paine told the American colonies to break free from their king. But what was supposed to come next? 250 years later, that question still doesn't have a good answer. To mark the anniversary of *Common Sense*, we traveled to Lewes, England, the town where Paine lived before he ever set foot in America, and recorded our first-ever LIVE episode inside Bull House, the building where Paine honed his ideas about citizens and their government. Joseph Adelman chairs a panel with scholars Leanne O'Boyle, Nicole Mahoney, and Jeanne Sheehan Zaino as they dig into the legacy of *Common Sense*: democracy's "day two problem," the women Paine wrote out of his own story, why "the law is king" keeps showing up on protest signs, and what a 15th-century building in a small English town can teach us about where democratic ideas actually take root. Recorded live in partnership with the Institute for Thomas Paine Studies at Iona University.Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/435 EPISODE OUTLINE00:00:00 Introduction00:01:06 What Happened After the Revolution?00:02:59 Live from the Bull House in Lewes, England00:04:49 A Template for Common Sense and Civic Life00:07:12 Thomas Paine's Legacy in Lewes, England00:10:24 Thomas Paine's Legacy in New Rochelle, New York00:16:04 Democracy's "Day Two Problem"00:22:50 Local Civic Engagement in Lewes00:27:46 Women and Common Sense00:34:54 Paine's Family Life in Lewes00:35:31 Reconstituting Government00:42:44 Violence and Change00:49:31 "No Kings" Protest and 'The Law is King'00:56:29 Thomas Paine's Legacy00:58:10 Audience Q&A01:18:20 Episode Wrap-UpRECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODES🎧 Episode 144: The Common Cause of the American Revolution🎧 Episode 156: The Power of the Press in the American Revolution🎧 Episode 243: Revolutionary Print Networks🎧 Episode 287: Elections in Early America: Presidential Elections & the Electoral College🎧 Episode 431: Thomas Paine's Common Sense at 250SUPPORT OUR WORK🎁 Make a Donation to Ben Franklin’s WorldREQUEST A TOPIC📨 Topic Request Form📫 [email protected] YOU'RE READY🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter 👩‍💻 Join the BFW Listener Community🌍 Join the History Explorers ClubTAKE THE QUIZ🧭 Discover How You Explore History (under 2 minutes)👉 https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/quizLISTEN 🎧🍎 Apple Podcasts 💚 Spotify 🎶 Amazon Music🛜 PandoraCONNECT🦋 Liz on Bluesky👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn🛜 Liz’s WebsiteSAY THANKS💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts💚 Leave a rating on Spotify*Book links are affiliate links. Every purchase supports the podcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What would you fight for if you were free but still not equal? In 1777, brothers William and Benjamin Frank answered that question by enlisting in the Second Rhode Island Regiment of the Continental Army. Freeborn men of color, they gambled that military service would earn them what freedom alone had not: equality, land, and a better future. Historian Shirley Green, author of Revolutionary Blacks: Freeborn Men of Color, Soldiers of Independence, joins us to tell their story. Drawing on genealogical research rooted in her own family history, Green reveals what daily life looked like for free Black families in Revolutionary Rhode Island, how the Frank Brothers fought at the Battles of Red Bank, Monmouth, and Rhode Island, and how the Revolution ultimately divided them—one brother serving through Yorktown, the other crossing to the British side and resettling in Nova Scotia as a Black Loyalist. Their story is a window into the full range of Black experiences during the Revolution, and a reminder that for men like William and Benjamin Frank, choosing a side was never simple. It was a calculated gamble, shaped by promises made—and promises broken. Shirley’s Website | Book |Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/434 EPISODE OUTLINE00:00:00  Introduction00:01:19 The Frank Brothers' Revolutionary Choices00:05:14 Discovering the Frank Brothers Through Family Oral History00:09:01 Blending Genalogy and Microhistory00:15:22 Life for Free Black Families in Early Rhode Island00:20:50 Why Free Black Men Joined the Continental Army00:24:00 Motivations: Land, Pay, and Equality00:29:15 The Gamble of Military Service Amid Policy Shifts00:41:13 Daily Life and Combat in the Integrated Regiments00:44:46 Ben Frank's Desertion00:52:51 The Book of Negroes01:00:02 Postwar Outcomes: Did Promises of Land, Pay, and Equality Hold?01:02:47 Lessons from Black Soldiers' Experiences01:07:26 ConclusionRECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODES🎧 Episode 118: The Business of Slavery in Rhode Island🎧 Episode 157: African American Soldiers in the Continental Army🎧 Episode 301: From Inoculation to Vaccination, Part 1🎧 Episode 333: Disruptions in Yorktown🎧 Episode 348: Valley Forge🎧 Episode 413: Dr. Joseph Warren & the Battle of Bunker Hill🎧 Episode 424: Dunmore's Proclamation & the American Revolution in Virginia🎧 Episode 427: How States Are Planning the 250th of the American RevolutionSUPPORT OUR WORK🎁 Make a Donation to Ben Franklin’s WorldREQUEST A TOPIC📨 Topic Request Form📫 [email protected] YOU'RE READY🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter 👩‍💻 Join the BFW Listener Community🌍 Join the History Explorers ClubTAKE THE QUIZ🧭 Discover How You Explore History (under 2 minutes)👉 https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/quizLISTEN 🎧🍎 Apple Podcasts 💚 Spotify 🎶 Amazon Music🛜 PandoraCONNECT🦋 Liz on Bluesky👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn🛜 Liz’s WebsiteSAY THANKS💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts💚 Leave a rating on Spotify*Book links are affiliate links. Every purchase supports the podcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

More than 6,000 Black men—free and enslaved—served in the Continental Army during the American Revolution. Yet their stories remain some of the least told of the war. In this revisited episode, we rejoin Judith Van Buskirk, Professor Emerita of History at SUNY Cortland and author of Standing in Their Own Light: African American Patriots in the American Revolution, to explore what motivated African American men to fight for the Revolutionary cause, how the Continental Army's policies toward Black enlistment shifted over the course of the war, and what life and service looked like in units like the First Rhode Island Regiment.Judy's Book Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/403RECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODES🎧 Episode 016: The Internal Enemy🎧 Episode 118: The Business of Slavery in Rhode Island🎧 Episode 123: Revolutionary Allegiances🎧 Episode 433: Haiti, France, and the American War for Independence SUPPORT OUR WORK🎁 Make a Donation to Ben Franklin’s WorldREQUEST A TOPIC📨 Topic Request Form📫 [email protected] YOU'RE READY🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter 👩‍💻 Join the BFW Listener Community🌍 Join the History Explorers ClubTAKE THE QUIZ🧭 Discover How You Explore History (under 2 minutes)👉 https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/quizLISTEN 🎧🍎 Apple Podcasts 💚 Spotify 🎶 Amazon Music🛜 PandoraCONNECT🦋 Liz on Bluesky👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn🛜 Liz’s WebsiteSAY THANKS💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts💚 Leave a rating on Spotify*Book links are affiliate links. Every purchase supports the podcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What if the American Revolution was never just an American story? Historian Ronald Angelo Johnson helps us uncover the deep connections between the American and Haitian Revolutions to reveal how both revolutions emerged from the same Atlantic imperial struggle for empire, racialized power, and war. Using details from his book Entangled Alliances, Ron will guide us from the Treaty of Paris in 1763 to the Siege of Savannah in 1779, where hundreds of Black soldiers from French Saint Domingue landed on Georgia’s shores—not as enslaved laborers, but as uniformed volunteers ready to fight for American Independence. Ron's Website | Book |Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/433 EPISODE OUTLINE00:00:00  Introduction00:01:08  Episode Overview00:04:50 The Treaty of Paris 1763 and its Impact00:09:09 Consequences of the Seven Years' War for Saint Domingue00:18:39 Saint Domingue Society Post-Seven Years' War00:24:32 French Imperial Reaction vs. Local Resentment00:28:36 Circulation of News Between British North America & Saint Domingue00:39:22 France's Strategy to Assist American Revolutionaries00:50:42 Reception of the Chasseurs Volontaires Regiment in Georgia00:54:42 Re-evaluating the American Revolution00:57:32 Time Warp01:05:38 ConclusionRECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODES🎧 Episode 052: Diplomacy in Black and White🎧 Episode 151: Defining the American Revolution🎧 Episode 228: The Boston Massacre (King Street Riot)🎧 Episode 325: The Everyday People of the American Revolution🎧 Episode 361: The Fourth of July in 2026🎧 Episode 421: Loyalism & Revolution in Georgia🎧 Episode 432: How France & Spain Helped Win the American RevolutionSUPPORT OUR WORK🎁 Make a Donation to Ben Franklin’s WorldREQUEST A TOPIC📨 Topic Request Form📫 [email protected] YOU'RE READY🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter 👩‍💻 Join the BFW Listener Community🌍 Join the History Explorers ClubTAKE THE QUIZ🧭 Discover How You Explore History (under 2 minutes)👉 https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/quizLISTEN 🎧🍎 Apple Podcasts 💚 Spotify 🎶 Amazon Music🛜 PandoraCONNECT🦋 Liz on Bluesky👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn🛜 Liz’s WebsiteSAY THANKS💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts💚 Leave a rating on Spotify*Book links are affiliate links. Every purchase supports the podcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What does it take to become a revolutionary in more than one revolution? In this revisited conversation with Mike Duncan, we explore the life of the Marquis de Lafayette—an ambitious young Frenchman who crossed the Atlantic to fight for the American cause and later carried those lessons into the political storms of France. From early idealism to a complicated role in two upheavals, Lafayette’s story reveals how ideas, alliances, and personal relationships shaped the Age of Revolutions. You’ll hear how Lafayette became close to George Washington, what he learned in America, and why his legacy makes the most sense when you follow him across borders. Mike’s Instagram | Book |Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/313RECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODES🎧 Bonus: The Marquis de Lafayette & the Hermione🎧 Episode 071: Saratoga & Hubbardton, 1777🎧 Episode 203: Alexander Hamilton🎧 Episode 363: Ste. Genévieve National Historical Park🎧 Episode 365: 300 Years of French Settlment at Île Sait-Jean🎧 Episode 432: How France & Spain Helped Win the American RevolutionSUPPORT OUR WORK🎁 Make a Donation to Ben Franklin’s WorldREQUEST A TOPIC📨 Topic Request Form📫 [email protected] YOU'RE READY🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter 👩‍💻 Join the BFW Listener Community🌍 Join the History Explorers ClubTAKE THE QUIZ🧭 Discover How You Explore History (under 2 minutes)👉 https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/quizLISTEN 🎧🍎 Apple Podcasts 💚 Spotify 🎶 Amazon Music🛜 PandoraCONNECT🦋 Liz on Bluesky👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn🛜 Liz’s WebsiteSAY THANKS💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts💚 Leave a rating on Spotify*Book links are affiliate links. Every purchase supports the podcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The American Revolution wasn’t just a colonial rebellion; it was a global conflict shaped by European rivalries and high-stakes diplomacy. Without the help of foreign allies like France and Spain, the United States might never have won its independence. Historian John Ferling joins us to explore the international dimensions of the Revolutionary War. Drawing from his new book Shots Heard Round the World, Ferling reveals how secret aid, political gambles, and naval power from Europe (especially France) influenced the outcome of the war, and nearly derailed it. John’s Website | Book |Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/432 EPISODE OUTLINE00:01:06  Introduction00:01:52 Why European Powers Intervened00:08:02 International Interest in the American Revolution00:14:20 French Reaction to the Outbreak of War00:19:28 Initiation of Foreign Aid00:23:46 British Expectations of a Quick Victory00:25:35 Saratoga as a Turning Point00:31:46 French Naval and Military Support00:37:36 Spain's Ambitions and Entry into the War00:42:55 Britain's War Fatigue and Missed Opportunities00:51:31 Outcomes for France and Spain00:54:53 Time Warp00:59:20 ConclusionRECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODES🎧 Episode 046: The American Revolution and the War that Won It🎧 Episode 112: The Tea Crisis of 1773🎧 Episode 122: The Men Who Lost America🎧 Episode 208: Turning Points of the American Revolution🎧 Episode 313: The Marquis de Lafayette🎧 Episode 421: Loyalism & Revolution in GeorgiaSUPPORT OUR WORK🎁 Make a Donation to Ben Franklin’s WorldREQUEST A TOPIC📨 Topic Request Form📫 [email protected] YOU'RE READY🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter 👩‍💻 Join the BFW Listener Community🌍 Join the History Explorers ClubTAKE THE QUIZ🧭 Discover How You Explore History (under 2 minutes)👉 https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/quizLISTEN 🎧🍎 Apple Podcasts 💚 Spotify 🎶 Amazon Music🛜 PandoraCONNECT🦋 Liz on Bluesky👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn🛜 Liz’s WebsiteSAY THANKS💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts💚 Leave a rating on Spotify*Book links are affiliate links. Every purchase supports the podcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Before Common Sense could ignite a revolution, colonists had to be convinced they shared a cause worth fighting for. So how did Revolutionary leaders turn thirteen very different colonies into “Americans”—and what stories did they tell to make that unity feel real? In this Ben Franklin’s World Revisited episode, historian Robert Parkinson returns to explore how newspapers and wartime messaging helped forge the Revolution’s “common cause”—and how that campaign leaned on fear, race, and exclusion to build a new national identity. Rob’s Website | Book |Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/144 RECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODES🎧 Episode 016: The Internal Enemy🎧 Episode 122: The Men Who Lost America🎧 Episode 141: A Declaration in Draft🎧 Episode 243: Revolutionary Print Networks🎧 Episode 375: Misinformation Nation: Fake News in Early America🎧 Episode 431: Common Sense at 250: The Pamphlet That Sparked A RevolutionSUPPORT OUR WORK🎁 Make a Donation to Ben Franklin’s WorldREQUEST A TOPIC📨 Topic Request Form📫 [email protected] YOU'RE READY🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter 👩‍💻 Join the BFW Listener Community🌍 Join the History Explorers ClubTAKE THE QUIZ🧭 Discover How You Explore History (under 2 minutes)👉 https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/quizLISTEN 🎧🍎 Apple Podcasts 💚 Spotify 🎶 Amazon Music🛜 PandoraCONNECT🦋 Liz on Bluesky👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn🛜 Liz’s WebsiteSAY THANKS💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts💚 Leave a rating on Spotify*Book links are affiliate links. Every purchase supports the podcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Thomas Paine’s Common Sense turned a colonial rebellion into a full-blown revolution. But how did one pamphlet move so many minds in 1776—and why does it still matter 250 years later? To commemorate the 250th anniversary of Common Sense, historian and Director of the Institute for Thomas Paine Studies at Iona University, Nora Slonimsky, joins us to explore Paine’s life, the pamphlet’s explosive impact, and what this revolutionary text still teaches us about democracy, communication, and civic life. ITPS Website Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/403 EPISODE OUTLINE00:00:00  Introduction00:01:06 Thomas Pain's Early Life and Influences00:05:53 The Institute for Thomas Paine Studies00:07:51 Thomas Paine as an English Excise Man00:13:34 Paine's Ideas for Reform of the British Government00:19:27 Reception of Paine's First Pamphlet00:21:48 Paine's Intellectual Life in England00:27:30 Thomas Paine and Benjamin Franklin00:31:44 Paine's Migration to Philadelphia00:35:55 Paine's View of the American Revolution00:39:15 The Story of Common Sense00:50:34 Measuring the Reach of Common Sense00:59:34 The Legacy of Common Sense and Thomas Paine01:02:54 Time Warp01:05:02 Commemorating the 250th Anniversary of Common Sense01:08:17 ConclusionRECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODES🎧 Episode 127: American Enlightenments🎧 Episode 141: A Declaration in Draft🎧 Episode 144: The Common Cause🎧 Episode 156: The Power of the Press in the American Revolution🎧 Episode 243: Revolutionary Print Networks🎧 Episode 394: The Pursuit of HappinessSUPPORT OUR WORK🎁 Make a Donation to Ben Franklin’s WorldREQUEST A TOPIC📨 Topic Request Form📫 [email protected] YOU'RE READY🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter 👩‍💻 Join the BFW Listener Community🌍 Join the History Explorers ClubTAKE THE QUIZ🧭 Discover How You Explore History (under 2 minutes)👉 https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/quizLISTEN 🎧🍎 Apple Podcasts 💚 Spotify 🎶 Amazon Music🛜 PandoraCONNECT🦋 Liz on Bluesky👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn🛜 Liz’s WebsiteSAY THANKS💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts💚 Leave a rating on Spotify*Book links are affiliate links. Every purchase supports the podcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Common Sense didn’t just make an argument for independence—it moved through a world of newspapers, pamphlets, and personal networks that carried revolutionary ideas from one doorstep to the next. So how did political news travel in 1776, and what made print such a powerful engine of persuasion? As we approach the 250th anniversary of Common Sense, Ben Franklin’s World Revisited returns to Episode 156 to explore how early Americans shared, debated, and embraced revolutionary ideas. You’ll discover how print and networks spread the Revolution, what made Common Sense a publishing phenomenon, and how media shaped political debate and public opinion. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/156RECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODES🎧 Episode 091: Rumors, Legends, and Hoaxes in Early America🎧 Episode 153: Committees and Congresses: Governments of the American Revolution🎧 Episode 144: The Common Cause🎧 Episode 243: Revolutionary Print Networks🎧 Episode 375: Misinformation Nation: Fake News in Early America🎧 Episode 428: America's Forgotten Quest to Link Two OceansSUPPORT OUR WORK🎁 Make a Donation to Ben Franklin’s WorldREQUEST A TOPIC📨 Topic Request Form📫 [email protected] YOU'RE READY🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter 👩‍💻 Join the BFW Listener Community🌍 Join the History Explorers ClubTAKE THE QUIZ🧭 Discover How You Explore History (under 2 minutes)👉 https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/quizLISTEN 🎧🍎 Apple Podcasts 💚 Spotify 🎶 Amazon Music🛜 PandoraCONNECT🦋 Liz on Bluesky👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn🛜 Liz’s WebsiteSAY THANKS💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts💚 Leave a rating on Spotify*Book links are affiliate links. Every purchase supports the podcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Benjamin Rush was one of early America’s most fascinating figures. He was a signer of the Declaration of Independence, a leading Philadelphia physician, and a thinker who believed that a healthy body was the foundation of a healthy republic. In this episode, historian Sarah Naramore, author of Benjamin Rush, Civic Health and Human Illness in the Early American Republic, introduces us to Rush as both doctor and political philosopher. We’ll explore: How Rush developed an “American system” of medicine His groundbreaking ideas on mental health and addiction And why he believed the human body modeled the ideal form of government. Rush may be what Sarah calls a “B-list Founding Father,” but his influence on early American science, politics, and public health was anything but minor. Sarah’s Website | Book |Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/430 EPISODE OUTLINE00:00:00  Introduction00:01:06 Episode Introduction00:04:48 Who Was Benjamin Rush00:13:52 Benjamin Rush's Medical Practice00:17:01 The American System of Medicine00:22:30 Rush's Ideas about Civic Health00:29:07 Rush's Approach to Mental Health00:33:53 Rush's Views on Addiction00:48:00 Rush's Legacy00:52:13 Time Warp00:55:00 ConclusionRECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODES🎧 Episode 174: Yellow Fever in the Early American Republic🎧 Episode 193: Partisans: The Friendship & Rivalry of Adams & Jefferson🎧 Episode 263: The Medical Imagination🎧 Episode 279: Benjamin Rush, Founding Father🎧 Episode 301: From Inoculation to Vaccination, Part 1🎧 Episode 302: From Inoculation to Vaccination, Part 2SUPPORT OUR WORK🎁 Make a Donation to Ben Franklin’s WorldREQUEST A TOPIC📨 Topic Request Form📫 [email protected] YOU'RE READY🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter 👩‍💻 Join the BFW Listener Community🌍 Join the History Explorers ClubLISTEN 🎧🍎 Apple Podcasts 💚 Spotify 🎶 Amazon Music🛜 PandoraCONNECT🦋 Liz on Bluesky👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn🛜 Liz’s WebsiteSAY THANKS💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts💚 Leave a rating on Spotify*Book links are affiliate links. Every purchase supports the podcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

British officials had a problem: Their American colonists wouldn't stop smuggling. Even after Parliament slashed tea prices and passed laws to make legal imports cheaper, colonists kept buying Dutch and French goods on the black market. So what was really going on? If it wasn't just about saving money, what drove thousands of merchants and consumers to risk fines, seizure, and worse? In this revisited episode, we follow the illicit trade networks that connected colonial port cities to the "Golden Rock,” Sint Eustatius, a tiny Dutch island that became the Atlantic World's busiest smuggling hub. You'll discover why American merchants risked everything to trade there, how these underground networks shaped revolutionary resistance, and what Britain's crackdown on smuggling reveals about the deeper economic and political tensions that ignited the Revolution. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/161 RECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODES🎧 Episode 021: Smuggling in Colonial America & Living History🎧 Episode 112: The Tea Crisis of 1773🎧 Episode 121: The Dutch Moment in the 17th-Century Atlantic World🎧 Episode 159: Dangerous Economies🎧 Episode 160: The Politics of Tea🎧 Episode 288: Smugglers & Pirates in the 18th-Century Atlantic WorldSUPPORT OUR WORK🎁 Make a Donation to Ben Franklin’s WorldREQUEST A TOPIC📨 Topic Request Form📫 [email protected] YOU'RE READY🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter 👩‍💻 Join the BFW Listener Community🌍 Join the History Explorers ClubLISTEN 🎧🍎 Apple Podcasts 💚 Spotify 🎶 Amazon Music🛜 PandoraCONNECT🦋 Liz on Bluesky👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn🛜 Liz’s WebsiteSAY THANKS💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts💚 Leave a rating on Spotify*Book links are affiliate links. Every purchase supports the podcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Think the Boston Tea Party made America a coffee-drinking nation? Historian Michelle McDonald reveals the truth: colonists were already choosing coffee over tea because it was cheaper. Michelle Craig McDonald, the Librarian/Director of the Library & Museum at the American Philosophical Society and author of Coffee Nation: How One Commodity Transformed the Early United States, explains how coffee shaped American identity long before the Revolution. You'll hear about Revolutionary-era women storming a Boston warehouse to seize hoarded coffee and sell it at regulated prices. You'll discover why Parliament protected coffee while taxing tea. And you'll learn how enslaved Caribbean laborers made America's favorite beverage possible. From colonial coffee houses to debates about caffeine addiction in the early republic, discover how one imported commodity became distinctly American. Michelle's Website | Book |Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/429 EPISODE OUTLINE 00:00:00  Introduction 00:03:20  Meet our Guest  00:04:35  Coffee vs. Tea in Early America 00:06:50  Coffeehouses and How Coffee Was Served 00:08:04  Medical Concerns About Coffee 00:09:12  Coffee Production 00:12:35  Attempts to Grow Coffee in North America 00:14:04 The Use of Enslaved Labor in Coffee Cultivation 00:19:50 The Early American Market for Coffee 00:22:21  Early American Coffee Connoisseurs 00:29:57  Early American Coffeehouses 00:34:48  Coffee and the American Revolution 00:36:40 The Boston Coffee Riot, 1777 00:42:48 Coffee in the Early Republic 00:45:00 Coffee and the Haitian Revolution 00:47:53 Early Republic Attempts to Grow Coffee 00:50:55 Early Republic Coffee Culture 00:53:56 Time Warp 00:58:31 Conclusion RECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODES🎧 Episode 160: The Politics of Tea🎧 Episode 161: Smuggling and the American Revolution🎧 Episode 288: Smugglers & Patriots in the 18th-Century Atlantic World🎧 Episode 294: 1774, The Long Year of American Revolution🎧 Episode 319: Cuba: An Early American History🎧 Episode 401: Tea, Boycotts, & Revolution SUPPORT OUR WORK🎁 Make a Donation to Ben Franklin’s WorldREQUEST A TOPIC📨 Topic Request Form📫 [email protected] YOU'RE READY🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter 👩‍💻 Join the BFW Listener Community🌍 Join the History Explorers ClubLISTEN 🎧🍎 Apple Podcasts 💚 Spotify 🎶 Amazon Music🛜 PandoraCONNECT🦋 Liz on Bluesky👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn🛜 Liz’s WebsiteSAY THANKS💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts💚 Leave a rating on Spotify*Book links are affiliate links. Every purchase supports the podcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the 1820s, American entrepreneurs, engineers, and politicians dared to dream big. They believed they could cut a canal, not through Panama, but through the wild, rain-soaked terrain of Nicaragua. Their goal: To link the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans and transform global trade forever. But what inspired these ambitious "canal dreamers?” And why did they believe Nicaragua held the key to controlling the future of commerce?  Jessica Lepler, Associate Professor of History at the University of New Hampshire and author of Canal Dreamers: The Epic Quest to Connect the Atlantic and Pacific in the Age of Revolutions, joins us to explore this nearly forgotten story of innovation, illusion, and international ambition in early American history. Jessica’s Website | Book Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/428 EPISODE OUTLINE00:01:00  Introduction00:04:05 Desire to Build a Canal Across Central America00:08:01 Political Landscape of Central America During the 1820s00:09:55 Creating a Stable Central American Government00:11:55 Geography of the Nicaraguan Canal Route00:16:03 Economic Opportunities of an Interoceanic Canal00:17:57 Individual vs. State Interest in a Nicaraguan Canal00:21:58 Why Americans Sought A Private Canal Contract00:26:44 Information Canal Dreamers Relied On to Build a Canal00:33:12 Competitive Advantages of American Canal Dreamers00:35:40 American Surveys of a Central American Canal Route00:39:12 Influence of the Erie Canal00:42:32 Why the Nicaraguan Canal Failed00:44:50 What Canal Dreamers Reveal About the Early United States 0046:40 Overview of the Panama Canal00:49:50 Time Warp00:56:00 ConclusionRECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODES🎧 Episode 028: Building the Erie Canal🎧 Episode 090: The Age of American Revolutions🎧 Episode 113: Building the Empire State🎧 Episode 165: The Age of Revolutions🎧 Episode 186: The New Map of Empire🎧 Episode 329: Freemasonry in Early AmericaSUPPORT OUR WORK🎁 Make a Donation to Ben Franklin’s WorldREQUEST A TOPIC📨 Topic Request Form📫 [email protected] YOU'RE READY🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter 👩‍💻 Join the BFW Listener Community🌍 Join the History Explorers ClubLISTEN 🎧🍎 Apple Podcasts 💚 Spotify 🎶 Amazon Music🛜 PandoraCONNECT🦋 Liz on Bluesky👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn🛜 Liz’s WebsiteSAY THANKS💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts💚 Leave a rating on Spotify*Book links are affiliate links. Every purchase supports the podcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As we look ahead to the 250th anniversary—the semiquincentennial—of the Declaration of Independence in 2026, communities and commissions across the United States are asking big questions: How should we commemorate this historic milestone?
What’s the right balance between celebration and education? And how can this moment bring people together across political divides, generational gaps, and complex histories? To explore these questions, I’ve invited my friend, colleague, and Clio Digital Media co-founder Karin Wulf to guest host a special conversation with two people who are leading the way: Gregg Amore, Chair of the Rhode Island 250 Commission, and Carly Fiorina, Chair of the Virginia 250 Commission. Together, they reveal how their states are planning commemorative programs that center civic engagement, local storytelling, and inclusive history—and how the 250th can be more than a moment. It can be a spark. Karin’s Website | Book |Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/427 EPISODE OUTLINE00:00:00  Introduction00:01:10  Welcome & Episode Overview00:04:45  Guest Introductions00:07:32 Virginia & Rhode Island's Commemorative Plans00:11:21 State Efforts and Collaborations00:16:32 Engaging Young People00:20:11 Educational Initiatives00:22:13 Ken Burns's The American Revolution00:24:30 Navigating the Political Climate00:32:05 Reflections on the Bicentennial00:35:00 Challenges to Achieving Commemorative Goals00:42:51 Conclusion and Future Opportunities00:46:53 Final ThoughtsRECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODES🎧 Episode 250: Virginia, 1619🎧 Episode 373: The Gaspee Affair🎧 Episode 417: Roger Williams, Rogue Puritan🎧 Episode 416: Lineage: Genealogy in Early America🎧 Episode 424: Dunmore's Proclamation & the American Revolution in Virginia🎧 Episode 425: Ken Burns's The American RevolutionSUPPORT OUR WORK🎁 Make a Donation to Ben Franklin’s WorldREQUEST A TOPIC📨 Topic Request Form📫 [email protected] YOU'RE READY🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter 👩‍💻 Join the BFW Listener Community🌍 Join the History Explorers ClubLISTEN 🎧🍎 Apple Podcasts 💚 Spotify 🎶 Amazon Music🛜 PandoraCONNECT🦋 Liz on Bluesky👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn🛜 Liz’s WebsiteSAY THANKS💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts💚 Leave a rating on Spotify*Book links are affiliate links. Every purchase supports the podcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Each November, we Americans come together to celebrate Thanksgiving, a holiday that invites us to reflect on gratitude, community, and the stories we tell about our past. But what do we really know about the origins of this holiday? What did the “First Thanksgiving” look like, and who were the people who made it happen? In honor of Thanksgiving, we’re revisiting our 2018 conversation with Rebecca Fraser, author of The Mayflower: The Families, The Voyage, and the Founding of America. This rich conversation offers a look at the English Separatists or Pilgrims who settled in Massachusetts. It explores who they were, why they came to North America, and what their life was like in the early years of Plymouth Colony. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/213RECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODES🎧 Episode 095: A Tale of Two Bostons🎧 Episode 104: The Saltwater Frontier🎧 Episode 121: The Dutch Moment in the 17th-Century Atlantic World🎧 Episode 182: The Great Awakening in New England🎧 Episode 290: The World of the Wampanoag, Part 1🎧 Episode 291: The World of the Wampanoag, Part 2SUPPORT OUR WORK🎁 Make a Donation to Ben Franklin’s WorldREQUEST A TOPIC📨 Topic Request Form📫 [email protected] YOU'RE READY🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter 👩‍💻 Join the BFW Listener Community🌍 Join the History Explorers ClubLISTEN 🎧🍎 Apple Podcasts 💚 Spotify 🎶 Amazon Music🛜 PandoraCONNECT🦋 Liz on Bluesky👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn🛜 Liz’s WebsiteSAY THANKS💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts💚 Leave a rating on Spotify*Book links are affiliate links. Every purchase supports the podcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As Thanksgiving approaches, many Americans are gathering to reflect on gratitude, family—and of course—food. It's the time of year when we may think about the so-called "First Thanksgiving" and imagine scenes of Pilgrims and Native peoples gathering in Massachusetts to share in the bounty of their fall harvests. But how much do we really know about the food systems and agricultural knowledge of Indigenous peoples of North America? In what ways were the Wampanoag people able to contribute to this harvest celebration—and what have we gotten wrong about their story? Michael Wise, Associate Professor of History at the University of North Texas and author of Native Foods: Agriculture, Indigeneity, and Settler Colonialism in American History, joins us to challenge four persistent myths about Indigenous food practices. Discover how Native communities shaped and stewarded the land and its agriculture long before European colonists arrived—and why this history matters more than we might think. Michael’s Website | Book |Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/426 EPISODE OUTLINE00:00:00  Introduction00:01:10  Episode Introduction00:03:43 Guest Introduction00:04:30 Myths about Indigenous Agriculture00:11:29  Indigenous and European Gender Roles00:15:56 Wampanoag Agriculture00:17:29 Wampanoag Corn Cultivation00:25:59 Wampanoag Cuisine00:27:52 Indigenous Disspossession in New England00:32:58 Cherokee Agriculture00:37:13 The Cherokee Hunter Myth00:40:53 The Origin of the Myths about Native American Agriculture00:45:40 Future Projects00:47:13 Closing Thoughts & Resources RECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODES🎧 Episode 131: Thomas Jefferson's Empire of Liberty🎧 Episode 189: The Little Ice Age🎧 Episode 278: Polygamy: An Early American History🎧 Episode 290: The World of the Wampanoag, Pt 1🎧 Episode 291: The World of the Wampanoag, Pt 2🎧 Episode 323: American Expansion and the Political Economy of Plunder SUPPORT OUR WORK🎁 Make a Donation to Ben Franklin’s World REQUEST A TOPIC📨 Topic Request Form📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter👩‍💻 BFW Listener Community🌍 The History Explorers Club  LISTEN 🎧🍎 Apple Podcasts 💚 Spotify 🎶 Amazon Music🛜 Pandora CONNECT🦋 Liz on Bluesky👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts💚 Leave a rating on Spotify*Book links are affiliate links. Every purchase supports the podcast. = Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What does it take to bring the American Revolution to life? How can an event that took place 250 years ago be conveyed to us through modern-day film? Ken Burns and his team worked to answer these questions in their new, epic six-part documentary, Ken Burns’ The American Revolution. Their work promises to deepen, complicate, and transform our understanding of the Revolution over 12 hours of film. But how did Burns and his team make this film? What stories did they choose to tell? And what challenges did they face in telling those stories? Sarah Botstein and David Schmidt, the two co-directors of Ken Burns’ The American Revolution, join us for a behind-the-scenes tour of their film and how they made it. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/425 EPISODE OUTLINE00:00:00  Introduction00:03:09 Guest Introduction00:04:42 Becoming Involved in the Documentary00:07:57 Approach to Telling the Story of the Revolution 00:18:57 Images and Representation00:21:53 Challenges Faced00:27:03 Choosing Which Stories to Include00:39:00 Relevance and Meaning of the Revolution00:45:45 Time Warp00:52:15 Conclusion RECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODES🎧 Episode 307: History and the American Revolution🎧 Episode 314: Native Americans in Early American Cities🎧 Episode 327: Ken Burns' Benjamin Franklin🎧 Episode 352: James Forten and the Making of the United States🎧 Episode 382: Hessians🎧 Episode 408: The Memory of 1776 SUPPORT OUR WORK🎁 Make a Donation to Ben Franklin’s World REQUEST A TOPIC📨 Topic Request Form📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter👩‍💻 BFW Listener Community🌍 The History Explorers Club  LISTEN 🎧🍎 Apple Podcasts 💚 Spotify 🎶 Amazon Music🛜 Pandora CONNECT🦋 Liz on Bluesky👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts💚 Leave a rating on Spotify*Book links are affiliate links. Every purchase supports the podcast.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In November 1775, as tensions between the British Empire and its rebellious colonies continued to escalate, Virginia’s royal governor made a radical—and to some, terrifying—proclamation: Any enslaved person who fled a revolutionary enslaver and joined the British Army would gain their freedom. Known to history as Dunmore’s Proclamation, this single decree changed the course of the American Revolution in the South. It offered a lifeline to thousands of enslaved men, women, and their families, ignited fierce debates about loyalty and liberty, and revealed deep contradictions at the heart of a revolution that claimed to fight for freedom. In honor of the 250th anniversary of Lord Dunmore’s Proclamation, we’re taking a deeper look at the man behind it: John Murray, Fourth Earl of Dunmore, and at the Revolution in Virginia, which he helped fuel. Our guide for this exploration is Andrew Lawler, an award-winning journalist and author of A Perfect Frenzy: A Royal Governor, His Black Allies, and the Crisis that Spurred the American Revolution. Andrew's Website | Book |Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/424 RECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODES🎧 Episode 109: The American Enlightenment & Cadwallader Colden🎧 Episode 162: Dunmore's New World🎧 Episode 252: The Highland Soldier in North America🎧 Episode 322: Running From Bondage in Revolutionary America🎧 Episode 333: Disruptions in Yorktown🎧 Episode 398: The Shawnee-Dunmore War, 1774SUPPORT OUR WORK🎁 Make a Donation to Ben Franklin’s WorldREQUEST A TOPIC📨 Topic Request Form📫 [email protected] YOU'RE READY🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter👩‍💻 BFW Listener Community🌍 The History Explorers Club LISTEN 🎧🍎 Apple Podcasts 💚 Spotify 🎶 Amazon Music🛜 PandoraCONNECT🦋 Liz on Bluesky👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn🛜 Liz’s WebsiteSAY THANKS💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts💚 Leave a rating on Spotify*Book links are affiliate links. Every purchase supports the podcast. = Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What did it take to end the War for Independence? When we think of the American Revolution’s final chapter, we think of the Siege of Yorktown. Between September 28 and October 19, 1781, British forces endured a siege by the Franco-American forces that ultimately led to a triumphant Franco-American victory, British recognition of American independence, and the birth of a new nation. But the real story of the Yorktown victory is far more layered. It involved international alliances, enslaved people seeking freedom, and years of hardship. Today, we’re revisiting the events of October 1781 as we revisit Episode 333. In this episode, we join three historians–Marcus Nevius, Ed Ayers, and Gretchen Johnson– who help us uncover: How American, French, and British forces converged at Yorktown The vital role of the French army and navy in securing victory And what this final battle looked like on the ground for soldiers, civilians, and Black Virginians alike Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/333 EPISODE OUTLINE00:00:00  Introduction00:03:59 Siege of Yorktown00:05:13 The British Military Approach00:08:50 The Importance of Virginia's Regions00:18:57 The Impact of War on Yorktown00:28:03 Dunmore's Proclamation and the British Strategy00:33:44 The British Invasion of Virginia00:48:00 Aftermath and Legacy00:55:49 ConclusionRECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODES🎧 Episode 162: Dunmore's New World🎧 Episode 208: Turning Points of the American Revolution🎧 Episode 250: Virginia, 1619🎧 Episode 289: Maroonage in the Great Dismal Swamp🎧 Episode 306: The Horse's Tail🎧 Episode 332: Occupied PhiladelphiaSUPPORT OUR WORK🎁 Make a Donation to Ben Franklin’s WorldREQUEST A TOPIC📨 Topic Request Form📫 [email protected] YOU'RE READY🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter👩‍💻 BFW Listener Community🌍 The History Explorers Club LISTEN 🎧🍎 Apple Podcasts 💚 Spotify 🎶 Amazon Music🛜 PandoraCONNECT🦋 Liz on Bluesky👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn🛜 Liz’s WebsiteSAY THANKS💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts💚 Leave a rating on Spotify*Book links are affiliate links. Every purchase supports the podcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Have you ever noticed how conversations about the American Revolution often center on great battles, founding documents, and famous statesmen? What if, instead, we explored that world through the eyes—and the hands—of everyday people who shaped it through art? Zara Anishanslin, Associate Professor of History and Art History at the University of Delaware and Director of its Museum Studies and Public Engagement Program, joins us to uncover the hidden world of artists, artisans, and makers who painted, stitched, and crafted the Revolution into being. Drawing from her book The Painter’s Fire: A Forgotten History of the Artists Who Championed the American Revolution, Zara helps us see how creativity and craftsmanship tell a fuller—and more human—story of America’s founding.Zara’s Website | Book |Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/423  EPISODE OUTLINE 00:00:00  Introduction 00:41.79  Welcome & Episode Overview 00:02:59  Meet Our Guest 00:07:11  The Transatlantic Network of Revolutionary Artists 00:11:28  Why Revolutionary Artwork Didn't Survive 00:14:13  Prince Demah & His Mother Daphny 00:21:21  How Art Patronage Worked in the 18th Century 00:24:01  Finding Prince Demah a Teacher in London 00:27:40  Life as a Black Artist in London 00:41:22  Prince Demah's Life in Revolutionary Boston 00:49:24  Robert Edge Pine: The English Artist Who Supported America 00:59:24  How Revolutionary Art Differs from Later Commemorative Art 01:04:55  What Artists Reveal About the Revolution 01:07:29  Closing Thoughts & Resources RECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODES🎧 Episode 084: How Historians Read Historical Sources🎧 Episode 106: The World of John Singleton Copley🎧 Episode 201: Art, Politics, and Everyday Life in Early America🎧 Episode 299: Colonial Virginia Portraits🎧 Episode 390: Objects of Revolution🎧 Episode 422: Plantation GoodsSUPPORT OUR WORK🎁 Make a Donation to Ben Franklin’s WorldREQUEST A TOPIC📨 Topic Request Form📫 [email protected] YOU'RE READY🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter👩‍💻 BFW Listener Community🌍 The History Explorers Club LISTEN 🎧🍎 Apple Podcasts 💚 Spotify 🎶 Amazon Music🛜 PandoraCONNECT🦋 Liz on Bluesky👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn🛜 Liz’s WebsiteSAY THANKS💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts💚 Leave a rating on Spotify*Book links are affiliate links. Every purchase supports the podcast.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What does it mean to be caught between two worlds? Between loyalty and liberty, artistry and commerce, and between the British North American colonies and the British Empire? We’re revisiting our exploration of the life of John Singleton Copley, one of early America’s most celebrated portrait artists. Copley’s story reveals much about the upheaval of the American Revolution and the choices people made as events unfolded around them.Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/106 RECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODES🎧 Bonus: The Boston Stamp Act Riots of 1765🎧 Episode 075: How Archives Work (Paul Revere)🎧 Episode 084: How Historians Read Historical Sources🎧 Episode 136: Material Culture and the Making of America🎧 Episode 201: Art, Politics, and Everyday Life in Early America🎧 Episode 299: Colonial Virginia PortraitsSUPPORT OUR WORK🎁 Make a Donation to Ben Franklin’s WorldREQUEST A TOPIC📨 Topic Request Form📫 [email protected] YOU'RE READY🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter👩‍💻 BFW Listener Community🌍 The History Explorers Club LISTEN 🎧🍎 Apple Podcasts 💚 Spotify 🎶 Amazon Music🛜 PandoraCONNECT🦋 Liz on Bluesky👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn🛜 Liz’s WebsiteSAY THANKS💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts💚 Leave a rating on Spotify*Book links are affiliate links. Every purchase supports the podcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When we talk about slavery in Early America, we often focus on plantations: their large, fertile fields, their cash crops, and the people who labored on those fields to produce those cash crops under conditions of enslavement. But what about the ordinary objects that made slavery work? The shoes, axes, cloth, and hoes? What can these everyday objects reveal about the economic and social systems that sustained slavery in the early United States?  Seth Rockman, a Professor of History at Brown University and author of Plantation Goods: A Material History of Slavery, which was a finalist for the 2025 Pulitzer Prize in History, joins us to rethink how Northern manufacturing, labor, and commerce were entangled with the southern slave economy. Seth’s Website | Book |Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/422 RECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODES🎧 Bonus: Lonnie Bunch: History & Historians in the Public🎧 Episode 084: How Historians Read Historical Sources🎧 Episode 244: Shoe Stories from Early America🎧 Episode 281: The Business of Slavery🎧 Episode 390: Objects of Revolution🎧 Episode 406: Threads of PowerSUPPORT OUR WORK🎁 Make a Donation to Ben Franklin’s WorldREQUEST A TOPIC📨 Topic Request Form📫 [email protected] YOU'RE READY🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter👩‍💻 BFW Listener Community🌍 The History Explorers Club LISTEN 🎧🍎 Apple Podcasts 💚 Spotify 🎶 Amazon Music🛜 PandoraCONNECT🦋 Liz on Bluesky👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn🛜 Liz’s WebsiteSAY THANKS💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts💚 Leave a rating on Spotify*Book links are affiliate links. Every purchase supports the podcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When we picture the early United States, we often imagine a young nation fighting for political independence. But what about economic independence—and what did it take to achieve it? Historian Lindsay Schakenbach Regele of Miami University in Ohio joins us to explore how manufacturing became central to the nation's post-Revolution identity. Drawing from her book Manufacturing Advantage: War, the State, and the Origins of American Industry, 1776–1848, Lindsay reveals how the federal government championed industries like firearms and textiles as tools of sovereignty, security, and self-reliance. Tune in to discover: Why early leaders saw manufacturing as essential to independence. 2. How state-sponsored factories shaped key sectors like arms and textiles. 3. How these efforts laid the foundation for America’s industrial and social transformation This episode sheds light on the surprising role of government in jumpstarting the U.S. economy. Lindsay’s Website | Book |Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/298 RECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODES🎧 Episode 098: Birth of the American Tax Man🎧 Episode 113: Building the Empire State🎧 Episode 140: Nathaniel Bowditch🎧 Episode 281: The Business of Slavery🎧 Episode 292: Craft SUPPORT OUR WORK🎁 Make a Donation to Ben Franklin’s WorldREQUEST A TOPIC📨 Topic Request Form📫 [email protected] YOU'RE READY🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter👩‍💻 BFW Listener Community🌍 The History Explorers Club LISTEN 🎧🍎 Apple Podcasts 💚 Spotify 🎶 Amazon Music🛜 PandoraCONNECT🦋 Liz on Bluesky👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn🛜 Liz’s WebsiteSAY THANKS💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts💚 Leave a rating on Spotify*Book links are affiliate links. Every purchase supports the podcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What if loyalty, not rebellion, was the default position in revolutionary British North America? It’s easy to forget that before 1776, most colonists identified as proud Britons. They didn’t see themselves as future Americans or revolutionaries; they saw themselves as subjects of a global empire. And in the colony of Georgia, many clung to that identity longer than we might expect. Greg Brooking, a historian of the American Revolution in the South and a high school history and social studies teacher, joins us to explore the American Revolution in Georgia with details from his book From Empire to Revolution: Sir James Wright and the Price of Loyalty in Georgia. Greg’s Website | Book |Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/421 RECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODES🎧 Episode 126: The Reintegration of American Loyalists🎧 Episode 171: Native Americans, British Colonists, and Trade in North America🎧 Episode 280: The British Are Coming🎧 Episode 409: The Battles of Lexington & Concord, 1775🎧 Episode 413: Dr. Joseph Warren & the Battle of Bunker Hill SUPPORT OUR WORK🎁 Make a Donation to Ben Franklin’s World REQUEST A TOPIC📨 Topic Request Form📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter👩‍💻 BFW Listener Community🌍 The History Explorers Club  LISTEN 🎧🍎 Apple Podcasts 💚 Spotify 🎶 Amazon Music🛜 Pandora CONNECT🦋 Liz on Bluesky👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts💚 Leave a rating on Spotify*Book links are affiliate links. Every purchase supports the podcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When we think of the American Revolution, we often focus on the patriots who fought for independence. But what about the Loyalists—those who chose to remain faithful to the British crown? In this episode, we revisit a thought-provoking conversation with historian Brad Jones of Fresno State University, author of Resisting Independence: Popular Loyalism in the Revolutionary British Atlantic. Brad challenges the long-held view of Loyalists as passive or fearful, instead revealing Loyalism as a vibrant political identity shaped by faith, governance, and a broader sense of British belonging.  Listen as we explore: Why the Revolution was also a civil war among neighbors. How Protestantism influenced Loyalist thought. What loyalty meant across the diverse communities of the British Atlantic.  This episode offers a deeper, more nuanced view of the Revolution—and the people who resisted it.Brad’s Website | Book |Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/330 RECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODES🎧 Episode 119: The Heart of the Declaration🎧 Episode 122: The Men Who Lost America🎧 Episode 151: Defining the American Revolution🎧 Episode 232: The Acadian Diaspora🎧 Episode 238: Benedict Arnold🎧 Episode 306: The Horse's Tail SUPPORT OUR WORK🎁 Make a Donation to Ben Franklin’s World REQUEST A TOPIC📨 Topic Request Form📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter👩‍💻 BFW Listener Community🌍 The History Explorers Club  LISTEN 🎧🍎 Apple Podcasts 💚 Spotify 🎶 Amazon Music🛜 Pandora CONNECT🦋 Liz on Bluesky👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts💚 Leave a rating on Spotify*Book links are affiliate links. Every purchase supports the podcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When we think about the founding of the United States, we often focus on the Constitution, the Founding Fathers, and those first landmark elections. But how did the United States actually build its federal government, the entire apparatus of state that could collect revenue, manage international diplomacy, provide law and order, and extend its reach across a rapidly expanding nation? Who were the people who made that government work? And how did their service to the nation shape what it meant to be an American citizen? Peter Kastor, a Professor of History and American Cultural Studies at Washington University in St. Louis, and the Founder of the Creating a Federal Government, 1789-1829 digital project, joins us to explore the remarkable and often overlooked story of how the United States built its federal government between 1789 and 1829. Peter’s Website | Digital Project |Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/420 RECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODES🎧 Episode 098: Birth of the American Tax Man🎧 Episode 202: The Early History of the United States Senate🎧 Episode 279: The Cabinet: Creation of an American Institution🎧 Episode 259: American Legal History🎧 Episode 315: History and American Democracy🎧 Episode 338: The Early History of the United States Senate  🎧 Episode  393: Politics and Political Culture in the Early American Republic SUPPORT OUR WORK🎁 Make a Donation to Ben Franklin’s World REQUEST A TOPIC📨 Topic Request Form📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter👩‍💻 BFW Listener Community🌍 The History Explorers Club  LISTEN 🎧🍎 Apple Podcasts 💚 Spotify 🎶 Amazon Music🛜 Pandora CONNECT🦋 Liz on Bluesky👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts💚 Leave a rating on Spotify*Book links are affiliate links. Every purchase supports the podcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Each September, Constitution Day marks the signing of the U.S. Constitution on September 17, 1787. But beyond celebration, this commemoration invites deeper reflection: Whose voices helped shape this foundational document? And who was imagined as part of the political community it created? In honor of Constitution Day and Constitution Month, we’re revisiting a pivotal conversation from Episode 339 with constitutional historian Mary Sarah Bilder. Drawing from her book, Female Genius: Eliza Harriot and George Washington at the Dawn of the Constitution, Mary challenges us to reconsider who influenced the Constitution and how women publicly engaged with its political possibilities. Join us as we explore: Eliza Harriot’s advocacy for “female genius” and intellectual equality. Why the Constitution’s gender-neutral language mattered. And, the debates over representation, education, and citizenship in 1787Mary’s Website | Book |Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/339 RECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODES🎧 Episode 107: Madison's Hand🎧 Episode 137: The Washingtons' Runaway Slave, Ona Judge🎧 Episode 255: Birthright Citizens🎧 Episode 259: American Legal History & the Bill of Rights🎧 Episode 285: Elections & Voting in Early AmericaSUPPORT OUR WORK🎁 Make a Donation to Ben Franklin’s WorldREQUEST A TOPIC📨 Topic Request Form📫 [email protected] YOU'RE READY🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter👩‍💻 BFW Listener Community🌍 The History Explorers Club LISTEN 🎧🍎 Apple Podcasts 💚 Spotify 🎶 Amazon Music🛜 PandoraCONNECT🦋 Liz on Bluesky👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn🛜 Liz’s WebsiteSAY THANKS💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts💚 Leave a rating on Spotify*Book links are affiliate links. Every purchase supports the podcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What happens when the very people meant to uphold justice become the ones exploiting it? In the 1760s, North Carolina farmers watched sheriffs pocket their tax payments, judges rule in favor of corrupt land speculators, and government officials literally steal their land, all while claiming to represent the Crown’s interests. Nathan Schultz, a public historian and the Site Manager at the Alamance Battleground State Historic Site in North Carolina, joins us to explore the North Carolina Regulator Movement. Show Notes:  https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/419 RECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODES🎧 Episode 330: Loyalism in the British Atlantic World🎧 Episode 356: The Moravian Church in North America🎧 Episode 373: The Gaspee Affair🎧 Episode 374: The American Revolutionary War in the West🎧 Episode 380: The Tory's Wife🎧 Episode 409: The Battles of Lexington & Concord, 1775 SUPPORT OUR WORK🎁 Make a Donation to Ben Franklin’s WorldREQUEST A TOPIC📨 Topic Request Form📫 [email protected] YOU'RE READY🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter👩‍💻 BFW Listener Community🌍 The History Explorers Club LISTEN 🎧🍎 Apple Podcasts 💚 Spotify 🎶 Amazon Music🛜 PandoraCONNECT🦋 Liz on Bluesky👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn🛜 Liz’s WebsiteSAY THANKS💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts💚 Leave a rating on Spotify*Book links are affiliate links. Every purchase supports the podcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Revolutionary upheaval didn't just reshape governments—it transformed daily life for ordinary families across colonial America.  In this revisited episode, historian Cynthia Kierner reveals the remarkable story of Jane Spurgin, a woman navigating loyalty, survival, and family obligations in Revolutionary-era North Carolina. Through Jane's experience as a Loyalist's wife, we discover how political conflicts reached into homes and communities, forcing women to make difficult choices between personal safety and family loyalty. As we prepare to explore the North Carolina Regulator Movement, Jane's story illuminates the human cost of colonial resistance and the often-overlooked voices of women caught in the crossfire of revolution.  Guest: Cynthia Kierner, Professor of History at George Mason University and author of The Tory's Wife: A Woman and Her Family in Revolutionary America Cynthia’s Website | Book Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/380 RECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODES🎧 Episode 085: American Loyalists in Canada🎧 Episode 126: The Reintegration of American Loyalists🎧 Episode 237: Motherhood in Early America🎧 Episode 325: Everyday People of the American Revolution🎧 Episode 330: Loyalism in the British Atlantic WorldSUPPORT OUR WORK🎁 Make a Donation to Ben Franklin’s WorldREQUEST A TOPIC📨 Topic Request Form📫 [email protected] YOU'RE READY🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter👩‍💻 BFW Listener Community🌍 The History Explorers Club LISTEN 🎧🍎 Apple Podcasts 💚 Spotify 🎶 Amazon Music🛜 PandoraCONNECT🦋 Liz on Bluesky👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn🛜 Liz’s WebsiteSAY THANKS💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts💚 Leave a rating on Spotify*Book links are affiliate links. Every purchase supports the podcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We often learn about slavery in early America through broad economic or political terms—cotton, sugar, markets, revolutions. But what happens when we turn our focus to the lived experiences of enslaved people themselves? What did slavery feel and look like on the ground? What did survival look like day to day? And what do we make of the enslaved people who were forced into positions of authority over others, like the plantation drivers who were tasked with extracting labor from their fellow enslaved workers? Randy Browne, an award-winning historian and Professor of History at Xavier University, joins us to investigate plantation slavery and its driving system with details from his book The Driver’s Story: Labor and Power in the World of Atlantic Slavery. Randy’s Website | Book Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/418 RECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODES🎧 Episode 281: The Business of Slavery🎧 Episode 282: Tacky's Revolt🎧 Episode 289: Maroonage & the Great Dismal Swamp🎧 Episode 295: The Whitney Plantation & Museum🎧 Episode 312: The Domestic Slave Trade🎧 Episode 324: New Netherland & Slavery SUPPORT OUR WORK🎁 Make a Donation to Ben Franklin’s World REQUEST A TOPIC📨 Topic Request Form📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter👩‍💻 BFW Listener Community🌍 The History Explorers Club  LISTEN 🎧🍎 Apple Podcasts 💚 Spotify 🎶 Amazon Music🛜 Pandora CONNECT🦋 Liz on Bluesky👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts💚 Leave a rating on Spotify *Book links are affiliate links. Every purchase supports the podcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When we think about slavery in early America, we often rightfully focus on the human toll–the violence, the exploitation, the dehumanization that defined the institution. But slavery wasn’t just a system of forced labor; it was also a business. Next week, in Episode 418, we’ll be investigating a different facet of the business of slavery: the story of slave drivers–enslaved people who were forced or took up positions of authority over others. To better understand the system slave drivers operated within, I thought we should revisit Episode 281 with historian Caitlin Rosenthal. Caitlin is an Associate Professor of History at the University of California, Berkeley. Her book, Accounting for Slavery: Masters and Management, won the Simkins Award from the Southern Historical Association and the Economic Historical Society’s First Book Prize. Caitlin’s Website | Book Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/403 RECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODES🎧 Episode 173: Colonial Port Cities & Slavery🎧 Episode 176: The Value of the Enslaved from Womb to Grave🎧 Episode 312: The Domestic Slave Trade🎧 Episode 324: New Netherland and Slavery🎧 Episode 386: Sleeping with the Ancestors🎧 Episode 387: California and SlaverySUPPORT OUR WORK🎁 Make a Donation to Ben Franklin’s WorldREQUEST A TOPIC📨 Topic Request Form📫 [email protected] YOU'RE READY🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter👩‍💻 BFW Listener Community🌍 The History Explorers Club LISTEN 🎧🍎 Apple Podcasts 💚 Spotify 🎶 Amazon Music🛜 PandoraCONNECT🦋 Liz on Bluesky👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn🛜 Liz’s WebsiteSAY THANKS💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts💚 Leave a rating on Spotify*Book links are affiliate links. Every purchase supports the podcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When we think of early American champions of religious liberty, one name often rises above the rest: Roger Williams. Best known as the founder of Rhode Island and a fierce advocate for the separation of church and state, Williams was a man who defied convention at every turn. He turned down a prestigious post in Boston, challenged Puritan orthodoxy, and was ultimately banished—only to build a new colony rooted in his radical ideas of liberty of conscience and religious toleration. In this episode, we explore the life and legacy of this “nonconformist among nonconformists” with the co-editors of Reading Roger Williams: Rogue Puritans, Indigenous Nations, and the Founding of America:  Linford Fisher, Associate Professor of History at Brown University Sheila McIntyre, Professor of History at SUNY Potsdam Julie Fisher, scholar of Native American history Together, they help us uncover: How Williams challenged both church and colonial authority His relationships with Indigenous communities and his work as a translator And why his ideas still matter for understanding religious freedom in America today. Guests' Book Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/417 RECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODES🎧 Episode 118: The Business of Slavery in Rhode Island🎧 Episode 290: The World of the Wampanoag, Pt. 1🎧 Episode 291: The World of the Wampanoag, Pt. 2🎧 Episode 356: The Moravian Church in North America🎧 Episode 373: The Gaspee Affair🎧 Episode 392: Religion and Race in Early America SUPPORT OUR WORK🎁 Make a Donation to Ben Franklin’s World REQUEST A TOPIC📨 Topic Request Form📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter👩‍💻 BFW Listener Community🌍 The History Explorers Club  LISTEN 🎧🍎 Apple Podcasts 💚 Spotify 🎶 Amazon Music🛜 Pandora CONNECT🦋 Liz on Bluesky👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts💚 Leave a rating on Spotify *Book links are affiliate links. Every purchase supports the podcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Why do we trace our family histories? What drives our desire to know who our ancestors were and how we’re connected to past people and events? Genealogy is often seen as a modern pursuit, spurred by DNA tests and online records–but in reality, early Americans were deeply invested in understanding and documenting their familial ties. Their desire to understand these ties, however, extended far beyond sheer curiosity. Last week, in Episode 416, we were joined by Karin Wulf, who shared with us her now-finished project on genealogy and family history in Lineage: Genealogy and the Politics of Connection in the British Atlantic World. Karin’s book is built on the research she shared with us in 2016, so I thought it would be fun to return to her first conversation with us about her research so we can see how her thoughts, ideas, and her book project changed over time as she did more research and thinking on the subject. Karin’s Website | Book | Instagram Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/114 RECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODES🎧 Episode 231: The Religious Lives of the Adams Family🎧 Episode 236: Mixed-Race Britons & the Atlantic Family🎧 Episode 278: Polygamy: An Early American History🎧 Episode 354: The Sewing Girl's Tale🎧 Episode 416: Lineage: Genealogy in Early America SUPPORT OUR WORK🎁 Make a Donation to Ben Franklin’s World REQUEST A TOPIC📨 Topic Request Form📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter👩‍💻 BFW Listener Community🌍 The History Explorers Club  LISTEN 🎧🍎 Apple Podcasts 💚 Spotify 🎶 Amazon Music🛜 Pandora CONNECT🦋 Liz on Bluesky👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts💚 Leave a rating on Spotify *Book links are affiliate links. Every purchase supports the podcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Have you ever wondered why genealogy captivates so many people? Whether it’s tracing a family tree back generations or holding on to stories told around the dinner table, genealogy offers a powerful sense of connection—a connection that can shape identities, claims of property, and even arguments for freedom. But genealogy isn’t just a modern-day hobby. In early America, genealogy was a deeply consequential practice with social, political, and legal implications. Karin Wulf, a Professor of History and the Eighth Director and Librarian of the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University, joins us to explore the ways early Americans were interested in their family histories with details from her book, Lineage: Genealogy and the Power of Connection in Early America. Karin’s Website | Book | Instagram Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/403 RECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODES🎧 Episode 114: The History of Genealogy🎧 Episode 231: The Religious Lives of the Adams Family🎧 Episode 236: Mixed-Race Britons & the Atlantic Family🎧 Episode 278: Polygamy: An Early American History🎧 Episode 296: The Boston Massacre: A Family History🎧 Episode 354: The Sewing Girl's Tale   SUPPORT OUR WORK 🎁  Make a Donation to Ben Franklin’s World  REQUEST A TOPIC📨 Topic Request Form📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY🗞️ ⁠BFW Gazette Newsletter⁠ 👩‍💻 ⁠BFW Listener Community⁠ 🌍 ⁠The History Explorers Club⁠ LISTEN 🎧🍎 Apple Podcasts 💚 Spotify 🎶 Amazon Music🛜 Pandora CONNECT🦋 Liz on Bluesky👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts💚 Leave a rating on Spotify *Book links are affiliate links. Every purchase supports the podcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Declaration of Independence is one of the most iconic documents in United States history. But what do we really know about how it came to be? In our most recent episode, historian Emily Sneff helped us explore the Declaration through your questions–questions that revealed just how complex, living, and contested this document still is. So in today’s Revisited episode, we take a listen to the podcast that Emily helped to produce back in 2017: Episode 141: A Declaration in Draft. Originally part of the Omohundro Institute’s Doing History: To the Revolution! Series, this episode features three distinguished scholars: Danielle Allen, Patrick Spero, and Peter Onuf, Together, these scholars reveal that many hands and minds shaped the Declaration of Independence. They also help us dive into some of the document’s contradictions around slavery and equality. Emily’s Website  Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/415 RECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODES🎧 Episode 018: Our Declaration🎧 Episode 245: Celebrating the Fourth🎧 Episode 277: Whose Fourth of July?🎧 Episode 388: John Hancock🎧 Episode 394: The Pursuit of Happiness🎧 Episode 415: The Many Declarations of Independence REQUEST A TOPIC📨 Topic Request Form📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter👩‍💻 BFW Listener Community🌍 The History Explorers Club LISTEN 🎧🍎 Apple Podcasts 💚 Spotify 🎶 Amazon Music🛜 Pandora CONNECT🦋 Liz on Bluesky👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Preview of Karin Wulf’s book, Lineage: Genealogy and the Power of Connection in Early America. In eighteenth-century America, genealogy was more than a simple record of family ties--it was a powerful force that shaped society. Lineage delves into an era where individuals, families, and institutions meticulously documented their connections. Whether driven by personal passion or mandated by churches, local governments, and courts, these records appeared in diverse forms-from handwritten notes and account books to intricate silk threads and enduring stone carvings. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When you picture the Declaration of Independence, what comes to mind? Most people envision a single, iconic document–parchment, signatures, maybe even a scene from National Treasure. But what if I told you, the Declaration of Independence isn’t just one document, but many documents? And that each version of the Declaration tells a different story–a story not just about American independence, but about the people who printed, read, preserved, and even re-wrote the Declaration? Emily Sneff is one of the leading experts on the Declaration of Independence. She has spent more than a decade researching the Declaration’s origins, and its different copies. She’s the former research manager of the Declaration Resources Project at Harvard, a consulting curator for Revolution 250 exhibits at the Museum of the American Revolution and the American Philosophical Society, and I’m proud to say, she’s is one of our former interns here at Ben Franklin’s World. Emily’s Website  Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/415 RECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODES🎧 Episode 018: Our Declaration🎧 Episode 141: A Declaration in Draft 🎧 Episode 245: Celebrating the Fourth of July🎧 Episode 277: Whose Fourth of July?🎧 Episode 388: John Hancock🎧 Episode 394: The Pursuit of Happiness REQUEST A TOPIC📨 Topic Request Form📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter👩‍💻 BFW Listener Community🌍 The History Explorers Club  LISTEN 🎧🍎 Apple Podcasts 💚 Spotify 🎶 Amazon Music🛜 Pandora CONNECT🦋 Liz on Bluesky👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How do we uncover queer lives from the distant past, especially in an era when language and records often erased or obscured them? What did queerness look like in early America, and how might it have intersected with power, religion, and empire on the eve of the American Revolution?  John McCurdy, a Professor of History and Philosophy at Eastern Michigan University and the author of Vicious and Immoral: Homosexuality, the American Revolution, and the Trials of Robert Newburgh, joins us to explore these questions through the remarkable story of British Army Chaplain Robert Newburgh. John's EMU Webpage | Book  Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/414  RECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODES🎧 Episode 002: "That's So Gay" Exhibit, Library Company🎧 Episode 004: Sex and the Founding Fathers🎧 Episode 013: Charity & Sylvia: A Same-Sex Marriage in Early America🎧 Episode 278: Polygamy: An Early American History🎧 Episode 354: The Sewing Girl's Tale🎧 Episode 359: Transing Gender in Early America REQUEST A TOPIC📨 Topic Request Form📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter👩‍💻 BFW Listener Community🌍 The History Explorers Club  LISTEN 🎧🍎 Apple Podcasts 💚 Spotify 🎶 Amazon Music🛜 Pandora CONNECT🦋 Liz on Bluesky👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

June 17, 2025, marks the 250th anniversary of the Battle of Bunker Hill, the first full-scale battle of what would become the American War for Independence. Although technically a British victory, Bunker Hill proved that colonial soldiers could hold their own against the might of the British Empire. New England militiamen inflicted 1,054 casualties on the British, 50 percent of the British force. The New Englanders sustained 411 casualties that day, including the man who stood at the heart of this battle: Dr. Joseph Warren. Who was Dr. Joseph Warren, and why did he risk his life in the first major battle of the Revolutionary War? What drove this physician, political thinker, and revolutionary leader to become the face of the American Revolution in Boston? Christian Di Spigna, Executive Director of the Dr. Joseph Warren Foundation, joins us to explore these questions and commemorate this important anniversary with details from his book, Founding Martyr: The Life and Death of Dr. Joseph Warren, the American Revolution’s Lost Hero. Christian’s Foundation | Book  Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/413 RECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODES🎧 Episode 130: Paul Revere's Ride Through History🎧 Episode 301: From Innoculation to Vaccination, Part 1🎧 Episode 350: The Revolutionary Samuel Adams🎧 Episode 388: John Hancock🎧 Episode 409: The Battles of Lexington & Concord REQUEST A TOPIC📨 Topic Request Form📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter👩‍💻 BFW Listener Community🌍 The History Explorers Club  LISTEN 🎧🍎 Apple Podcasts 💚 Spotify 🎶 Amazon Music🛜 Pandora CONNECT🦋 Liz on Bluesky👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Juneteenth, the holiday that commemorates the end of slavery in the United States, is nearly upon us, and it offers us the perfect moment for reflection. What do we know about Juneteenth? Where did this holiday begin? And how has it grown from a regional commemoration into a national conversation about freedom, equality, and memory? In this episode, we return to our conversation with Annette Gordon-Reed in Episode 304. A native Texan and Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, Annette brings both personal insight and deep historical knowledge to her book On Juneteenth, which is a rich meditation on Texas history, African American identity, and the long arc of emancipation. Annette’s Website | Book | Bluesky Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/304 RECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODES🎧 Episode 067: Cattle Colonialism🎧 Episode 115: The Early History of Texas🎧 Episode 117: The Life and Ideas of Thomas Jefferson🎧 Episode 139: The Other Slavery🎧 Episode 281: The Business of Slavery🎧 Episode 282: Tacky's Revolt REQUEST A TOPIC📨 Topic Request Form📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter👩‍💻 BFW Listener Community🌍 The History Explorers Club  LISTEN 🎧🍎 Apple Podcasts 💚 Spotify 🎶 Amazon Music🛜 Pandora CONNECT🦋 Liz on Bluesky👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It might surprise you, but in the 18th century, people across the globe were reckoning with colder-than-usual weather brought on by the Little Ice Age—a centuries-long chill that made heating homes more urgent than ever. At the same time, early Americans were cutting down trees at an unsustainable pace to stay warm. Enter Benjamin Franklin. In this episode, Harvard historian Joyce Chaplin joins us to explore how Franklin tackled this problem by designing five different stove models, and what these innovations reveal about early American science, sustainability, and life with fire. Joyce’s Website | Book Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/412 RECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODES🎧 Episode 015: Round About the Earth: Circumnavigation from Magellan to Orbit🎧 Episode 086: Benjamin Franklin in London🎧 Episode 169: The Religious Life of Benjamin Franklin🎧 Episode 189: The Little Ice Age🎧 Episode 207: Young Benjamin Franklin🎧 Episode 397: Native Nations REQUEST A TOPIC📨 Topic Request Form📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter👩‍💻 BFW Listener Community🌍 The History Explorers Club  LISTEN 🎧🍎 Apple Podcasts 💚 Spotify 🎶 Amazon Music🛜 Pandora CONNECT🦋 Liz on Bluesky👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

To commemorate the 250th anniversary of the Second Continental Congress, this episode revisits the origins of the United States Congress and how early Americans built a representative government from revolutionary ideals. Historians Matt Wasniewski and Terrence Ruckner of the Office of the Historian of the U.S. House of Representatives join us to explore how Congress evolved from its colonial and revolutionary predecessors into the bicameral legislature established by the Constitution. House History Office Website Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/202 RECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODES🎧 Episode 040: For Fear of an Elected King🎧 Episode 078: Washington Brotherhood🎧 Episode 153: Governments of the American Revolution🎧 Episode 179: Governance During the Critical Period🎧 Episode 338: The Early History of the United States Senate REQUEST A TOPIC📨 Topic Request Form📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter👩‍💻 BFW Listener Community🌍 The History Explorers Club  LISTEN 🎧🍎 Apple Podcasts 💚 Spotify 🎶 Amazon Music🛜 Pandora CONNECT🦋 Liz on Bluesky👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Two hundred fifty years ago, in May 1775, delegates from thirteen British North American colonies gathered in Philadelphia for the Second Continental Congress.  Why was Philadelphia chosen as the seat of Congress? What made the city a critical hub for revolutionary ideas, commerce, and culture? And how has Philadelphia’s early history shaped the broader narrative of American Independence?  Paul Kahan, a historian of American political, economic, and urban history, joins us to explore Philadelphia’s early American history with details from his book. Philadelphia: A Narrative History, the first comprehensive history book about Philadelphia in over 40 years. Paul’s Website | Book  Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/411 RECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODES🎧 Episode 153: Committees and Congresses: Governments of the American Revolution🎧 Episode 242: A History of Early Delaware🎧 Episode 332: Experiences of Revolution, Pt 1: Occupied Philadelphia🎧 Episode 352: James Forten and the Making of the United States🎧 Episode 379: Women Healers in Early America🎧 Episode 396: Carpenters' Hall and the First Continental Congress🎧 Episode 402: Clocks, Watches, and Life in Early America REQUEST A TOPIC📨 Topic Request Form📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter👩‍💻 BFW Listener Community🌍 The History Explorers Club  LISTEN 🎧🍎 Apple Podcasts 💚 Spotify 🎶 Amazon Music🛜 Pandora CONNECT🦋 Liz on Bluesky👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What did friendship between men and women look like in the decades following the American Revolution? Could emotional closeness and intellectual kinship flourish outside of marriage— and without scandal? In this episode, we revisit our earlier conversation with historian Cassandra Good, author of Founding Friendships: Friendships between Men and Women in the Early American Republic. Building on our recent exploration of love and advice in 1690s England, we take a closer look at how early Americans navigated the shifting social norms of gender, intimacy, and platonic relationships. Cassie’s Website | Book Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/094 REQUEST A TOPIC📨 Topic Request Form📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter👩‍💻 BFW Listener Community🌍 The History Explorers Club   LISTEN 🎧🍎 Apple Podcasts 💚 Spotify 🎶 Amazon Music🛜 Pandora CONNECT🦋 Liz on Bluesky👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is a 30-second trailer for Ben Franklin's World. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When did people begin seeking anonymous advice for their most profound personal dilemmas? What can the answers to their early questions tell us about the emotional lives of people in the past?  We’re traveling back in time to 1690s England to explore the world’s first personal advice column, The Athenian Mercury. This two-sided broadsheet publication invited readers to send in questions about anything–from science and religion to love and marriage– and its creators, a small group of Londoners who dubbed themselves the “Athenian Society,” answered these queries with a surprising blend of wit, morality, and insight. Joining us for this investigation is Mary Beth Norton, the Mary Donlon Alger Professor Emerita at Cornell University and award-winning historian who is a trailblazer in the field of early American women's history. Mary Beth's Bio | Book Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/410 RECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODES🎧 Episode 094: Founding Friendships🎧 Episode 112: The Tea Crisis of 1773🎧 Episode 155: Pauline Maier's American Revolution🎧 Episode 294: 1774, The Long Year of Revolution REQUEST A TOPIC📨 Topic Request Form📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter👩‍💻 BFW Listener Community🌍 The History Explorers Club  LISTEN 🎧🍎 Apple Podcasts 💚 Spotify 🎶 Amazon Music🛜 Pandora CONNECT🦋 Liz on Bluesky👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Paul Revere’s Midnight Ride is one of the most famous events in American history. On the night of April 18, 1775, Revere set out to warn the Massachusetts countryside that British regulars were marching to seize rebel supplies in Concord. Revere’s name has become legendary, immortalized in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s famous poem, The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere. But how much do we really know about Paul Revere beyond that single night? In this revisited episode, we’ll explore the history and memory of Paul Revere. Why has he endured as a national icon, while other revolutionary couriers and figures have faded from public consciousness? How does the story of Revere’s ride illustrate the power of historical memory? And what does Revere’s real life—beyond that one night—tell us about the American Revolution and the ways we remember it? Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/130 REQUEST A TOPIC 📨 Topic Request Form 📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter👩‍💻 BFW Listener Community🌍 The History Explorers Club   LISTEN 🎧 🍎 Apple Podcasts  💚 Spotify  🎶 Amazon Music 🛜 Pandora CONNECT 🦋 Liz on Bluesky 👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn 🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS 💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts 💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

April 19, 2025 marked the 250th anniversary of the Battles of Lexington and Concord—the moment the American Revolution turned from protest to war. What do we really know about that fateful day? How did the people of Concord prepare for what they faced in April 1775? David Wood, the longtime curator of the Concord Museum and the author of Eyewitness to Revolution: The American Revolution in the Concord Museum, joins us to explore answers to these questions. Concord Museum Website | Book | Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/409 RECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODES 🎧 Episode 112: The Tea Crisis of 1773 🎧 Episode 129: The Road to Concord 🎧 Episode 130: Paul Revere's Ride Through History 🎧 Episode 158: The Revolutionaries' Army 🎧 Episode 229: The Townshend Moment 🎧 Episode 401: Tea, Boycotts, and Revolution REQUEST A TOPIC 📨 Topic Request Form 📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter👩‍💻 BFW Listener Community🌍 The History Explorers Club   LISTEN 🎧 🍎 Apple Podcasts  💚 Spotify  🎶 Amazon Music 🛜 Pandora CONNECT 🦋 Liz on Bluesky 👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn 🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS 💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts 💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

April 2025 marks the 250th anniversary of the Battles of Lexington and Concord. One of the lesser-known catalysts for these battles was the hunt for artillery. The British military, under General Thomas Gage, sought to seize weapons stockpiled by colonial militias, while Massachusetts Patriots scrambled to secure and hide weapons. This tug-of-war over firepower played a crucial role in pushing Massachusetts from political resistance to armed conflict. To better understand how Massachusetts got to this point, we’re revisiting Episode 129: The Road to Concord, with historian J.L. Bell. John is the author of The Road to Concord: How Four Stolen Cannon Ignited the Revolutionary War and the prolific blogger behind Boston 1775.net. John’s Website | Book  Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/129   RECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODES 🎧 Episode 039: The Royalist Revolution 🎧 Episode 046: The American Revolution & The War That Won It 🎧 Episode 112: The Tea Crisis of 1773 🎧 Episode 130: Paul Revere's Ride Through History 🎧 Bonus: Stamp Act of 1765 REQUEST A TOPIC 📨 Topic Request Form 📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter👩‍💻 BFW Listener Community🌍 The History Explorers Club   LISTEN 🎧 🍎 Apple Podcasts  💚 Spotify  🎶 Amazon Music 🛜 Pandora CONNECT 🦋 Liz on Bluesky 👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn 🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS 💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts 💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The American Revolution was more than just a series of events that unfolded between 1763 and 1783, the American Revolution is our national origin story–one we’ve passed down, shaped, and reshaped for the last 250 years.  But what do we really mean when we talk about “the Revolution?” Whose Revolution are we remembering? And how has the meaning of 1776 shifted from generation to generation? Michael Hattem, a scholar of the American Revolution and historical memory, joins us to discuss the American Revolution and its memory, drawing on details from his new book, The Memory of ‘76: The Revolution in American History. Michael’s Website | Book  Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/408   RECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODES 🎧 Episode 145: Mercy Otis Warren 🎧 Episode 193: Partisans: The Friendship & Rivalry of Adams and Jefferson 🎧 Episode 259: American Legal History & the Bill of Rights 🎧 Episode 261: Creating the Fourth Amendment 🎧 Episode 307: History and the American Revolution 🎧 Episode 313: Hero of Two Worlds: The Marquis de Lafayette 🎧 Episode 401: Tea, Boycotts, and Revolution REQUEST A TOPIC 📨 Topic Request Form 📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter👩‍💻 BFW Listener Community🌍 The History Explorers Club   LISTEN 🎧 🍎 Apple Podcasts  💚 Spotify  🎶 Amazon Music 🛜 Pandora CONNECT 🦋 Liz on Bluesky 👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn 🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS 💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts 💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This month, we commemorate the 250th anniversary of the Battles of Lexington and Concord, the “shot heard round the world” that ignited the Revolutionary War. But before those battles, and before the Revolution became a war for independence, it was a movement—a fight to secure more local control over government. And no one worked harder to transform that movement into a revolution than Samuel Adams. To help us investigate, we’re revisiting our conversation from Episode 350 with Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Stacy Schiff, author of The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams. Stacy's Website | Book Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/350   RECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODES 🎧 Episode 130: Paul Revere's Ride Through History 🎧 Episode 145: Mercy Otis Warren and the American Revolution 🎧 Episode 152: Origins of the American Revolution 🎧 Episode 153: Governments of the American Revolution 🎧 Episode 228: The Boston Massacre 🎧 Episode 296: The Boston Massacre: A Family History REQUEST A TOPIC 📨 Topic Request Form 📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter👩‍💻 BFW Listener Community🌍 The History Explorers Club   LISTEN 🎧 🍎 Apple Podcasts  💚 Spotify  🎶 Amazon Music 🛜 Pandora CONNECT 🦋 Liz on Bluesky 👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn 🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS 💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts 💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Patrick Henry is one of the most famous voices of the American Revolution. He was known in his own time for his powerful speeches and his unwavering commitment to liberty. But did you know that later in life, Patrick Henry opposed the United States Constitution? Did you know that during the political crisis of 1798/99, George Washington wrote to Patrick Henry and asked him to save the nation? In honor of the 250th anniversary of Patrick Henry’s most famous speech, “Give Me Liberty, or Give Me Death,” award-winning historian John Ragosta joins us to investigate the life and work of Patrick Henry. John's Website | Book Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/403   RECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODES 🎧 Episode 102: George Rogers Clark & the Fight for the Illinois Country 🎧 Episode 152: The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution 🎧 Episode 188: The Alien & Sedition Acts of 1798 🎧 Episode 348: Valley Forge 🎧 Episode 350: The Revolutionary, Samuel Adams 🎧 Episode 374: The American Revolutionary War in the West 🎧 Episode 403: Re-evaluating the Presidency of John Adams REQUEST A TOPIC 📨 Topic Request Form 📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter👩‍💻 BFW Listener Community🌍 The History Explorers Club   LISTEN 🎧 🍎 Apple Podcasts  💚 Spotify  🎶 Amazon Music 🛜 Pandora CONNECT 🦋 Liz on Bluesky 👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn 🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS 💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts 💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What precisely is the work that mothers do to raise children? Has the nature of mothers, motherhood, and the work mothers do changed over time? Nora Doyle, an Associate Professor of History at Western Carolina University, has combed through the historical record to find answers to these questions. Specifically, she’s sought to better understand the lived and imagined experiences of mothers and motherhood between the 1750s and 1850s. Nora’s Webpage | Book  Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/237   RECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODES 🎧 Episode 027: A History of Stepfamilies in Early America 🎧 Episode 120: A History of Mail Order Brides in Early America 🎧 Episode 150: Abigail Adams: Revolutionary Spectator 🎧 Episode 205: First Ladies of the Republic 🎧 Episode 339: Women and the Constitutional Moment of 1787 🎧 Episode 379: Women Healers in Early America REQUEST A TOPIC 📨 Topic Request Form 📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter👩‍💻 BFW Listener Community🌍 The History Explorers Club   LISTEN 🎧 🍎 Apple Podcasts  💚 Spotify  🎶 Amazon Music 🛜 Pandora CONNECT 🦋 Liz on Bluesky 👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn 🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS 💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts 💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Historians use a lot of different sources when they research the past. Many rely on primary source documents, documents that were written by official government bodies or those written by the people who witnessed the events or changes historians are studying. But how do you uncover the voices and stories of people who didn’t know how to write or whose families didn’t preserve much of their writing?  Maeve Kane, an Associate Professor of History at the University at Albany and author of Shirts Powdered Red: Gender, Trade, and Exchange Across Three Centuries, ran into this very problem as she sought to recover the lives of Haudenosaunee women. Maeve overcame this challenge by researching a different type of historical source—the cloth Haudenosaunee women traded for and the clothing they made and wore. Maeve’s Website | Book  Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/403   RECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODES 🎧 Episode 021: Smuggling in Colonial America & Living History 🎧 Episode 163: The American Revolution in North America 🎧 Episode 223: A Native American History of the Ohio River Valley & Great Lakes Region 🎧 Episode 264: The Treaty of Canandaigua 🎧 Episode 353: Women and the Making of Catawba Identity REQUEST A TOPIC 📨 Topic Request Form 📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter👩‍💻 BFW Listener Community🌍 The History Explorers Club LISTEN 🎧 🍎 Apple Podcasts  💚 Spotify  🎶 Amazon Music 🛜 Pandora CONNECT 🦋 Liz on Bluesky 👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn 🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS 💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts 💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In 1738, a cooper named Benedict Arnold petitioned the Rhode Island General Assembly for a divorce from his wife Mary Ward Arnold. Benedict claimed that Mary had taken a lover and together they had attempted to murder him with poison. How did this story of love, divorce, and attempted murder unfold? What does it reveal about the larger world of colonial America and the experiences of colonial American men and women? Elaine Forman Crane, a Distinguished Professor of History at Fordham University, takes us through the Arnolds’ story with details from her book, The Poison Plot: A Tale of Adultery and Murder in Colonial Newport. Elaine's Webpage | Book  Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/225   RECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODES 🎧 Episode 110: How Genealogists Research 🎧 Episode 114: The History of Genealogy 🎧 Episode 118: The Business of Slavery in Rhode Island 🎧 Episode 157: The Revolution's African American Soldiers 🎧 Episode 208: Nathaniel Philbrick, Turning Points of the American Revolution 🎧 Episode 373: Adrian Weimer, The Gaspee Affair REQUEST A TOPIC 📨 Topic Request Form 📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter👩‍💻 BFW Listener Community🌍 The History Explorers Club LISTEN 🎧 🍎 Apple Podcasts  💚 Spotify  🎶 Amazon Music 🛜 Pandora CONNECT 🦋 Liz on Bluesky 👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn 🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS 💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts 💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When we think of slavery in Early America, we often think about the plantations and economies of the South. But did you know that slavery was also deeply entrenched in New York City? Did you know that Africans and African Americans helped New York City confront slavery, freedom, and racism in the Early American Republic and Antebellum periods? Leslie M. Harris, a professor at Northwestern University and author of In the Shadow of Slavery: African Americans in New York City, 1626-1863, joins us to explore the history of Africans and African Americans in early New York City. Leslie’s Website | Book  Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/405   RECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODES 🎧 Episode 306: The Horse's Tale 🎧 Episode 324: New Netherland and Slavery 🎧 Episode 351: Wealth and Slavery in New Netherland 🎧 Episode 371: Archive of Indigenous Slavery 🎧 Episode 387: California and Slavery REQUEST A TOPIC 📨 Topic Request Form 📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter👩‍💻 BFW Listener Community🌍 The History Explorers Club   LISTEN 🎧 🍎 Apple Podcasts  💚 Spotify  🎶 Amazon Music 🛜 Pandora CONNECT 🦋 Liz on Bluesky 👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn 🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS 💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts 💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What does freedom mean when the deck is stacked against you? In commemoration of Black History Month, we’re revisiting a story that is too often overlooked, but critical to our understanding of Early America. Join Warren Milteer, Jr., an Associate Professor of History at George Washington University, as we uncover the lives of free people of color in Early America. Warren’s Faculty Page | Book Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/328 RECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODES 🎧 Episode 118: The Business of Slavery in Rhode Island 🎧 Episode 142: A History of Abolition 🎧 Episode 176: The Value of the Enslaved from Womb to Grave 🎧 Episode 289: Maroonage and the Great Dismal Swamp 🎧 Episode 312: The Domestic Slave Trade 🎧 Episode 352: James Forten and the Making of the United States REQUEST A TOPIC 📨 Topic Request Form 📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter👩‍💻 BFW Listener Community🌍 The History Explorers Club LISTEN 🎧 🍎 Apple Podcasts  💚 Spotify  🎶 Amazon Music 🛜 Pandora CONNECT 🦋 Liz on Bluesky 👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn 🛜 Liz’s Website   SAY THANKS 💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts 💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Did you know that many of the food traditions that define cuisine in the United States today have roots in African culinary traditions and history? Diane Spviey, a culinary historian and author of three culinary history books, joins us to uncover the rich and complex legacy of African and African American foodways and how those foodways helped establish the United States. Diane’s Website | Book | Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/404 RECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODES 🎧 Episode 137: The Washingtons’ Runaway Slave, Ona Judge 🎧 Episode 170: New England Bound 🎧 Episode 222: Early History of Washington, D.C. 🎧 Episode 226: Making the State of South Carolina 🎧 Episode 250: Virginia, 1619 🎧 Episode 348: Valley Forge 🎧 Episode 395: The Great New York Fire of 1776 REQUEST A TOPIC 📨 Topic Request Form 📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter👩‍💻 BFW Listener Community🌍 The History Explorers Club LISTEN 🎧 🍎 Apple Podcasts  💚 Spotify  🎶 Amazon Music 🛜 Pandora CONNECT 🦋 Liz on Bluesky 👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn 🛜 Liz’s Website   SAY THANKS 💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts 💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What would you risk for freedom? Would you risk your safety? You family? Your life? During the American Revolution, enslaved women faced these impossible choices when the British Army promised freedom to those who dared to escape. In honor of Black History Month, we’re revisiting an extraordinary chapter of resilience and bravery: the stories of enslaved women who seized the chance to chart their own destinies amid the chaos of war. Join Karen Cook-Bell for an exploration of enslaved women who self-emancipated during the American Revolution. Karen's Website | Book Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/322   Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 137: The Washingtons' Runaway Slave, Ona Judge 🎧 Episode 142: A History of Abolition 🎧 Episode 157: The Revolution's African American Soldiers 🎧 Episode 162: Dunmore's New World 🎧 Episode 352: James Forten and the Making of the United States REQUEST A TOPIC 📨 Topic Request Form 📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter👩‍💻 BFW Listener Community🌍 The History Explorers Club LISTEN 🎧 🍎 Apple Podcasts  💚 Spotify  🎶 Amazon Music 🛜 Pandora CONNECT 🦋 Liz on Bluesky 👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn 🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS 💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts 💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Did you know that John Adams, not George Washington, solidified the precedents of the executive branch and the presidency? Lindsay Chervinsky, an award-winning presidential historian and the Executive Director of the George Washington Presidential Library, has written a book Making the Presidency: John Adams and the Precedents that Forged the Republic. She joins us to investigate the presidency of the United States’ second president, John Adams. Lindsay’s Website | Book | Instagram Show Notes:  https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/403  RECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODES 🎧 Episode 040: For Fear of an Elected King 🎧 Episode 117: The Life and Ideas of Thomas Jefferson 🎧 Episode 188: The Alien & Sedition Acts of 1798 🎧 Episode 193: Partisans: The Friendship & Rivalry of Adams and Jefferson 🎧 Episode 203: Alexander Hamilton 🎧 Episode 279: The Cabinet: Creation of An American Institution REQUEST A TOPIC 📨  Topic Request Form  📫  [email protected]  WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter👩‍💻 BFW Listener Community🌍 The History Explorers Club   LISTEN 🎧 🍎  Apple Podcasts   💚  Spotify   🎶  Amazon Music   🛜 Pandora  CONNECT 🦋  Liz on Bluesky  👩‍💻  Liz on LinkedIn  🛜  Liz’s Website  SAY THANKS 💜  Leave a review on Apple Podcasts  💚  Leave a rating on Spotify  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

January 20th, marked Inauguration Day in the United States, the day a new president and his administration takes office. So it seems a fitting time for us to revisit a conversation we had in 2020 about the creation of the Executive Branch, and more specifically, the creation of the president’s cabinet. Lindsay Chervinsky is an award-winning presidential historian and the Executive Director of the George Washington Presidential Library. In 2020, she published her first book called The Cabinet: George Washington and the Creation of an American Institution. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/279 Complementary Episodes Episode 040: Kathleen Bartoloni-Tuazon, For Fear of an Elected King Episode 137: Erica Dunbar, The Washington’s Runaway Slave, Ona Judge Episode 193: Partisans: The Friendship and Rivalry of John Adams & Thomas Jefferson Episode 202: The Early History of the United States Congress Episode 203: Joanne Freeman: Alexander Hamilton Episode 265: Lindsay Chervinsky, An Early History of the White House SUPPORT OUR WORK🎁 Make a Donation to Ben Franklin’s WorldREQUEST A TOPIC📨 Topic Request Form📫 [email protected] YOU'RE READY🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter 👩‍💻 Join the BFW Listener Community🌍 Join the History Explorers ClubLISTEN 🎧🍎 Apple Podcasts 💚 Spotify 🎶 Amazon Music🛜 PandoraCONNECT🦋 Liz on Bluesky👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn🛜 Liz’s WebsiteSAY THANKS💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts💚 Leave a rating on Spotify*Book links are affiliate links. Every purchase supports the podcast.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Do you know what time it is? In early America, this question wasn’t as simple to answer as it is today. Urban dwellers in cities like Boston, Philadelphia, and Charleston often wondered about the time—but few owned their own watches or clocks. So, how did they keep track of the hours? In this episode, we dive into the fascinating world of early American timekeeping. Bob Frishman, a horologist—a specialist in clocks and watches—and a scholar of horology, joins us to explore how timepieces and their makers shaped community life and craftsmanship in the 18th century. Along the way, we’ll uncover the remarkable story of Edward Duffield, a Philadelphia clockmaker who wasn’t just a master craftsman but also a close friend and neighbor of Benjamin Franklin. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/402 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 149: Benjamin Franklin in London 🎧 Episode 175: The Revolution in Ben Franklin’s House 🎧 Episode 207: Young Benjamin Franklin 🎧 Episode 244: Shoe Stories from Early America 🎧 Episode 292: Craft in Early America 🎧 Episode 301: From Inoculation to Vaccination, Pt 1 🎧 Episode 302: From Inoculation to Vaccination, Pt 2 🎧 Episode 332: Occupied Philadelphia   REQUEST A TOPIC 📨  Topic Request Form  📫  [email protected]  WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter👩‍💻 BFW Listener Community🌍 The History Explorers Club   LISTEN 🎧 🍎  Apple Podcasts   💚  Spotify   🎶  Amazon Music   🛜 Pandora   CONNECT 🦋  Liz on Bluesky  👩‍💻  Liz on LinkedIn  🛜  Liz’s Website  SAY THANKS 💜  Leave a review on Apple Podcasts  💚  Leave a rating on Spotify  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

To close out our mini-series on Tea in early America, we’re going to revisit Episode 160: The Politics of Tea. This episode was part of our Doing History: To the Revolution series with the Omohundro Institute in 2017. In this episode, we’ll revisit how early Americans went from attending tea parties to holding the Boston Tea Party. We’ll also explore more in-depth information about how tea became a central part of many early Americans’ lives. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/160 SUPPORT OUR WORK🎁 Make a Donation to Ben Franklin’s WorldREQUEST A TOPIC📨 Topic Request Form📫 [email protected] YOU'RE READY🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter 👩‍💻 Join the BFW Listener Community🌍 Join the History Explorers ClubLISTEN 🎧🍎 Apple Podcasts 💚 Spotify 🎶 Amazon Music🛜 PandoraCONNECT🦋 Liz on Bluesky👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn🛜 Liz’s WebsiteSAY THANKS💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts💚 Leave a rating on Spotify*Book links are affiliate links. Every purchase supports the podcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

During the early days of the American Revolution, British Americans attempted to sway their fellow Britons with consumer politics. In 1768 and 1769, they organized a non-consumption movement of British goods to protest the Townshend Duties. In 1774, they arranged a non-importation and non-exportation movement to protest the Tea Act and Coercive Acts. Why did the colonists protest the Tea Act and Coercive Acts? Why did they chose to protest those acts with the consumer politics of a non-importation/non-exportation program? James Fichter, the author of Tea: Consumption, Politics, and Revolution, 1773-1776, joins us to explore the Tea Crisis of 1773 and the resulting non-importation/non-exportation movement the colonists organized after Parliament passed the Coercive Acts. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/401 REQUEST A TOPIC 📨  Topic Request Form  📫  [email protected]  WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter👩‍💻 BFW Listener Community🌍 The History Explorers Club LISTEN 🎧 🍎  Apple Podcasts   💚  Spotify   🎶  Amazon Music   🛜 Pandora   CONNECT 🦋  Liz on Bluesky  👩‍💻  Liz on LinkedIn  🛜  Liz’s Website  SAY THANKS 💜  Leave a review on Apple Podcasts  💚  Leave a rating on Spotify  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In Episode 401, we’ll be exploring the Tea Crisis and how it led to the non-importation/non-exportation movement of 1774-1776. Our guest historian, James Fichter, references the work of Mary Beth Norton and her “The Seventh Tea Ship” article from The William and Mary Quarterly. In this BFW Revisited episode, we’ll travel back to December 2016, when we spoke with Mary Beth Norton about her article and the Tea Crisis of 1773. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/112   Complementary Episodes Episode 135: Moral Commerce: The Transatlantic Boycott of the Slave Labor Economy Episode 160: The Politics of Tea Episode 228: The Boston Massacre Episode 229: The Townshend Moment Episode 337: Early America's Trade with ChinaSUPPORT OUR WORK🎁 Make a Donation to Ben Franklin’s WorldREQUEST A TOPIC📨 Topic Request Form📫 [email protected] YOU'RE READY🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter 👩‍💻 Join the BFW Listener Community🌍 Join the History Explorers ClubLISTEN 🎧🍎 Apple Podcasts 💚 Spotify 🎶 Amazon Music🛜 PandoraCONNECT🦋 Liz on Bluesky👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn🛜 Liz’s WebsiteSAY THANKS💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts💚 Leave a rating on Spotify*Book links are affiliate links. Every purchase supports the podcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How do historians define Ben Franklin’s “world?” What historical event, person, or place in the era of Ben Franklin do they wish you knew about? In celebration of the 400th episode of Ben Franklin’s World, we posed these questions to more than 20 scholars. What do they think? Join the celebration and discover more about the world Ben Franklin lived in. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/400 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 114: Karin Wulf, The History of the Genealogy 🎧 Episode 285: Elections & Voting in the Early Republic 🎧 Episode 300: Vast Early America 🎧 Episode 389: Indigenous Justice in Early America 🎧 Episode 393: Politics and Political Culture in the Early American Republic   REQUEST A TOPIC 📨  Topic Request Form  📫  [email protected]  WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter👩‍💻 BFW Listener Community🌍 The History Explorers Club LISTEN 🎧 🍎  Apple Podcasts   💚  Spotify   🎶  Amazon Music   🛜 Pandora   CONNECT 🦋  Liz on Bluesky  👩‍💻  Liz on LinkedIn  🛜  Liz’s Website  SAY THANKS 💜  Leave a review on Apple Podcasts  💚  Leave a rating on Spotify  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In our last episode, Episode 399, we discussed Denmark Vesey’s revolt and the way biblical texts and scripture enabled Vesey to organize what would have been the largest slave revolt in United States history if the revolt had not been thwarted before Vesey could put it into action. Early American history is filled with revolts against enslavers that were thwarted and never made it past the planning stage. But, one uprising that did move beyond planning and into action was the Southampton Rebellion or Nat Turner’s Revolt in August 1831. In this BFW Revisited episode, Episode 133, which was released in May 2017, we met with Patrick Breen, an Associate Professor of History at Providence College. Patrick joined us to investigate Nat Turner’s Revolt with details from his book The Land Shall Be Deluged in Blood: A New History of the Nat Turner Revolt. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/133 Complementary Episodes Episode 016: The Internal Enemy Episode 083: Slavery in Colonial Boston Episode 091: Rumors, Legends, and Hoaxes in Early America Episode 124: Making the Haitian Revolution Episode 125: Death, Suicide, and Slavery in British North America Episode 336: Suviving the Southampton Rebellion Episode 399: Denmark Vesey's Revolt SUPPORT OUR WORK🎁 Make a Donation to Ben Franklin’s WorldREQUEST A TOPIC📨 Topic Request Form📫 [email protected] YOU'RE READY🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter 👩‍💻 Join the BFW Listener Community🌍 Join the History Explorers ClubLISTEN 🎧🍎 Apple Podcasts 💚 Spotify 🎶 Amazon Music🛜 PandoraCONNECT🦋 Liz on Bluesky👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn🛜 Liz’s WebsiteSAY THANKS💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts💚 Leave a rating on Spotify*Book links are affiliate links. Every purchase supports the podcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Denmark Vesey’s failed revolt in 1822 could have been the largest insurrection of enslaved people against their enslavers in United States history. Not only was Vesey’s plan large in scale, but Charleston officials arrested well over one hundred rumored participants. Jeremy Schipper, a Professor in the departments for the Study or Religion and Near and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Toronto and the author of Denmark Vesey’s Bible: The Thwarted Revolt that Put Scripture and Slavery on Trial, joins us to investigate Vesey’s planned rebellion and the different ways Vesey used the Bible and biblical texts to justify his revolt and the violence it would have wrought. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/399 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 052: Early United States-Haitian Diplomacy 🎧 Episode 124: Making the Haitian Revolution in Early America 🎧 Episode 133: Nat Turner’s Rebellion 🎧 Episode 165: The Age of Revolutions 🎧 Episode 190: Origins of the American Middle Class 🎧 Episode 226: Making the State of South Carolina 🎧 Episode 384: Making Maine: A Journey to Statehood 🎧 Episode 390: Objects of Revolution REQUEST A TOPIC 📨  Topic Request Form  📫  [email protected]  WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter👩‍💻 BFW Listener Community🌍 The History Explorers Club   LISTEN 🎧 🍎  Apple Podcasts   💚  Spotify   🎶  Amazon Music   🛜 Pandora   CONNECT 🦋  Liz on Bluesky  👩‍💻  Liz on LinkedIn  🛜  Liz’s Website  SAY THANKS 💜  Leave a review on Apple Podcasts  💚  Leave a rating on Spotify  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week is Thanksgiving week in the United States. On Thursday, most of us will sit down with friends, family, and other loved ones and share a large meal where we give thanks for whatever we’re grateful for over the last year. In elementary school, we are taught to associate this holiday and its rituals with the religious separatists, or pilgrims, who migrated from England to what is today Plymouth, Massachusetts. We are taught that at the end of the fall harvest, the separatists sat down with their Indigenous neighbors to share in the bounty that the Wampanoag people helped them grow by teaching the separatists how to sow and cultivate crops like corn in the coastal soils of New England. In this BFW Revisited episode, Episode 291, we investigate the arrival of the Mayflower and the Indigenous world the separatists arrived in. We’ll also explore how the Wampanoag and Narragansett peoples interacted with their new European neighbors and how they contended with the English people who were determined to settle on their lands. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/291 Complementary Episodes Episode 104: The Saltwater Frontier: Native Americans and Colonsits on the Northeastern Coast Episode 132: Indigenous London Episode 184: Thundersticks: Firearms and the Violent Transformation of Native America Episode 220: New England Indians, Colonists, and the Origins of Slavery Episode 235: A 17th-Century Native American Life Episode 267: Snowshoe Country Episode 290: The World of the Wampanoag, Pt 1 SUPPORT OUR WORK🎁 Make a Donation to Ben Franklin’s WorldREQUEST A TOPIC📨 Topic Request Form📫 [email protected] YOU'RE READY🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter 👩‍💻 Join the BFW Listener Community🌍 Join the History Explorers ClubLISTEN 🎧🍎 Apple Podcasts 💚 Spotify 🎶 Amazon Music🛜 PandoraCONNECT🦋 Liz on Bluesky👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn🛜 Liz’s WebsiteSAY THANKS💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts💚 Leave a rating on Spotify*Book links are affiliate links. Every purchase supports the podcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

After the Seven Years’ War (1754-1763), Great Britain instituted the Proclamation Line of 1763. The Line sought to create a lasting peace in British North America by limiting British colonial settlement east of the Appalachian Mountains. In 1768, colonists and British Indian agents negotiated the Treaties of Fort Stanwix and Hard Labour to extend the boundary line further west. In 1774, the Shawnee-Dunmore War broke out as colonists attempted to push further west. Fallon Burner and Russell Reed, two of the three co-managers of the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation’s American Indian Initiative, join us to investigate the Shawnee-Dunmore War and what this war can show us about Indigenous life, warfare, and sovereignty during the mid-to-late eighteenth century. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/398 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 223: A Native American History of the Ohio River Valley & Great Lakes Region 🎧 Episode 310: History of the Blackfeet 🎧 Episode 353: Women and the Making of Catawba Identity 🎧 Episode 367: Brafferton Indian School, Part 1 🎧 Episode 368: Brafferton Indian School, Part 2 REQUEST A TOPIC 📨  Topic Request Form  📫  [email protected]  WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter👩‍💻 BFW Listener Community🌍 The History Explorers Club LISTEN 🎧 🍎  Apple Podcasts   💚  Spotify   🎶  Amazon Music   🛜 Pandora   CONNECT 🦋  Liz on Bluesky  👩‍💻  Liz on LinkedIn  🛜  Liz’s Website  SAY THANKS 💜  Leave a review on Apple Podcasts  💚  Leave a rating on Spotify  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It’s November, the time of year when we Americans get ready for the Thanksgiving holiday. Although the federal holiday we know and honor today came about in 1863, Thanksgiving is a day that many modern-day Americans associate with the Indigenous peoples and religious separatists of Plymouth, Massachusetts. What do we know about the Indigenous people the so-called Pilgrims interacted with? This month, in between our new episodes about Indigenous history, the Ben Franklin’s World Revisited series explores the World of the Wampanoag. The World of the Wampanoag originally posted as a two-episode series in December 2020. This first episode will introduce you to the life, societies, and cultures of the Wampanoag and Narragansett peoples the Plymouth colonists interacted with before the colonists’ arrival in December 1620. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/290 Sponsor Links Colonial Williamsburg Foundation Mass Humanities National Endowment for the Humanities Omohundro Institute Complementary Episodes Episode 104: The Salwater Frontier: Native Americans and Colonists on the Northeastern Coast Episode 132: Indigenous London Episode 184: Firearms and the Violent Transformation of Native America Episode 220: New England indians, Colonists, and the Origins of Slavery Episode 235: A 17th-Century Native American Life Episode 267: Snowshoe Country Episode 291: The World of the Wampanoag, Pt. 2   Listen! Apple Podcasts Spotify Google Podcasts Amazon Music Ben Franklin's World iOS App Ben Franklin's World Android App Helpful Links Join the Ben Franklin's World Facebook Group Ben Franklin’s World Twitter: @BFWorldPodcast Ben Franklin's World Facebook Page Sign-up for the Franklin Gazette Newsletter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The North American continent is approximately 160 million years old, yet in the United States, we tend to focus on what amounts to 3300 millionths of that history, which is the period between 1492 to the present. Kathleen DuVal, a Professor of History at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, asks us to widen our view of early North American history to at least 1,000 years. Using details from her book, Native Nations: A Millennium in North America, DuVal shows us that long before European colonists and enslaved Africans arrived on North American shores, Indigenous Americans built vibrant cities and civilizations, and adapted to a changing world and climate. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/397 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 037: Independence Lost 🎧 Episode 189: The Little Ice Age 🎧 Episode 223: A Native American History of the Ohio River Valley & Great Lakes Region 🎧 Episode 264: The Treaty of Canandaigua 🎧 Episode 286: Native Sovereignty 🎧 Episode 310: History of the Blackfeet 🎧 Episode 323: American Expansion and the Political Economy of Plunder 🎧 Episode 362: Treaties Between the U.S. & Native Nations REQUEST A TOPIC 📨  Topic Request Form  📫  [email protected]  WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter👩‍💻 BFW Listener Community🌍 The History Explorers Club LISTEN 🎧 🍎  Apple Podcasts   💚  Spotify   🎶  Amazon Music   🛜 Pandora   CONNECT 🦋  Liz on Bluesky  👩‍💻  Liz on LinkedIn  🛜  Liz’s Website  SAY THANKS 💜  Leave a review on Apple Podcasts  💚  Leave a rating on Spotify  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ben Franklin’s World Revisited is a series where Liz surfaces one of our earlier episodes that complements and adds additional perspectives to the histories we discuss in our new episodes. Given the conversation we just had in Episode 396 about Carpenters’ Hall & the First Continental Congress, Liz would like to offer you an episode she produced in 2017 as part of our Doing History: To the Revolution series. Episode 153: Committees and Congresses: Governments of the American Revolution, furthers the discussion we just had about the First Continental Congress by helping us investigate how the American revolutionaries formed governments as imperial rule in British North American disintegrated and the American Revolution turned to war. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

“Monday, September 5, 1774. A number of the Delegates chosen and appointed by the Several Colonies and Provinces in North America to meet and hold a Congress at Philadelphia assembled at the Carpenters’ Hall.”  That statement begins the Journals of the Continental Congress, the official meeting minutes of the First and Second Continental Congresses. Between September 1774 and March 1789, the congressmen filled 34-printed volumes worth of entries. Join Michael Norris, the Executive Director of the Carpenters’ Company of the City and County of Philadelphia, for a tour of Carpenters’ Hall, the meeting place of the First Continental Congress, and discover more about this historic building and the historic work of the First Continental Congress. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/396 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 001: The Library Company of Philadelphia 🎧 Episode 153: Committees and Congresses: Governments of the American Revolution 🎧 Episode 207: Young Benjamin Franklin 🎧 Episode 229: The Townshend Moment 🎧 Episode 292: Craft in Early America 🎧 Episode 294: 1774: The Long Year of Revolution REQUEST A TOPIC 📨  Topic Request Form  📫  [email protected]  WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter👩‍💻 BFW Listener Community🌍 The History Explorers Club LISTEN 🎧 🍎  Apple Podcasts   💚  Spotify   🎶  Amazon Music   🛜 Pandora   CONNECT 🦋  Liz on Bluesky  👩‍💻  Liz on LinkedIn  🛜  Liz’s Website  SAY THANKS 💜  Leave a review on Apple Podcasts  💚  Leave a rating on Spotify  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When we think about the American Revolution, textbooks, documentaries, and historic sites have trained most of us to think about American triumphs in battles or events when American revolutionaries overcame moments of despair, when all seemed lost, to triumph in the cause of American independence. Benjamin L. Carp will help us look at the American Revolution differently. The Daniel M. Lyons Chair of History at Brooklyn College, Ben will use details from his book The Great New York Fire of 1776: A Lost Story of the American Revolution to help us consider the strategic military importance of New York City and its capture by the British Army and how both armies used fire as an instrument of war. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/395 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 113: Building the Empire State 🎧 Episode 123: Revolutionary Allegiances 🎧 Episode 185: Early New York City and Its Culture 🎧 Episode 306: The Horse’s Tail: Revolution & Memory in Early New York City 🎧 Episode 325: Everyday People of the American Revolution 🎧 Episode 330: Loyalism in the British Atlantic World 🎧 Episode 332: Experiences of Revolution: Occupied Philadelphia 🎧 Episode 333: Experiences of Revolution: Disruptions in Yorktown REQUEST A TOPIC 📨  Topic Request Form  📫  [email protected]  WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter👩‍💻 BFW Listener Community🌍 The History Explorers Club LISTEN 🍎  Apple Podcasts   💚  Spotify   🎶  Amazon Music   🛜 Pandora   CONNECT 🦋  Liz on Bluesky  👩‍💻  Liz on LinkedIn  🛜  Liz’s Website  SAY THANKS 💜  Leave a review on Apple Podcasts  💚  Leave a rating on Spotify  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What did Thomas Jefferson and the members of the Second Continental Congress mean when they wrote “the pursuit of Happiness” into the United States Declaration of Independence? And why is pursuing happiness so important that Jefferson and his fellow Founding Fathers included it in the Declaration of Independence’s most powerful statement of the new United States’ ideals?  Jeffrey Rosen, the President and CEO of the National Constitution Center and a law professor at George Washington University Law School, joins us to investigate and answer these questions with details from his book, The Pursuit of Happiness: How Classical Writers on Virtue Inspired the Lives of the Founders and Defined America.  Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/394 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 061: The Retirement of George Washington 🎧 Episode 123: Revolutionary Allegiances 🎧 Episode 117: The Life and Ideas of Thomas Jefferson 🎧 Episode 145: Mercy Otis Warren and the American Revolution 🎧 Episode 150: Abigail Adams: Revolutionary Speculator 🎧 Episode 203: Alexander Hamilton 🎧 Episode 231: The Religious Lives of the Adams Family 🎧 Episode 207: Young Benjamin Franklin 🎧 Episode 307: History and the American Revolution 🎧 Episode 377: Phillis Wheatley & the Playwright REQUEST A TOPIC 📨  Topic Request Form  📫  [email protected]  WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter👩‍💻 BFW Listener Community🌍 The History Explorers Club   LISTEN 🎧 🍎  Apple Podcasts   💚  Spotify   🎶  Amazon Music   🛜 Pandora   CONNECT 🦋  Liz on Bluesky  👩‍💻  Liz on LinkedIn  🛜  Liz’s Website  SAY THANKS 💜  Leave a review on Apple Podcasts  💚  Leave a rating on Spotify    Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Constitution is a document of “We the People.” The ways Americans have supported, debated, and interpreted the Constitution since 1787 have played a vital role in the rise of politics and political parties within the United States. What kind of political culture did the United States Constitution and its interpretations help establish? What were the expectations, practices, and cultural norms early Americans had to follow when debating the Constitution or its interpretation in the early American republic?  In honor of Constitution Day on September 17, the day the United States commemorates the signing of the United States Constitution, we speak with two historians–Jonathan Gienapp, an Associate Professor of History and Associate Professor of Law at Stanford University and Rachel Shelden, Director of the Richard Civil War Era Center and an Associate Professor of History at Penn State University– about early American political culture and political civility in the early American republic.  Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/393 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 078: Washington Brotherhood: Politics, Social Life, and the Coming of the Civil War  🎧 Episode 160: The Politics of Tea 🎧 Episode 202: The Early History of the United States Congress 🎧 Episode 210: Considering John Marshall, Part 1 🎧 Episode 211: Considering John Marshall, Part 2 🎧 Episode 285: Election & Voting in the Early Republic    REQUEST A TOPIC 📨  Topic Request Form  📫  [email protected]  WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter👩‍💻 BFW Listener Community🌍 The History Explorers Club   LISTEN 🍎  Apple Podcasts   💚  Spotify   🎶  Amazon Music   🛜 Pandora   CONNECT 🦋  Liz on Bluesky  👩‍💻  Liz on LinkedIn  🛜  Liz’s Website  SAY THANKS 💜  Leave a review on Apple Podcasts  💚  Leave a rating on Spotify  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What does history have to tell us about how we, as Americans, came to define people by their race; the visual ways we have grouped people together based on their skin color, facial features, hair texture, and ancestry? As you might imagine, history has a LOT to tell us about this question! So today, we’re going to explore one aspect of the answer to this question by focusing on some of the ways religion shaped European and early American ideas about race and racial groupings. Kathryn Gin Lum is an Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Stanford University. She’s also the author of Heathen: Religion and Race in American History. Show Notes:https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/392 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 047: Christian Imperialism: Converting the World in the Early American Republic 🎧 Episode 109: The American Enlightenment & Cadwallader Colden 🎧 Episode 139: Indian Enslavement in the Americas 🎧 Episode 311: Religion and the American Revolution 🎧 Episode 334: Missions and Mission Building in New Spain 🎧 Episode 367: The Brafferton Indian School, Part 1 🎧 Episode 376: Cotton Mather’s Spanish Lessons REQUEST A TOPIC 📨  Topic Request Form  📫  [email protected]  WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter👩‍💻 BFW Listener Community🌍 The History Explorers Club   LISTEN 🍎  Apple Podcasts   💚  Spotify   🎶  Amazon Music   🛜 Pandora  CONNECT 🦋  Liz on Bluesky  👩‍💻  Liz on LinkedIn  🛜  Liz’s Website  SAY THANKS 💜  Leave a review on Apple Podcasts  💚  Leave a rating on Spotify  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Do you ever wonder how governments met and worked in colonial British America? Williamsburg, Virginia, served as the capital of Virginia between 1699 and 1779. During its 80 years of service as capital, Williamsburg represented the center of British authority in Virginia. This meant the Royal Governor of the colony lived in Williamsburg. Indigenous, colonial, and other delegations came to Williamsburg to negotiate treaties and trade with Virginia. And, the colonial government met in Williamsburg’s capitol building to pass laws, listen to court cases, and debate ideas. Katie Schinabeck, a historian of historical memory and the American Revolution and the Digital Projects Researcher at Colonial Williamsburg’s Innovation Studios, takes us on a behind-the-scenes tour of Williamsburg’s colonial capitol building to explore how the government of colonial Virginia worked and operated. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/391 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 084: How Historians Read Historical Sources 🎧 Episode 099: Pirates & Pirate Nests in the British Atlantic World 🎧 Episode 153: Committees and Congresses: Governments of the American Revolution 🎧 Episode 202: The Early History of the United States Congress 🎧 Episode 259: American Legal History & the Bill of Rights 🎧 Episode 315: History and American Democracy 🎧 Episode 328: Warren Milteer, Free People of Color in Early America 🎧 Episode 389: Nicole Eustace, Indigenous Justice in Early America REQUEST A TOPIC 📨  Topic Request Form  📫  [email protected]  WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter👩‍💻 BFW Listener Community🌍 The History Explorers Club   LISTEN 🍎  Apple Podcasts   💚  Spotify   🎶  Amazon Music   🛜 Pandora  CONNECT 🦋  Liz on Bluesky  👩‍💻  Liz on LinkedIn  🛜  Liz’s Website  SAY THANKS 💜  Leave a review on Apple Podcasts  💚  Leave a rating on Spotify  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When we think about the American Revolution, the French Revolution, or the Haitian Revolution, we think about the ideals of freedom and equality. These ideals were embedded and discussed in all of these revolutions. What we don’t always think about when we think about these revolutions are the objects that inspired, came out of, and were circulated as they took place.  Ashli White, an Associate Professor of History at the University of Miami in Florida, joins us to investigate the “revolutionary things” that were created and circulated during the American, French, and Haitian Revolutions with details from her book Revolutionary Things: Material Culture and Politics in the Late Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/390 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 124: James Alexander Dun, Making the Haitian Revolution in Early America 🎧 Episode 136: Jennifer Van Horn, Material Culture and the Making of America 🎧 Episode 164: The American Revolution in the Age of Revolutions 🎧 Episode 165: The Age of Revolutions 🎧 Episode 177, Martin Brückner, The Social Life of Maps in America 🎧 Episode 306: The Horse’s Tail: Revolution & Memory in Early New York City 🎧 Episode 319: Cuba: An Early American History   REQUEST A TOPIC 📨  Topic Request Form  📫  [email protected]  WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter👩‍💻 BFW Listener Community🌍 The History Explorers Club   LISTEN 🍎  Apple Podcasts   💚  Spotify   🎶  Amazon Music   🛜 Pandora  CONNECT 🦋  Liz on Bluesky  👩‍💻  Liz on LinkedIn  🛜  Liz’s Website  SAY THANKS 💜  Leave a review on Apple Podcasts  💚  Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Early North America was a place that contained hundreds of distinct Indigenous nations and peoples who spoke at least 2,000 distinct languages. In the early sixteenth century, Spain began to establish colonies on mainland North America, and they were followed by the French, Dutch, and English, and the forced migration of enslaved Africans who represented at least 45 different ethnic and cultural groups. With such diversity, Early North America was full of cross-cultural encounters. What did it look like when people of different ethnicities, races, and cultures interacted with one another? How were the people involved in cross-cultural encounters able to understand and overcome their differences? Nicole Eustace is an award-winning historian at New York University. Using details from her Pulitzer-prize-winning book, Covered with Night: A Story of Murder and Indigenous Justice in Early America, Nicole will take us through one cross-cultural encounter in 1722 between the Haudenosaunee and Susquehannock peoples and English colonists in Pennsylvania. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/389 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 080: Liberty’s Prisoners: Prisons and Prison Life in Early America  🎧 Episode 171: Native Americans, British Colonists, and Trade in North America 🎧 Episode 220: New England Indians, Colonists, and the Origins of Slavery  🎧 Episode 264: Treaty of Canandaigua 🎧 Episode 356: The Moravian Church in North America 🎧 Episode 362: Treaties Between the US and American Indian Nations  REQUEST A TOPIC 📨  Topic Request Form  📫  [email protected]  WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter👩‍💻 BFW Listener Community🌍 The History Explorers Club   LISTEN 🍎  Apple Podcasts   💚  Spotify   🎶  Amazon Music   🛜 Pandora  CONNECT 🦋  Liz on Bluesky  👩‍💻  Liz on LinkedIn  🛜  Liz’s Website  SAY THANKS 💜  Leave a review on Apple Podcasts  💚  Leave a rating on Spotify  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Happy Fourth of July!  We’ve created special episodes to commemorate, celebrate, and remember the Fourth of July for years. Many of our episodes have focused on the Declaration of Independence, how and why it was created, the ideas behind it, and its sacred words: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” This year, we examine a different aspect of the Declaration of Independence: the man behind the boldest signature on the document: John Hancock. Brooke Barbier is a public historian and holds a Ph.D. in American History from Boston College. She’s also the author of the first biography in many years about John Hancock, it’s called King Hancock: The Radical Influence of a Moderate Founding Father. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/388 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 018: Our Declaration 🎧 Episode 129: John Bell, The Road to Concord, 1775 🎧 Episode 141: A Declaration in Draft 🎧 Episode 245: Celebrating the Fourth 🎧 Episode 277: Whose Fourth of July? 🎧 Episode 306: The Horse’s Tail: Revolution & Memory in Early New York City 🎧 Episode 309: Merchant Ships of the Eighteenth Century 🎧 Episode 360: Kyera Singleton, Slavery & Freedom in Massachusetts REQUEST A TOPIC 📨  Topic Request Form  📫  [email protected]  WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter👩‍💻 BFW Listener Community🌍 The History Explorers Club   LISTEN 🍎  Apple Podcasts   💚  Spotify   🎶  Amazon Music   🛜 Pandora  CONNECT 🦋  Liz on Bluesky  👩‍💻  Liz on LinkedIn  🛜  Liz’s Website  SAY THANKS 💜  Leave a review on Apple Podcasts  💚  Leave a rating on Spotify  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When we think of California, we might think about sunny weather, Hollywood, beaches, wine country, and perhaps the Gold Rush. What we don’t usually think about when we think about California is the state’s long history of slavery. Jean Pfaelzer, a Californian and a Professor Emerita of English, Asian Studies, and Women and Gender Studies at the University of Delaware, joins us to lead us through some of California’s long 250-year history of slavery with details from her book, California: A Slave State.  Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/387 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 014: West of the Revolution: An Uncommon History of 1776 🎧 Episode 067: An Environmental History of Early California and Hawaii  🎧 Episode 115: The Early American History of Texas 🎧 Episode 139: The Other Slavery: Indian Enslavement in the Americas 🎧 Episode 233: A History of Russian America  🎧 Episode 277: Whose Fourth of July? 🎧 Episode 312: The Domestic Slave Trade 🎧 Episode 371: An Archive of Indigenous Slavery  🎧 Episode 384: Making Maine: A Journey to Statehood   REQUEST A TOPIC 📨  Topic Request Form  📫  [email protected]  WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter👩‍💻 BFW Listener Community🌍 The History Explorers Club   LISTEN 🍎  Apple Podcasts   💚  Spotify   🎶  Amazon Music   🛜 Pandora  CONNECT 🦋  Liz on Bluesky  👩‍💻  Liz on LinkedIn  🛜  Liz’s Website  SAY THANKS 💜  Leave a review on Apple Podcasts  💚  Leave a rating on Spotify  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this special Juneteenth episode, as we honor the emancipation of enslaved African Americans, we delve into the work of those working to preserve slave dwellings across the United States, safeguarding the essential stories these structures embody. In our conversation, Joseph McGill, the Executive Director and Founder of the Slave Dwelling Project, joins us to share why former slave dwellings are vital to our nation's history and what they reveal about the lives of those who once lived in them. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/386 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 075: How Archives Work 🎧 Episode 079: What is a Historic Source? 🎧 Episode 089: Slavery & Freedom in Early Maryland 🎧 Episode 312: The Domestic Slave Trade 🎧 Episode 331: Discovery of the Williamsburg Bray School 🎧 Episode 360: Kyera Singleton, Slavery & Freedom in Massachusetts 🎧 Episode 378: Everyday Black Living in Early America REQUEST A TOPIC 📨  Topic Request Form  📫  [email protected]  WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter👩‍💻 BFW Listener Community🌍 The History Explorers Club   LISTEN 🍎  Apple Podcasts   💚  Spotify   🎶  Amazon Music   🛜 Pandora  CONNECT 🦋  Liz on Bluesky  👩‍💻  Liz on LinkedIn  🛜  Liz’s Website  SAY THANKS 💜  Leave a review on Apple Podcasts  💚  Leave a rating on Spotify  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The United States Constitution of 1787 gave many Americans pause about the powers the new federal government could exercise and how the government's leadership would rest with one person, the president. The fact that George Washington would likely serve as the new nation’s first president calmed many Americans’ fears that the new nation was creating an opportunity for a hereditary monarch. Washington had proven his commitment to a democratic form of government when he gave up his army command peacefully and voluntarily. He had proven he was someone Americans could trust. Plus, George Washington had no biological heirs–no sons–to whom he might pass on the presidency. But while George Washington had no biological heirs, he did have heirs. Cassandra A. Good, an Associate Professor of History at Marymount University and author of First Family: George Washington’s Heirs and the Making of America, joins us to explore Washington’s heirs and the lives they lived. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/385 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 027: A History of Stepfamilies in Early America 🎧 Episode 033: George Washington and His Library  🎧 Episode 061: George Washinton in Retirement  🎧 Episode 074: Martha Washington  🎧 Episode 137: The Washingtons’ Runaway Slave 🎧 Episode 183: George Washinton’s Mount Vernon  🎧 Episode 222: The Early History of Washington, D.C.  🎧 Episode 265: An Early History of the White House   REQUEST A TOPIC 📨 Topic Request Form 📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter👩‍💻 BFW Listener Community🌍 The History Explorers Club   LISTEN 🍎 Apple Podcasts  💚 Spotify  🎶 Amazon Music 🛜 Pandora CONNECT 🦋 Liz on Bluesky 👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn 🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS 💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts 💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Article IV, Section 3 of the United States Constitution establishes guidelines by which the United States Congress can admit new states to the American Union. It clearly states that “no new State shall be formed or erected within the Jurisdiction of any other State…without the Consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned as well as of the Congress.” Five states have been formed from pre-existing states: Vermont, Kentucky, Tennessee, West Virginia, and Maine. How did the process of forming a state from a pre-existing state work? Why would territories within a state want to declare their independence from their home state? Joshua Smith, the interim director of the American Merchant Marine Museum in Kings Point, New York, and author of the book Making Maine: Statehood and the War of 1812, leads us on an exploration of Maine’s journey to statehood. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/384 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 030: Northern New England’s Religious Geography 🎧 Episode 057: Money and the American State 🎧 Episode 098: Birth of the American Tax Man 🎧 Episode 103, James Monroe and & His Estate Highland 🎧 Episode 134: Pulpit and Nation 🎧 Episode 309: Merchant Ships of the Eighteenth Century REQUEST A TOPIC 📨 Topic Request Form 📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter👩‍💻 BFW Listener Community🌍 The History Explorers Club   LISTEN 🍎 Apple Podcasts  💚 Spotify  🎶 Amazon Music 🛜 Pandora CONNECT 🦋 Liz on Bluesky 👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn 🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS 💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts 💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If you will recall from Episode 331, the Williamsburg Bray School is the oldest existing structure in the United States that we know was used to educate African and African American children. As the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation prepares the Bray School for you to visit and see, we’re having many conversations about the history of the school, its scholars, and early Black American History in general. During one of these conversations, the work of Kevin Dawson came up. Kevin is an Associate Professor of History at the University of California, Merced and author of the book, Undercurrents of Power: Aquatic Culture in the African Diaspora. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/383 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 104: The Saltwater Frontier: Europeans & Native Americans on the Northeastern Coast 🎧 Episode 241: Pearls and the Nature of the Spanish Empire 🎧 Episode 250: Virginia, 1619 🎧 Episode 277: Who's Fourth of July? 🎧 Episode 331: Discovery of the Williamsburg Bray School 🎧 Episode 347: African and African American Music 🎧 Episode 352: James Forten and the Making of the United States REQUEST A TOPIC 📨 Topic Request Form 📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter👩‍💻 BFW Listener Community🌍 The History Explorers Club   LISTEN 🍎 Apple Podcasts  💚 Spotify  🎶 Amazon Music 🛜 Pandora CONNECT 🦋 Liz on Bluesky 👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn 🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS 💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts 💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Within the Declaration of Independence, the founders of the United States present twenty-seven grievances against King George III as they declare their reasons for why the thirteen British North American colonies sought their independence from Great Britain. Their twenty-fifth grievance declares that King George III “is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat [sic] the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun.” What do we know about the “Armies of foreign Mercenaries” King George III sent to his rebellious American colonies?  Friederike Baer, an Associate Professor of History at Penn State Abbington College, joins us to explore the lives and wartime experiences of the 30,000 German soldiers the British Crown hired and dispatched to North America during the American War for Independence. Frederike is the author of the award-winning book Hessians: German Soldiers in the American Revolutionary War. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/382 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 046: Whirlwind: The American Revolution & the War That Won It  🎧 Episode 048: Dangerous Guests: Enemy Captives During the War for Independence  🎧 Episode 081: After Yorktown 🎧 Episode 144: The Common Cause 🎧 Episode 147: British Soldiers, American War  🎧 Episode 157: The Revolution’s African American Soldiers 🎧 Episode 252: The Highland Soldier in North America 🎧 Episode 375: Misinformation Nation REQUEST A TOPIC 📨 Topic Request Form 📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter👩‍💻 BFW Listener Community🌍 The History Explorers Club   LISTEN 🍎 Apple Podcasts  💚 Spotify  🎶 Amazon Music 🛜 Pandora CONNECT 🦋 Liz on Bluesky 👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn 🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS 💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts 💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The vast and varied landscapes of Texas loom large in our American imaginations. As does Texas culture with its BBQ, cowboys, and larger-than-life personality. But before Texas was a place that embraced ranching, space flight, and country music, Texas was a place with rich and vibrant Indigenous cultures and traditions and with Spanish and Mexican cultures and traditions. Martha Menchaca, a Professor of Anthropology at the University of Texas, Austin, is a scholar of Texas history and United States-Mexican culture. She joins us to explore the Spanish and Mexican origins of Texas with details from her book, The Mexican American Experience in Texas: Citizenship, Segregation, and the Struggle for Equality. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/381 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 037: Kathleen DuVal, Independence Lost: Lives on the Edge of the American Revolution 🎧 Episode 115: Andrew Torget, The Early American History of Texas 🎧 Episode 178, Karoline Cook, Muslims & Moriscos in Colonial Spanish America 🎧 Episode 241: Molly Warsh, Pearls & the Nature of the Spanish Empire 🎧 Episode 334, Brandon Bayne, Missions and Mission Building in New Spain 🎧 Episode 358: Charles Tingley, St Augustine and Early Florida 🎧 Episode 371: Estevan Rael-Gálvez, An Archive of Indigenous Slavery REQUEST A TOPIC 📨 Topic Request Form 📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter👩‍💻 BFW Listener Community🌍 The History Explorers Club   LISTEN 🍎 Apple Podcasts  💚 Spotify  🎶 Amazon Music 🛜 Pandora CONNECT 🦋 Liz on Bluesky 👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn 🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS 💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts 💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The American Revolution was a movement that divided British Americans. Americans did not universally agree on the Revolution’s ideas about governance and independence. And the movement’s War for Independence was a bloody civil war that not only pitted brother against brother and fathers against sons; it also pitted wives against husbands. Cynthia A. Kierner is a professor of history at George Mason University and the author of the book The Tory’s Wife: A Woman and Her Family in Revolutionary America. Cindy joins us to lead us through the story of Jane and William Spurgin, an everyday couple who lived in the North Carolina Backcountry during the American Revolution and who found themselves supporting different sides of the Revolution. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/380 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 085: Bonnie Huskins, American Loyalists in Canada 🎧 Episode 126: Rebecca Brannon, The Reintegration of American Loyalists 🎧 Episode 237: Nora Doyle, Motherhood in Early America 🎧 Episode 325: Woody Holton, Everyday People of the American Revolution 🎧 Episode 330: Brad Jones, Loyalism in the British Atlantic World 🎧 Episode 356: Paul Peucker, The Moravian Church in North America REQUEST A TOPIC 📨 Topic Request Form 📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter👩‍💻 BFW Listener Community🌍 The History Explorers Club   LISTEN 🍎 Apple Podcasts  💚 Spotify  🎶 Amazon Music 🛜 Pandora CONNECT 🦋 Liz on Bluesky 👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn 🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS 💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts 💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Women make up eight out of every ten healthcare workers in the United States. Yet they lag behind men when it comes to working in the roles of medical doctors and surgeons. Why has healthcare become a professional field dominated by women, and yet women represent a minority of physicians and doctors who serve at the top of the healthcare field? Susan H. Brandt, a historian and lecturer at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, seeks to find answers to these questions. In doing so, she takes us into the rich history of women healers with details from her book, Women Healers: Gender, Authority, and Medicine in Early Philadelphia. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/379 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 003: Director of the Library Company of Philadelphia 🎧 Episode 005: Revolutionary Medicine: The Founding Fathers and Mothers in Sickness and Health 🎧 Episode 116: Disease & the Seven Years’ War 🎧 Episode 174: Yellow Fever in the Early American Republic 🎧 Episode 263: The Medical Imagination 🎧 Episode 273: David Hosack, Botany, and Medicine in the Early Republic 🎧 Episode 276: Benjamin Rush: Founding Father 🎧 Episode 301: From Inoculation to Vaccination, Part 1 🎧 Episode 302: From Inoculation to Vaccination, Part 2 REQUEST A TOPIC 📨 Topic Request Form 📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter👩‍💻 BFW Listener Community🌍 The History Explorers Club   LISTEN 🍎 Apple Podcasts  💚 Spotify  🎶 Amazon Music 🛜 Pandora CONNECT 🦋 Liz on Bluesky 👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn 🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS 💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts 💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When we study the history of Black Americans, especially in the early American period, we tend to focus on slavery and the slave trades. But focusing solely on slavery can hinder our ability to see that, like all early Americans, Black Americans were multi-dimensional people who led complicated lives and lived a full range of experiences that were worth living and talking about. Tara Bynum, an Assistant Professor of English and African American Studies at the University of Iowa and the author of Reading Pleasures: Everyday Black Living in Early America, joins us to explore the lives of four early Black American writers: Phillis Wheatley, John Marrant, James Albert Unkawsaw Groniosaw, and David Walker. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/378 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 025: Inventing George Whitefield  🎧 Episode 083: Unfreedom: Slavery in Colonial Boston 🎧 Episode 118: The Business of Slavery in Rhode Island 🎧 Episode 123: Revolutionary Allegiances 🎧 Episode 166: Freedom and the American Revolution 🎧 Episode 328: Free People of Color in Early America 🎧 Episode 360: Slavery & Freedom in Massachusetts REQUEST A TOPIC 📨 Topic Request Form 📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter👩‍💻 BFW Listener Community🌍 The History Explorers Club   LISTEN 🍎 Apple Podcasts  💚 Spotify  🎶 Amazon Music 🛜 Pandora CONNECT 🦋 Liz on Bluesky 👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn 🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS 💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts 💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

2023 marked the 250th anniversary of the arrival of Phillis Wheatley's published book of poetry in the British American colonies. Phillis Wheatley was an enslaved African woman who, as a teenager, became the first published African author of a book of poetry written in English.  Ade Solanke, an award-winning playwright and screenwriter, has written two plays about Phillis Wheatley’s life to commemorate the semiquincentennial of Wheatley’s literary accomplishments. She joins us to not only explore the life of Phillis Wheatley, but also how playwrights use and research history to help them create dramatic works of art. Works of art that can help us forge an emotional connection with the past. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/377 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 008: The Intercolonial Slave Trade of British America 🎧 Episode 086: Ben Franklin in London 🎧 Episode 123: Revolutionary Allegiances 🎧 Episode 132: Indigenous London 🎧 Episode 166: Freedom and the American Revolution 🎧 Episode 170: New England Bound: Slavery in Early New England   REQUEST A TOPIC 📨 Topic Request Form 📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter👩‍💻 BFW Listener Community🌍 The History Explorers Club   LISTEN 🍎 Apple Podcasts  💚 Spotify  🎶 Amazon Music 🛜 Pandora CONNECT 🦋 Liz on Bluesky 👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn 🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS 💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts 💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Colonial America was born in a world of religious alliances and rivalries. Missionary efforts in the colonial Americas allow us to see how some of these religious alliances and rivalries played out. Spain, and later France, sent Catholic priests and friars to North and South America, and the Caribbean, purportedly to save the souls of Indigenous Americans by converting them to Catholicism. We also know that Protestants did similar work to help counteract this Catholic work in the Americas. Kirsten Silva Gruesz, a Professor of Literature at the University of California, Santa Cruz, joins us to explore the life and work of Cotton Mather, a Boston Puritan minister who actively sought to counteract the work of Catholic conversion, with details from her book Cotton Mather’s Spanish Lessons: A Story of Language, Race, and Belonging in the Early Americas. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/376 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 047: Emily Conroy-Krutz, Christian Imperialism: Converting the World in the Early American Republic 🎧 Episode 139: Andrés Reséndez, The Other Slavery: Indian Enslavement in the Americas 🎧 Episode 170: Wendy Warren, New England Bound: Slavery in Early New England 🎧 Episode 196: Alejandra Dubcovsky, Information & Communication in the Early American South 🎧 Episode 242: Molly Warsh, Pearls & the Nature of the Spanish Empire 🎧 Episode 301: From Inoculation to Vaccination, Part 1 🎧 Episode 318: Ste Genevieve National Historic Park 🎧 Episode 334: Brandon Bayne, Missions and Mission Building in New Spain 🎧 Episode 371: Estevan Rael-Gálvez, An Archive of Indigenous Slavery REQUEST A TOPIC 📨 Topic Request Form 📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter👩‍💻 BFW Listener Community🌍 The History Explorers Club   LISTEN 🎧 🍎 Apple Podcasts  💚 Spotify  🎶 Amazon Music 🛜 Pandora CONNECT 🦋 Liz on Bluesky 👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn 🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS 💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts 💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Over the past decade, we’ve heard a lot about “fake news” and “misinformation.” And as 2024 is an election year, it’s likely we’re going to hear even more about these terms. So what is the origin of misinformation in the American press? When did Americans decide that they needed to be concerned with figuring out whether the information they heard or read was truthful or fake? Jordan E. Taylor joins us to find answers to these questions. Jordan is a historian who studies the history of media and the ways early Americans created, spread, and circulated news. He is also the author of the book Misinformation Nation: Foreign News and the Politics of Truth in Revolutionary America. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/375 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 144: The Common Cause of the American Revolution 🎧 Episode 156: The Power of the Press in the American Revolution 🎧 Episode 207: Young Benjamin Franklin 🎧 Episode 227: Copyright & Fair Use in Early America 🎧 Episode 243:  Revolutionary Print Networks REQUEST A TOPIC 📨 Topic Request Form 📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter👩‍💻 BFW Listener Community🌍 The History Explorers Club   LISTEN 🎧 🍎 Apple Podcasts  💚 Spotify  🎶 Amazon Music 🛜 Pandora CONNECT 🦋 Liz on Bluesky 👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn 🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS 💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts 💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The American Revolution and its War for Independence comprised the United States’ founding movement. The War for Independence also served as the fifth major war for European empire in North America. The fourth war for European empire, the Seven Years’ War, reshaped and redefined Europe’s worldwide colonial landscape in Great Britain’s favor. The American Revolutionary War presented Britain’s European rivals with an opportunity to regain some of the territory they had lost. An opportunity we can see those rivals seizing in the Revolutionary War’s Western Theater. Stephen Kling, Jr., is the author and co-author of several books and articles about the American Revolution in the West. His latest book, The American Revolutionary War in the West, has served as the basis for a museum exhibit at the St. Charles County Heritage Museum in St. Peters, Missouri. Stephen joins us as our expert guide on our expedition through the Revolution’s Western Theater. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/374 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 014: West of the Revolution: An Uncommon History of 1776 🎧 Episode 037: Independence Lost: Lives on the Edge of the American Revolution 🎧 Episode 041: Canada & the American Revolution 🎧 Episode 051: A History of Early Detroit 🎧 Episode 081: After Yorktown: The Final Struggle for American Independence 🎧 Episode 102: George Rogers Clark & the Fight for the Illinois Country 🎧 Episode 318: Ste. Genevieve National Historical Park 🎧 Episode 372: A History of the Myaamia REQUEST A TOPIC 📨 Topic Request Form 📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter👩‍💻 BFW Listener Community🌍 The History Explorers Club   LISTEN 🍎 Apple Podcasts  💚 Spotify  🎶 Amazon Music 🛜 Pandora CONNECT 🦋 Liz on Bluesky 👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn 🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS 💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts 💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The so-called “March to the American Revolution” comprised many more events than just the Stamp Act Riots, the Boston Massacre, and the Tea Crisis. One event we often overlook played an essential and direct role in the events needed to draw the thirteen rebellious British North American colonies into a union of coordinated response. That event was the Gaspee Affair in 1772. Adrian Weimer, a professor of history at Providence College, has been researching the Gaspee Affair and what it can tell us about the constitutional balance between the British Empire and its colonies. She leads us on an investigation of the Gaspee Affair. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/373 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 112: The Tea Crisis of 1773 🎧 Episode 118: The Business of Slavery in Rhode Island 🎧 Episode 144: The Common Cause of the American Revolution 🎧 Episode 153: Committees and Congresses: Governments of the American Revolution 🎧 Episode 309: Merchant Ships of the Eighteenth Century 🎧 Episode 325: Everyday People of the American Revolution REQUEST A TOPIC 📨 Topic Request Form 📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter👩‍💻 BFW Listener Community🌍 The History Explorers Club   LISTEN 🍎 Apple Podcasts  💚 Spotify  🎶 Amazon Music 🛜 Pandora CONNECT 🦋 Liz on Bluesky 👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn 🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS 💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts 💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Early America was a diverse place. A significant part of this diversity came from the fact that there were at least 1,000 different Indigenous tribes and nations living in different areas of North America before the Spanish and other European empires arrived on the continent’s shores. Diane Hunter and John Bickers join us to investigate the history and culture of one of these distinct Indigenous tribes: the Myaamia. At the time of this recording, Diane Hunter was the Tribal Historic Preservation Officer for the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma. She has since retired from that position. John Bickers is an Assistant Professor of History at Case Western Reserve University in Ohio. Both Diane and John are citizens of the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma and experts in Myaamia history and culture. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/372 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 029: Colin Calloway, The Victory with No Name: The Native American Defeat of the First American Army 🎧 Episode 223: Susan Sleeper-Smith, A Native American History of the Ohio River Valley & Great Lakes Region 🎧 Episode 290: The World of the Wampanoag, Part 1: Before 1620 🎧 Episode 291: The World of the Wampanoag, Part 2: 1620 and Beyond 🎧 Episode 297: Claudio Saunt, Indian Removal Act of 1830 🎧 Episode 323: Michael Witgen, American Expansion and the Political Economy of Plunder 🎧 Episode 362: David W. Penney, Treaties Between the US & American Indian Nations 🎧 Episode 367: The Brafferton Indian School, Part 1 🎧 Episode 368: The Brafferton Indian School, Part 2: Legacies REQUEST A TOPIC 📨 Topic Request Form 📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter👩‍💻 BFW Listener Community🌍 The History Explorers Club   LISTEN 🎧 🍎 Apple Podcasts  💚 Spotify  🎶 Amazon Music 🛜 Pandora CONNECT 🦋 Liz on Bluesky 👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn 🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS 💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts 💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Long before European arrival in the Americas, Indigenous people and nations practiced enslavement. Their version of enslavement looked different from the version Christopher Columbus and his fellow Europeans practiced, but Indigenous slavery also shared many similarities with the Euro-American practice of African Chattel Slavery. While there is no way to measure the exact impact of slavery upon the Indigenous peoples of the Americas, we do know the practice involved many millions of Indigenous people who were captured, bound, and sold as enslaved people. Estevan Rael-Gálvez, Executive Director of Native Bound-Unbound: Archive of Indigenous Slavery, joins us to discuss the digital project Native Bound-Unbound: Archive of Indigenous Slavery. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/371  Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 008: Greg O'Malley, Final Passages: The Intercolonial Slave Trade of British America 🎧 Episode 139: Andrés Reséndez, The Other Slavery 🎧 Episode 184: David J. Silverman, Thundersticks: Firearms and the Violence Transformation of Native America 🎧 Episode 197: Brett Rushforth, Native American Slavery in New France 🎧 Episode 220: Margaret Ellen Newell, New England Indians, Colonists, and Origins of Slavery 🎧 Episode 367: The Brafferton Indian School, Part 1 🎧 Episode 368: The Brafferton Indian School, Part 2: Legacies   REQUEST A TOPIC 📨 Topic Request Form 📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter👩‍💻 BFW Listener Community🌍 The History Explorers Club   LISTEN 🎧 🍎 Apple Podcasts  💚 Spotify  🎶 Amazon Music 🛜 Pandora CONNECT 🦋 Liz on Bluesky 👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn 🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS 💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts 💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Happy Halloween! In honor of the 31st of October and All Hallows Eve, we investigate a historical incident of witches and witchcraft in Springfield, Massachusetts in 1651. Malcolm Gaskill, Emeritus Professor of Early Modern History at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England, and one of the leading experts in the history of witchcraft, joins us to discuss details from his new book, The Ruin of All Witches: Life and Death in the New World. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/370 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 049: Malcolm Gaskill, How the English Became American 🎧 Episode 053: Emerson W. Baker, A Storm of Witchcraft 🎧 Episode 192: Brian Regal, The Secret History of the New Jersey Devil 🎧 Episode 225: Elaine Forman Crane, The Poison Plot: Adultery & Murder in Colonial Newport 🎧 Episode 341: Mairi Cowan, Possession and Exorcism in New France REQUEST A TOPIC 📨 Topic Request Form 📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter👩‍💻 BFW Listener Community🌍 The History Explorers Club   LISTEN 🍎 Apple Podcasts  💚 Spotify  🎶 Amazon Music 🛜 Pandora CONNECT 🦋 Liz on Bluesky 👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn 🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS 💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts 💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Establishing colonies in North America took an astonishing amount of work. Colonists had to clear trees, eventually remove stumps from newly cleared fields, plant crops to eat and sell, weed and tend those crops, and then they had to harvest crops, and get the crops they intended to sell to the nearest market town, and that was just some of the work involved to establish colonial farms. Colonists did not often perform this work on their own. They enlisted the help of children and neighbors, purchased enslaved people, and used animals. Undra Jeter is the Bill and Jean Lane Director of Coach and Livestock at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. He joins us to explore the animals English and British colonists brought with them to North America and used to build, run, and sustain their colonial farms and cities. Animals provided many benefits to early Americans, so Undra also shares information about the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation’s efforts to bring back the population numbers of some of these historic animal breeds through its rare breeds program. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/369 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 067: John Ryan Fischer, An Environmental History of Early California & Hawaii 🎧 Episode 168: Andrea Smalley, Wild By Nature: Colonists and Animals in North America 🎧 Episode 187: Kenneth Cohen, Sport in Early America 🎧 Episode 234: Richard Bushman, Farms & Farm Families in Early America 🎧 Episode 275: Ingrid Tague, Pets in Early America REQUEST A TOPIC 📨 Topic Request Form 📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter👩‍💻 BFW Listener Community🌍 The History Explorers Club   LISTEN 🍎 Apple Podcasts  💚 Spotify  🎶 Amazon Music 🛜 Pandora CONNECT 🦋 Liz on Bluesky 👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn 🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS 💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts 💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Brafferton Indian School has a long and complicated legacy. Chartered with the College of William & Mary in 1693, the Brafferton Indian School’s purpose was to educate young Indigenous boys in the ways of English religion, language, and culture. The Brafferton performed this work for more than 70 years, between the arrival of its first students in 1702 and when the last documented student left the school in 1778.  This second episode in our 2-episode series about the Brafferton Indian School will focus on the legacy of the Brafferton Indian School and how it and other colonial-era Indian Schools established models for the schools the United States government and religious institutions established during the Indian Boarding School Era.  As one of the architects of these later Boarding Schools, Richard Henry Pratt, stated, the purpose of these boarding schools was to “kill the Indian and save the man.” Pratt meant that the United States government desired to assimilate and fully Americanize Indigenous children so there would be no more Native Americans.  But Indigenous peoples are resilient, and they have resisted American attempts to extinguish their cultures. So we’ll also hear from three tribal citizens in Virginia who are working in different ways to reawaken long-dormant aspects of their Indigenous cultures. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/368 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 290: The World of the Wampanoag, Part 1: Before 1620 🎧 Episode 291: The World of the Wampanoag, Part 2: 1620 and Beyond 🎧 Episode 310: Rosalyn LaPier, History of the Blackfeet 🎧 Episode 314: Colin Calloway, Native Americans in Early American Cities 🎧 Episode 343: Music and Song in Native North America 🎧 Episode 353: Brooke Bauer, Women and the Making of Catawba Identity 🎧 Episode 367: The Brafferton Indian School, Part 1 Series Music 🎵 WarPaint Singers 🎵 WarPaint Singers on YouTube  🎵 Blue Dot Sessions REQUEST A TOPIC 📨 Topic Request Form 📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter👩‍💻 BFW Listener Community🌍 The History Explorers Club   LISTEN 🍎 Apple Podcasts  💚 Spotify  🎶 Amazon Music 🛜 Pandora CONNECT 🦋 Liz on Bluesky 👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn 🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS 💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts 💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In 1693, King William III and Queen Mary II of England granted a royal charter for two institutions of higher education in the Colony of Virginia. The first institution was the College of William & Mary. The second institution was the Indian School at William & Mary, known from 1723 to the present as the Brafferton Indian School. The history of the Brafferton Indian School is a story of power, trade, land, and culture. It’s an Indigenous story. It’s also a story of English, later British, colonialism. Over the next two episodes, we will investigate the Brafferton Indian School and the stories it tells about power, trade, land, culture, and colonialism in early America. We’ll also explore the legacy of the Brafferton and other colonial Indian schools by examining the connections between these schools and the creation of the Indian Boarding Schools that operated within the United States between the mid-nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries. In this episode, we focus on the history and origins of the Brafferton Indian School. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/367 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 104: Andrew Lipman, The Saltwater Frontier: Native Americans and Colonists on the Northeastern Coast 🎧 Episode 132: Coll Thrush, Indigenous London 🎧 Episode 171: Jessica Stern, Native Americans, British Colonists, and Trade in North America 🎧 Episode 290: The World of the Wampanoag, Part 1: Before 1620 🎧 Episode 291: The World of the Wampanoag, Part 2: 1620 and Beyond 🎧 Episode 310: Rosalyn LaPier, History of the Blackfeet 🎧 Episode 314: Colin Calloway, Native Americans in Early American Cities 🎧 Episode 353: Brooke Bauer, Women and the Making of Catawba Identity   REQUEST A TOPIC 📨 Topic Request Form 📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter👩‍💻 BFW Listener Community🌍 The History Explorers Club   LISTEN 🎧 🍎 Apple Podcasts  💚 Spotify  🎶 Amazon Music 🛜 Pandora CONNECT 🦋 Liz on Bluesky 👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn 🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS 💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts 💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On September 17, 1787, the members of the Constitutional Convention concluded their work by signing the final draft of their new proposed government. The document they signed was the United States Constitution, which is why the United States marks Constitution Day each year on September 17. In honor of Constitution Day, we explore the life of a Founder who played a large role in the creation and shaping of the United States Constitution: James Wilson. Michael H. Taylor, Professor of United States History and Political Science at Northeast Community College and author of James Wilson: The Anxious Founder, joins us to investigate the life of James Wilson, who stands as one of the United States’ overlooked founders.  Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/366 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 055: Robb Haberman, John Jay: Forgotten Founder 🎧 Episode 094: Cassandra Good, Founding Friendships 🎧 Episode 107: Mary Sarah Bilder, Madison’s Hand 🎧 Episode 143: Michael Klarman, The Making of the United States Constitution 🎧 Episode 153: Committees and Congresses: Governments of the American Revolution 🎧 Episode 212: Researching Biography 🎧Episode 258: Jane Calvert, “John Dickinson Life, Religion, & Politics” REQUEST A TOPIC 📨 Topic Request Form 📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter👩‍💻 BFW Listener Community🌍 The History Explorers Club   LISTEN 🍎 Apple Podcasts  💚 Spotify  🎶 Amazon Music 🛜 Pandora CONNECT 🦋 Liz on Bluesky 👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn 🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS 💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts 💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

2020 commemorated the 300th anniversary of French presence on Prince Edward Island. Like much of North America, the Canadian Maritime provinces of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Cape Breton Island, and Prince Edward Island were highly contested regions. In fact, the way France and Great Britain fought for presence and control of this region places the Canadian Maritimes among the most contested regions in eighteenth-century North America. Anne Marie Lane Jonah, a historian with the Parks Canada Agency, joins us to explore the history of Prince Edward Island and why Great Britain and France fought over the Canadian Maritime region. This episode originally posted as Episode 283.  Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/365 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 064: Brett Rushforth, Native American Slavery in New France 🎧Episode 104: Andrew Lipman, Europeans & Native Americans on the Northeastern Coast 🎧 Episode 108: Ann Little, The Many Captivities of Esther Wheelwright 🎧 Episode 167: Eberhard Faber, The Early History of New Orleans 🎧 Episode 189: Sam White, The Little Ice Age 🎧 Episode 232: Christopher Hodson, The Acadian Diaspora REQUEST A TOPIC 📨 Topic Request Form 📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter👩‍💻 BFW Listener Community🌍 The History Explorers Club   LISTEN 🍎 Apple Podcasts  💚 Spotify  🎶 Amazon Music 🛜 Pandora CONNECT 🦋 Liz on Bluesky 👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn 🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS 💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts 💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Mississippi Gulf Coast was the home of many different peoples, cultures, and empires during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. According to some historians, the Gulf Coast region may have been the most diverse region in early North America.
 Matthew Powell, a historian of slavery and southern history and the Executive Director of the La Pointe-Krebs House & Museum in Pascagoula, Mississippi, joins us to investigate and explore the Mississippi Gulf Coast and a prominent family who has lived there since about 1718. This episode originally posted as Episode 303. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/364 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 037: Kathleen DuVal, Independence Lost 🎧 Episode 167: Eberhard Faber, The Early History of New Orleans 🎧 Episode 283: Anne Marie Lane Jonah, Acadie 300  🎧 Episode 295: Ibrahima Seck, Whitney Plantation Museum 🎧 Episode 298: Lindsey Shackenback Regele, Manufacturing Advantage REQUEST A TOPIC 📨 Topic Request Form 📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter👩‍💻 BFW Listener Community🌍 The History Explorers Club   LISTEN 🍎 Apple Podcasts  💚 Spotify  🎶 Amazon Music 🛜 Pandora CONNECT 🦋 Liz on Bluesky 👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn 🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS 💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts 💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

About 620 miles north of New Orleans and 62 miles south of St. Louis, sits the town of Ste. Geneviéve, Missouri. Established in 1750 by the French, Ste. Geneviéve reveals much about what it was like to establish a colony in the heartland of North America and what it was like for colonists to live so far removed from seats of imperial power. Claire Casey, a National Park Service interpretative ranger at the Ste. Geneviéve National Historical Park, joins us to explore the early American history of Ste. Geneviéve. This episode is originally posted as Episode 318.  Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/363 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 102: William Nester, George Rogers Clark and the Fight for the Illinois Country 🎧 Episode 108: Ann Little, The Many Captivities of Esther Wheelwright 🎧 Episode 120: Marcia Zug, Mail Order Brides in Early America 🎧 Episode 139: Andrés Reséndez, The Other Slavery 🎧 Episode 308: Jessica Marie Johnson, Slavery and Freedom in French Louisiana REQUEST A TOPIC 📨 Topic Request Form 📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter👩‍💻 BFW Listener Community🌍 The History Explorers Club   LISTEN 🍎 Apple Podcasts  💚 Spotify  🎶 Amazon Music 🛜 Pandora CONNECT 🦋 Liz on Bluesky 👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn 🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS 💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts 💚 Leave a rating on Spotify   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian has an exhibit called Nation to Nation: Treaties Between the United States & American Indian Nations. This exhibit allows you to see treaties the United States has made with American Indian nations and learn more about those treaties and their outcomes. David W. Penney is the Associate Director of Museum Scholarship, Exhibitions, and Public Engagement at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian. He’s also an internationally recognized scholar and curator who has a lot of expertise in Native American art history, and he was involved in creating the Nation to Nation exhibit. He joins us to guide us through this exhibit and some of the treaties the United States has made with Indigenous nations. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/362 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 163: The American Revolution in North America 🎧 Episode 223: Susan Sleeper-Smith, A Native American History of the Ohio River Valley & Great Lakes Region 🎧 Episode 264: Michael Oberg, The Treaty of Canandaigua, 1794  🎧 Episode 286: Elections in Early America: Native Sovereignty 🎧 Episode 323: Michael Witgen, American Expansion and the Political Economy of Plunder REQUEST A TOPIC 📨 Topic Request Form 📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter👩‍💻 BFW Listener Community🌍 The History Explorers Club   LISTEN 🍎 Apple Podcasts  💚 Spotify  🎶 Amazon Music 🛜 Pandora CONNECT 🦋 Liz on Bluesky 👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn 🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS 💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts 💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

July 4, 2023 marks the 247th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence and the birth of the United States. In three short years, we will be marking the 250th anniversary of these events. How are historians thinking about the American Revolution for 2026? What are they discussing when it comes to the 250th anniversary of the United States’ founding?  Lindsay M. Chervinsky, Ronald Angelo Johnson, and Kariann Akemi Yokota join us to answer these questions. All three guests are historians of the American Revolutionary Era who research the American Revolution from different perspectives. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/361 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 052: Ronald A. Johnson, Early United States-Haitian Diplomacy 🎧 Episode 245: Celebrating the Fourth 🎧 Episode 277: Whose Fourth of July? 🎧 Episode 279: Lindsay M Chervinsky, The Cabinet: Creation of an American Institution 🎧 Episode 306: The Horse’s Tail: Revolution & Memory in Early New York City 🎧 Episode 332: Experiences of Revolution: Occupied Philadelphia 🎧 Episode 333: Experiences of Revolution: Disruptions in Yorktown   REQUEST A TOPIC 📨 Topic Request Form 📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter👩‍💻 BFW Listener Community🌍 The History Explorers Club   LISTEN 🍎 Apple Podcasts  💚 Spotify  🎶 Amazon Music 🛜 Pandora CONNECT 🦋 Liz on Bluesky 👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn 🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS 💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts 💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Juneteenth is a holiday that celebrates and commemorates the end of slavery in the United States. We choose to reflect on the end of slavery in the United States on June 19, because, on June 19, 1865, United States General Gordon Granger issued his General Order No. 3 in Galveston, Texas, informing Texans that all slaves are free. Juneteenth may feel like it is a mid-19th-century moment, but the end of slavery didn’t just occur on one day or at one time. And it didn’t just occur in the mid-19th century. The fight to end slavery was a long process that started during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.  Kyera Singleton, the Executive Director of the Royall House and Slave Quarters in Medford, Massachusetts, has spent years researching the lives of the enslaved people who lived and worked on the Royall Plantation and the significant contributions they made to ending slavery in Massachusetts. Kyera joins us to investigate the story of slavery and freedom within the first state in the United States to legally abolish slavery. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/360 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 083: Jared Hardesty, Unfreedom: Slavery in Colonial Boston 🎧 Episode 170: Wendy Warren, New England Bound 🎧 Episode 194: Longfellow House-Washington’s Headquarters, NHS  🎧 Episode 220: Margaret Newell, New England Indians, Colonists, and the Origins of Slavery 🎧 Episode 304: Annette Gordon-Reed: On Juneteenth 🎧 Episode 324: Andrea Mosterman, New Netherland and Slavery 🎧 Episode 329: Mark Tabbert, Freemasonry in Early America 🎧 Episode 351: Nicole Maskiell, Wealth and Slavery in New Netherland REQUEST A TOPIC 📨 Topic Request Form 📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter👩‍💻 BFW Listener Community🌍 The History Explorers Club   LISTEN 🍎 Apple Podcasts  💚 Spotify  🎶 Amazon Music 🛜 Pandora CONNECT 🦋 Liz on Bluesky 👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn 🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS 💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts 💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

“People are complicated” is a truism that holds in the past and the present. Seldom do we find a person where all of their actions and thoughts are black and white. What we see instead is that people are colorful because they aren’t just one thing and they don’t think and act in one way. Human identities are one area where we find a lot of colorfulness and complexity. Most humans have multiple Identities based in geography, nationality, religious affiliation, race and ethnicity, and also gender. Jen Manion, a Professor of History and of Sexuality and Women’s and Gender Studies at Amherst College and author of the book, Female Husbands: A Trans History, joins us to investigate the early American world of female husbands, people who were assigned female at birth and then transed-gender at some point in their lives to live as men. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/359 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 002: Cornelia King, “That So Gay” Exhibit at the Library Company of Philadelphia 🎧 Episode 013: Rachel Hope Cleves, Charity & Sylvia: A Same-Sex Marriage in Early America 🎧 Episode 080: Jen Manion, Liberty's Prisoners: Prisons and Prison Life in Early America  🎧 Episode 266: Johann Neem, Education in Early America 🎧 Episode 292: Craft in Early America 🎧 Episode 309: Philip Reid, Merchant Ships of the Eighteenth Century 🎧 Episode 354: John Wood Sweet, The Sewing Gir’s Tale 🎧 Episode 357: Eric Jay Dolin, Privateering During the American Revolution  REQUEST A TOPIC 📨 Topic Request Form 📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter👩‍💻 BFW Listener Community🌍 The History Explorers Club   LISTEN 🍎 Apple Podcasts  💚 Spotify  🎶 Amazon Music 🛜 Pandora CONNECT 🦋 Liz on Bluesky 👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn 🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS 💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts 💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For much of the colonial period, Spain claimed almost all of North America as Spanish territory. It displayed this claim on maps and in the administrative units it created to govern this vast territory: New Spain and La Florida. Charles Tingley is a Senior Research Librarian at the St. Augustine Historical Society in St. Augustine, Florida, and an expert in the history of St. Augustine. He joins us to explore the early American history of La Florida through the lens of one of its capitals: the City of St. Augustine. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/358 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 082: Alejandra Dubcovsky, Information & Communication in the Early American South 🎧 Episode 167: Eberhard Faber, The Early History of New Orleans 🎧 Episode 178: Karoline Cook, Muslims & Moriscos in Colonial Spanish America 🎧 Episode 241: Molly Warsh, Pearls & the Nature of the Spanish Empire 🎧 Episode 319: Ada Ferrer, Cuba, An Early American History 🎧 Episode 334: Brandon Bayne, Missions and Mission Building in New Spain REQUEST A TOPIC 📨 Topic Request Form 📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter👩‍💻 BFW Listener Community🌍 The History Explorers Club LISTEN 🍎 Apple Podcasts  💚 Spotify  🎶 Amazon Music 🛜 Pandora CONNECT 🦋 Liz on Bluesky 👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn 🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS 💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts 💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How did the Continental Congress approach creating military forces that could go toe-to-toe with the British military during the American War for Independence? Eric Jay Dolin joins us to answer part of that question by looking at the creation of the United States’ privateer fleet. Dolin is the author of fifteen books about the maritime history of early America, including Rebels at Sea: Privateering in the American Revolution. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/357 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 153: Committees and Congresses of the American Revolution 🎧 Episode 161: Smuggling in the American Revolution 🎧 Episode 208: Nathaniel Philbrick, Turning Points of the American Revolution 🎧 Episode 288: Tyson Reeder, Smugglers & Patriots in the 18th-Century Atlantic World 🎧 Episode 309: Philip Reid, Merchant Ships of the Eighteenth Century 🎧 Episode 348: Ricardo Herrera, Valley Forge 🎧 Episode 352: James Forten and the Making of the United States REQUEST A TOPIC 📨 Topic Request Form 📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter  👩‍💻 Join the BFW Listener Community LISTEN 🍎 Apple Podcasts  💚 Spotify  🎶 Amazon Music 🛜 Pandora CONNECT 🦋 Liz on Bluesky 👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn 🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS 💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts 💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In 1682, the first Assembly of Pennsylvania and the Delaware counties met in Chester, Pennsylvania, and adopted “the Great Law,” a humanitarian code that guaranteed the people of Pennsylvania liberty of conscience. “The Great Law” created an environment that not only welcomed William Penn’s fellow Quakers to Pennsylvania but also created space for the migration of other unestablished religions, such as the Lutherans, Schwenkfelders, and Moravians. Paul Peucker, an archivist and the Director of the Moravian Archives in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, joins us to investigate the establishment of the Moravian Church in North America. Paul is the author of many articles, essays, and books about the Moravians and their history, including Herrnhut: The Formation of a Moravian Community, 1722-1732. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/356 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 025: Jessica Parr, Inventing George Whitefield 🎧 Episode 075: Peter Drummey, How Archives Work 🎧 Episode 134: Spence McBride, Clergymen and the Politics of Revolutionary America 🎧 Episode 135: Julie Holcomb, Moral Commerce 🎧 Episode 173: Marisa Fuentes, Colonial Port Cities and Slavery 🎧 Episode 214: Christopher Grasso, Skepticism & American Faith 🎧 Episode 311: Kate Carte, Religion and the American Revolution REQUEST A TOPIC 📨 Topic Request Form 📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter👩‍💻 BFW Listener Community🌍 The History Explorers Club   LISTEN 🍎 Apple Podcasts  💚 Spotify  🎶 Amazon Music 🛜 Pandora CONNECT 🦋 Liz on Bluesky 👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn 🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS 💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts 💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On April 10th, 1606, King James I granted the Virginia Company of London a charter. Just over a year later, on May 14, 1607, this privately-funded, joint-stock company established the first, permanent English colony in North America at Jamestown, in the colony of Virginia.  What work did the Virginia Company have to do to establish this colony? How much money did it have to raise, and from whom did it raise this money, to support its colonial venture? Misha Ewen, a Lecturer in early modern history at the University of Bristol and author of The Virginia Venture: American Colonization and English Society, 1580-1660, joins us to discuss the early history of the Virginia Company and its early investors. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/355 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 079: James Horn, What is a Historic Source? 🎧 Episode 120: Marcia Zug, A History of Mail Order Brides in Early America 🎧 Episode 150: Woody Holton, Abigail Adams: Revolutionary Speculator 🎧 Episode 186: Max Edelson, The New Map of the British Empire 🎧 Episode 213: Rebecca Fraser, The Pilgrims of Plimoth 🎧 Episode 250: Virginia, 1619 🎧 Episode 274: Alan Gallay, Walter Ralegh: Architect of Empire REQUEST A TOPIC 📨 Topic Request Form 📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter👩‍💻 BFW Listener Community🌍 The History Explorers Club   LISTEN 🍎 Apple Podcasts  💚 Spotify  🎶 Amazon Music 🛜 Pandora CONNECT 🦋 Liz on Bluesky 👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn 🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS 💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts 💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

History tells us who we are and how we came to be who we are. It also allows us to look back and see how far we’ve come as people and societies. Of course, history also has the power to show us how little has changed over time. John Wood Sweet, a professor of history at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and author of the book, The Sewing Girl’s Tale: A Story of Crime and Consequences in Revolutionary America, winner of the 2023 Bancroft Prize in American History, joins us to investigate the first published rape trial in the United States and how one woman, Lanah Sawyer, bravely confronted the man who raped her by bringing him to court for his crime. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/354 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 020: Kyle Bulthuis, Four Steeples Over the City Streets 🎧 Episode 069: Abby Chandler, Law, Order, and Sexual Misconduct in Colonial New England 🎧 Episode 113: Brian Murphy, Building the Empire State 🎧 Episode 174: Thomas Apel, Yellow Fever in the Early American Republic 🎧 Episode 185: Joyce Goodfriend, Early New York City & Its Culture 🎧 Episode 190: Jennifer Goloboy, Origins of the American Middle Class 🎧 Episode 225: Elaine Forman Crane, The Poison Plot: Adultery & Murder In Colonial Newport 🎧 Episode 257: Catherine O’Donnell, Elizabeth Seton An Early American Life REQUEST A TOPIC 📨 Topic Request Form 📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter👩‍💻 BFW Listener Community🌍 The History Explorers Club   LISTEN 🍎 Apple Podcasts  💚 Spotify  🎶 Amazon Music 🛜 Pandora CONNECT 🦋 Liz on Bluesky 👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn 🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS 💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts 💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How did Indigenous people adapt to and survive the onslaught of Indigenous warfare, European diseases, and population loss between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries? How did past generations of Indigenous women ensure their culture would live on from one generation to the next so their people would endure? Brooke Bauer, an assistant professor of history at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville and author of the book Becoming Catawba: Catawba Women and Nation Building, 1540-1840, joins us to investigate these questions and what we might learn from the Catawba. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/353 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 082: Alejandra Dubcovsky, Information & Communication in the Early American South 🎧 Episode 158: The Revolutionaries’ Army 🎧 Episode 223: Susan Sleeper-Smith, A Native American History of the Ohio River Valley & Great Lakes Region 🎧 Episode 323: Michael Witgen, American Expansion and the Political Economy of Plunder 🎧 Episode 342: Elizabeth Ellis, The Great Power of Small Native Nations REQUEST A TOPIC 📨 Topic Request Form 📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter👩‍💻 BFW Listener Community🌍 The History Explorers Club   LISTEN 🎧 🍎 Apple Podcasts  💚 Spotify  🎶 Amazon Music 🛜 Pandora CONNECT 🦋 Liz on Bluesky 👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn 🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS 💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts 💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

People of African descent have made great contributions to the United States and its history. Think about all of the food, music, dance, medicine, farming and religious practices that people of African descent have contributed to American culture. Think about the sacrifices they’ve made to create and protect the United States as an independent nation. Matthew Skic, a Curator of Exhibitions at the Museum of the American Revolution in Philadelphia, joins us to investigate the life and deeds of the Forten Family. A family of African-descended people who worked in the revolutionary era and beyond to build a better world for their family, community, state, and nation. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/352 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 142: Manisha Sinha, A History of Abolition 🎧 Episode 151: Defining the American Revolution 🎧 Episode 157: The Revolution’s African American Soldiers 🎧 Episode 245: Celebrating the Fourth of July 🎧 Episode 277: Whose Fourth of July?  🎧 Episode 332: Experiences of Revolution Part 1: Occupied Philadelphia  REQUEST A TOPIC 📨 Topic Request Form 📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter👩‍💻 BFW Listener Community🌍 The History Explorers Club   LISTEN 🎧 🍎 Apple Podcasts  💚 Spotify  🎶 Amazon Music 🛜 Pandora CONNECT 🦋 Liz on Bluesky 👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn 🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS 💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts 💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

African chattel slavery, the predominant type of slavery practiced in colonial North America and the early United States, did not represent one monolithic practice of slavery. Practices of slavery varied by region, labor systems, legal codes, and empire. Slavery also wasn’t just about enslavers enslaving people for their labor. Enslavers used enslaved people to make statements about their social status, as areas of economic investment that built generational wealth, and as a form of currency. Nicole Maskiell, an associate professor of History at the University of South Carolina and the author of Bound By Bondage: Slavery and the Creation of the Northern Gentry, joins us to investigate the practice of slavery in Dutch New Netherland and how the colony’s elite families built their wealth and power on the labor, skills, and bodies of enslaved Africans and African Americans. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/351 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 121: Wim Klooster, The Dutch Moment in the 17th-Century Atlantic World 🎧 Episode 139: Andrés Reséndez, The Other Slavery 🎧 Episode 170: Wendy Warren, Slavery in Early New England 🎧 Episode 185: Joyce Goodfriend, Early New York City and its Culture 🎧 Episode 220: Margaret Newell, New England Indians, Colonists, and the Origins of Slavery 🎧 Episode 242: David Young, A History of Early Delaware 🎧 Episode 256: Christian Koot, Mapping Empire in the Chesapeake 🎧 Episode 324, Andrea Mosterman, New Netherland and Slavery   REQUEST A TOPIC 📨 Topic Request Form 📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter👩‍💻 BFW Listener Community🌍 The History Explorers Club   LISTEN 🍎 Apple Podcasts  💚 Spotify  🎶 Amazon Music 🛜 Pandora CONNECT 🦋 Liz on Bluesky 👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn 🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS 💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts 💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Before the American Revolution became a war and a fight for independence, the Revolution was a movement and protest for more local control of government. So how did the American Revolution get started? Who worked to transform a series of protests into a revolution? This is a BIG question with no one answer. But one American who worked to transform protests into a coordinated revolutionary movement was a Boston politician named Samuel Adams. Stacy Schiff, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, joins us to explore and investigate the life, deeds, and contributions of Samuel Adams using details from her book, The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/350 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 130: Paul Revere’s Ride Through History 🎧 Episode 145: Rosemarie Zagarri, Mercy Otis Warren and the American Revolution  🎧 Episode 152: Bernard Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution 🎧 Episode 153: Revolutionary Committees and Congresses 🎧 Episode 193: Partisans: The Friendship and Rivalry of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson 🎧 Episode 228: Eric Hinderaker, The Boston Massacre 🎧 Episode 296: Serena Zabin, The Boston Massacre: A Family History REQUEST A TOPIC 📨 Topic Request Form 📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter👩‍💻 BFW Listener Community🌍 The History Explorers Club   LISTEN 🍎 Apple Podcasts  💚 Spotify  🎶 Amazon Music 🛜 Pandora CONNECT 🦋 Liz on Bluesky 👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn 🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS 💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts 💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

There are a lot of books about Benjamin Franklin. They tell us about his youth and accomplishments in business, politics, and diplomacy. They tell us about his serious interest in electricity and science, and about his philanthropic work. But only a handful of these books tell us about Benjamin Franklin as a man. What did Benjamin Franklin think about and experience when it came to his private, lived life? Nancy Rubin Stuart, an award-winning historian and journalist and author of Poor Richard’s Women: Deborah Read Franklin and the Other Women Behind the Founding Father, joins us to investigate the private life of Benjamin Franklin by using the women in his life as a window on to his experiences as a husband, father, and friend. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/349 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 022: Vivian Bruce Conger, Deborah Read Franklin & Sally Franklin Bache 🎧 Episode 031: The Papers of Benjamin Franklin 🎧 Episode 149: George Goodwin, Benjamin Franklin in London 🎧 Episode 175: Daniel Mark Epstein, The Revolution in Ben Franklin’s House 🎧 Episode 193: Partisans: The Friendship and Rivalry of John Adams & Thomas Jefferson 🎧 Episode 207: Young Benjamin Franklin 🎧 Episode 320: Benjamin Franklin’s London House   REQUEST A TOPIC 📨 Topic Request Form 📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter👩‍💻 BFW Listener Community🌍 The History Explorers Club   LISTEN 🍎 Apple Podcasts  💚 Spotify  🎶 Amazon Music 🛜 Pandora CONNECT 🦋 Liz on Bluesky 👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn 🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS 💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts 💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On December 19, 1777, George Washington marched his Continental Army into its winter encampment at Valley Forge. In school we learned this was a hard, cold winter that saw the soldiers so ill-supplied they chewed on the leather of their shoes. But is this what really happened at Valley Forge? Were soldiers idle, wallowing in their misery? Ricardo Herrera, a historian of American military history and a visiting professor in the Department of National Security and Strategy at the U.S. Army War College, joins us to investigate the winter at Valley Forge with details form his book, Feeding Washington’s Army: Surviving the Valley Forge Winter of 1778. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/348 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 158: The Revolutionaries’ Army 🎧 Episode 189: Sam White, The Little Ice Age   🎧 Episode 194: Longfellow House-Washington’s Headquarters 🎧 Episode 298: Lindsay Schakenbach Regele, Origins of American Manufacturing 🎧 Episode 301: From Inoculation to Vaccination, Part 1 🎧 Episode 302: From Inoculation to Vaccination, Part 2 🎧 Episode 332: Experiences of Revolution: Occupied Philadelphia 🎧 Episode 333: Experiences of Revolution: Disruptions in Yorktown   REQUEST A TOPIC 📨 Topic Request Form 📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter👩‍💻 BFW Listener Community🌍 The History Explorers Club   LISTEN 🍎 Apple Podcasts  💚 Spotify  🎶 Amazon Music 🛜 Pandora CONNECT 🦋 Liz on Bluesky 👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn 🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS 💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts 💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It’s impossible to overstate the importance of African and African American music to the United States’ musical traditions. Steven Lewis, a Curator of Music and Performing Arts at the Smithsonian, notes that “African American influences are so fundamental to American music there would be no American music without them.” Jon Beebe, a Jazz pianist, professional musician, and an interpretive ranger at the New Orleans Jazz National Historical Park, leads us on an exploration of how and why African rhythms and beats came to play important roles in the musical history and musical evolution of the Untied States. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/347 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 167: Eberhard Faber, The Early History of New Orleans 🎧 Episode 295: Ibrahima Seck, Whitney Plantation Museum 🎧 Episode 308: Jessica Marie Johnson, Slavery & Freedom in French New Orleans 🎧 Episode 342: Elizabeth Ellis, The Great Power of Small Native Nations 🎧 Episode 343: Chad Hamill, Music & Song in Native North America 🎧 Episode 344: Music in British North America 🎧 Episode 345: Amateur Musicians in the Early United States 🎧 Episode 346: Music & Politics in the Early United States   REQUEST A TOPIC 📨 Topic Request Form 📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter👩‍💻 BFW Listener Community🌍 The History Explorers Club   LISTEN 🍎 Apple Podcasts  💚 Spotify  🎶 Amazon Music 🛜 Pandora CONNECT 🦋 Liz on Bluesky 👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn 🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS 💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts 💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How did everyday Americans in the early United States use and enjoy music? How did they create and circulate new songs and musical lyrics? Our five-episode series about music in early America continues in this fourth episode about music and politics in the early United States. Billy Coleman, an Assistant Teaching Professor of History at the University of Missouri and author of the book Harnessing Harmony: Music, Power, and Politics in the United States, 1788-1865, joins us to investigate the role music played in early American politics. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/346 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 207: Nick Bunker, Young Benjamin Franklin 🎧 Episode 227: Kyle Courtney, Copyright & Fair Use in Early America 🎧 Episode 243: Joseph Adelman, Revolutionary Print Networks 🎧 Episode 343: Chad Hamill, Music and Song in Native North America 🎧 Episode 344: David Hildebrand, Music in British North America 🎧 Episode 345: Glenda Goodman, Amateur Musicians in the Early United States REQUEST A TOPIC 📨 Topic Request Form 📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter👩‍💻 BFW Listener Community🌍 The History Explorers Club   LISTEN 🍎 Apple Podcasts  💚 Spotify  🎶 Amazon Music 🛜 Pandora CONNECT 🦋 Liz on Bluesky 👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn 🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS 💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts 💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Our study of music in Early America continues with this third episode in our five-episode series. Our last two episodes (Episode 343 and Episode 344) helped us better understand the musical landscapes of Native North America around 1492 and colonial British America before 1776. In this episode, we jump forward in time to the early days of the United States. Glenda Goodman, an Associate Professor of Music at the University of Pennsylvania and the author of the book Cultivated by Hand: Amateur Musicians in the Early American Republic, joins us to investigate the role of music in the lives of wealthy white Americans during the earliest days of the early American republic. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/345 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 145: Rosemarie Zagarri, Mercy Otis Warren 🎧 Episode 237: Nora Doyle, Motherhood in Early America 🎧 Episode 311: Katherine Carté, Religion in the American Revolution 🎧 Episode 343: Chad Hamil, Music and Song in Native North America 🎧 Episode 344: David Hildebrand, Music in British North America REQUEST A TOPIC 📨 Topic Request Form 📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter  👩‍💻 Join the BFW Listener Community LISTEN 🎧 🍎 Apple Podcasts  💚 Spotify  🎶 Amazon Music 🛜 Pandora CONNECT 🦋 Liz on Bluesky 👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn 🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS 💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts 💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Our 5-episode series about music in Early America continues with this second episode that seeks to answer your questions about music in Early America. David Hildebrand is a musicologist and an expert on early American music. His research specialty is in Anglo-American music, and he joins us to answer your questions. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/344 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 219: Adrian Covert, Taverns in Early America 🎧 Episode 250: Virginia, 1619 🎧 Episode 290: The World of the Wampanoag, Part 1 🎧 Episode 291: The World of the Wampanoag, Part 2 🎧 Episode 343: Chad Hamill, The Musical Landscape of Native America    REQUEST A TOPIC 📨 Topic Request Form 📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter  👩‍💻 Join the BFW Listener Community LISTEN 🍎 Apple Podcasts  💚 Spotify  🎶 Amazon Music 🛜 Pandora CONNECT 🦋 Liz on Bluesky 👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn 🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS 💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts 💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What was music like in Early America? How did different early Americans—Native Americans, African Americans, and White Americans—integrate and use music in their daily lives? Your questions about music inspired this 5-episode series about music in Early America. Our exploration begins with music in Native America. Chad Hamill, a Professor of Applied Indigenous Studies at Northern Arizona University, is an ethnomusicologist who studies Native American and Indigenous music. He will guide us through Native North America’s musical landscapes before European colonization. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/343 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 163: The American Revolution in North America 🎧 Episode 290: The World of the Wampanoag, Part 1 🎧 Episode 291: The World of the Wampanoag, Part 2 🎧 Episode 297: Claudio Saunt, Indian Removal Act of 1830 🎧 Episode 310: Rosalyn LaPier, History of the Blackfeet 🎧 Episode 323: Michael Witgen, American Expansion and the Political Economy of Plunder 🎧 Episode 342: Elizabeth Ellis, The Great Power of Small Native Nations   REQUEST A TOPIC 📨 Topic Request Form 📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter  👩‍💻 Join the BFW Listener Community LISTEN 🍎 Apple Podcasts  💚 Spotify  🎶 Amazon Music 🛜 Pandora CONNECT 🦋 Liz on Bluesky 👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn 🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS 💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts 💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Did you know that small Native American nations had the power to dictate the terms of French colonization in the Gulf South region? Elizabeth Ellis, an Assistant Professor of History at Princeton University and a citizen of the Peoria Tribe of Indians of Oklahoma, joins us on an exploration of the uncovered and recovered histories of the more than 40 distinct and small Native nations who called the Gulf South region home during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Ellis is the author of The Great Power of Small Nations: Indigenous Diplomacy in the Gulf South. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/342 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 037: Kathleen DuVal, Independence Lost 🎧 Episode 064: Brett Rushforth, Native American Slavery in New France 🎧 Episode 082: Alejandra Dubcovsky, Information & Communication in the early American South 🎧 Episode 139: Andrés Reséndez, The Other Slavery 🎧 Episode 171: Jessica Stern, Native Americans, British Colonists, and Trade 🎧 Episode 233: Gwenn Miller, A History of Russian America 🎧 Episode 251: Cameron Strang, Frontiers of Science 🎧 Episode 303: Matthew Powell, La Pointe-Krebs House    REQUEST A TOPIC 📨 Topic Request Form 📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter  👩‍💻 Join the BFW Listener Community LISTEN 🍎 Apple Podcasts  💚 Spotify  🎶 Amazon Music 🛜 Pandora CONNECT 🦋 Liz on Bluesky 👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn 🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS 💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts 💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Prepare for tricks, treats, and time travel! In honor of Halloween, we’re traveling back to the mid-seventeenth century to investigate a case of demonic possession and the practice of exorcism in New France. Mairi Cowan, an Associate Professor of History at the University of Toronto, Mississauga, joins us to investigate the life of a young French woman named Barbe Hallay and her demonic possession. Cowan is the author of The Possession of Barbe Hallay: Diabolical Arts and Daily Life in Early Canada. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/341 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 108: Ann Little, The Many Captivities of Esther Wheelright 🎧 Episode 197: Brett Rushforth, Native American Slavery in New France 🎧 Episode 278: Sarah Pearsall, Polygamy: An Early American History 🎧 Episode 283: Anne Marie Lane Jonah, Acadie 300 🎧 Episode 318: Ste. Geneviéve National Historical Park 🎧 Episode 334: Brandon Bayne, Missions and Mission Building in New Spain    REQUEST A TOPIC 📨 Topic Request Form 📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter  👩‍💻 Join the BFW Listener Community LISTEN 🎧 🍎 Apple Podcasts  💚 Spotify  🎶 Amazon Music 🛜 Pandora CONNECT 🦋 Liz on Bluesky 👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn 🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS 💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts 💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The War of 1812 is an under-known conflict in United States history. It’s not a war that many Americans think about or dwell upon. And it was not a war that the United States can claim it clearly won. Nicholas Guyatt, a Professor of North American History at the University of Cambridge, joins us to investigate the War of 1812 and the experiences of American prisoners of war using details from his book, The Hated Cage: An American Tragedy in Britain’s Most Terrifying Prison. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/340 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 048: Kenneth Miller, Enemy Captives During the War for Independence  🎧 Episode 051: Catherine Cangany, A History of Early Detroit 🎧 Episode 076: Nathan Perl-Rosenthal, Citizen Sailors 🎧 Episode 080: Jen Manion, Liberty’s Prisoners 🎧 Episode 096: Nicholas Guyatt, Origins of Racial Segregation in the United States 🎧 Episode 098: Gautham Rao, Birth of the American Tax Man 🎧 Episode 323: Michael Witgen, American Expansion and the Political Economy of Plunder  REQUEST A TOPIC 📨 Topic Request Form 📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter  👩‍💻 Join the BFW Listener Community LISTEN 🍎 Apple Podcasts  💚 Spotify  🎶 Amazon Music 🛜 Pandora CONNECT 🦋 Liz on Bluesky 👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn 🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS 💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts 💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Between May 25 and September 17, 1787, delegates from each of the United States’ thirteen states assembled in Philadelphia for an event we now call the Constitutional Convention. What do we know about the moment of the United States Constitution’s creation? What was happening around the Convention, and what issues were Americans discussing and debating as the Convention’s delegates met? Mary Sarah Bilder, an award-winning historian and the Founders Professor of Law at Boston College Law School, joins us to investigate the context of the United States Constitution’s creation with details from her book, Female Genius: Eliza Harriot and George Washington at the Dawn of the Constitution. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/048 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode107: Mary Sarah Bilder, Madison’s Hand 🎧 Episode 137: Erica Armstrong Dunbar, Ona Judge, The Washington’s Runaway Slave 🎧 Episode 255: Martha S. Jones, Birthright Citizens 🎧 Episode 259: American Legal History & the Bill of Rights 🎧 Episode 276: Stephen Fried, Benjamin Rush 🎧 Episode 285: Elections & Voting in Early America 🎧 Episode 323: Michael Witgen, American Expansion and the Political Economy of Plunder  🎧 Episode 332: Experiences of Revolution: Occupied Philadelphia  REQUEST A TOPIC 📨 Topic Request Form 📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter  👩‍💻 Join the BFW Listener Community LISTEN 🎧 🍎 Apple Podcasts  💚 Spotify  🎶 Amazon Music 🛜 Pandora CONNECT 🦋 Liz on Bluesky 👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn 🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS 💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts 💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On September 17, 1787, thirty-nine delegates to the Constitutional Convention signed the United States Constitution and submitted it to the states for ratification. In honor of Constitution Day, we join three historians from the Senate Historical Office to investigate Article 1 of the Constitution and its creation of the United States Senate. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/338 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 040: Kathleen Bartoloni-Tuazon, For Fear of an Elective King 🎧 Episode 078: Rachel Shelden: Washington Brotherhood 🎧 Episode 107: Mary Sarah Bilder, Madison’s Hand 🎧 Episode 143: Michael Klarman, The Making of the United States Constitution 🎧 Episode 153: Committees and Congresses: Governments of the American Revolution 🎧 Episode 202: An Early History of the United States Congress 🎧 Episode 279: Lindsay Chervinsky, The Cabinet 🎧 Episode 285: Elections and Voting in the Early Republic   REQUEST A TOPIC 📨 Topic Request Form 📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter  👩‍💻 Join the BFW Listener Community LISTEN 🎧 🍎 Apple Podcasts  💚 Spotify  🎶 Amazon Music 🛜 Pandora CONNECT 🦋 Liz on Bluesky 👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn 🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS 💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts 💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What made trade with China so important to the new United States that one of Americans’ first acts after securing the United States’ independence was to establish a trade with China and other Southeast Asian countries? Deal Norwood, an Assistant Professor of History at the University of Delaware, joins us to explore the lure of trade with China with details from his book, Trading Freedom: How Trade with China Defined Early America. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/337 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 098: Gautham Rao, Birth of the American Tax Man 🎧 Episode 111: Jonathan Eacott, India in the Making of Britain & America 🎧 Episode 112: Mary Beth Norton, The Tea Crisis of 1773 🎧 Episode 160: The Politics of Tea 🎧 Episode 298: Lindsay Schakenbach Regele, Origins of American Manufacturing REQUEST A TOPIC 📨 Topic Request Form 📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter  👩‍💻 Join the BFW Listener Community LISTEN 🎧 🍎 Apple Podcasts  💚 Spotify  🎶 Amazon Music 🛜 Pandora CONNECT 🦋 Liz on Bluesky 👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn 🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS 💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts 💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What did it take to stage a successful slave uprising? Over the course of the early republic, we see a few violent slave uprisings in the United States. A particularly brutal rebellion took place in Louisiana in January 1811. Another violent rebellion took place in Southampton County, Virginia in August 1831. Neither of these rebellions led to the abolishment of slavery, but they did lead to the death of many enslaved people and their enslavers. Vanessa Holden, an Associate Professor of History at the University of Kentucky and the author of the award-winning book Surviving Southampton, leads us through the events and circumstances of the 1831-Southampton Rebellion, a rebellion we tend to know today as Nat Turner’s Rebellion. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/336 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 052: Ronald Johnson, Early United States-Haitian Diplomacy 🎧 Episode 124: James Alexander Dun, Making the Haitian Revolution 🎧 Episode 133: Patrick Breen, The Nat Turner Revolt 🎧 Episode 176: Daina Ramey Berry, The Value of the Enslaved 🎧 Episode 282: Vincent Brown, Tacky’s Revolt 🎧 Episode 295: Ibrahima Seck, Whitney Plantation Museum 🎧 Episode 312: Joshua D. Rothman, The Domestic Slave Trade 🎧 Episode 328: Warren Milteer, Jr., Free People of Color in Early America  REQUEST A TOPIC 📨 Topic Request Form 📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter  👩‍💻 Join the BFW Listener Community LISTEN 🎧 🍎 Apple Podcasts  💚 Spotify  🎶 Amazon Music 🛜 Pandora CONNECT 🦋 Liz on Bluesky 👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn 🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS 💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts 💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Alexander Hamilton played important roles in the founding of the United States. He served in the Continental Army, helped frame the United States Constitution, and helped place the United States on a secure economic footing with his work as the first Secretary of the Treasury. But how did Hamilton come to know so much about the economic systems that could help the new United States build a strong economic footing? Why did Hamilton work for and believe that the new United States should be a nation that welcomed all religions and forms of religious worship? Andrew Porwacher, the Wick Cary Associate Professor of History at the University of Oklahoma and the Ernest May Fellow at Harvard University’s Belfer Center, joins us to investigate the Jewish world and upbringing of Alexander Hamilton. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/335 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 057: Max Edling, War, Money, and the American State, 1783-1867 🎧 Episode 180: Kate Elizabeth Brown, Alexander Hamilton and the Making of American Law 🎧 Episode 203: Joanne Freeman, Alexander Hamilton 🎧 Episode 279: Lindsay Chervinsky, The Cabinet  🎧 Episode 317: Jews in Early America REQUEST A TOPIC 📨 Topic Request Form 📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter  👩‍💻 Join the BFW Listener Community LISTEN 🎧 🍎 Apple Podcasts  💚 Spotify  🎶 Amazon Music 🛜 Pandora CONNECT 🦋 Liz on Bluesky 👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn 🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS 💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts 💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Spanish explorers and colonists visited, settled, and claimed territory in 42 of the United States’ 50 states. So what does the history of Early America look like from a Spanish point of view? Brandon Bayne, an Associate Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and author of the book Missions Begin with Blood, joins us to investigate some of the religious aspects of Spanish colonization. Specifically, the work of Spanish missionaries. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/334 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 082: Alejandra Dubcovsky, Information & Communication in the Early American South 🎧 Episode 090: Caitlin Fitz, The Age of Revolutions  🎧 Episode 115: Andrew Torget, The Early American History of Texas 🎧 Episode 139: Andrés Reséndez, The Other Slavery 🎧 Episode 178: Karoline Cook, Muslims & Moriscos in Colonial Spanish America 🎧 Episode 189: Sam White, The Little Ice Age 🎧 Episode 241: Molly Warsh, Pearls & the Nature of the Spanish Empire   REQUEST A TOPIC 📨 Topic Request Form 📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter  👩‍💻 Join the BFW Listener Community LISTEN 🎧 🍎 Apple Podcasts  💚 Spotify  🎶 Amazon Music 🛜 Pandora CONNECT 🦋 Liz on Bluesky 👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn 🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS 💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts 💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What was everyday life like during the American War for Independence? Our Fourth of July series continues with an investigation of how the American War for Independence impacted those who remained on the home front. As episode 332 explored how the war impacted the lives of people who lived in urban Philadelphia, this episode investigates how the war impacted the lives of people who lived in the more rural setting of Yorktown, Virginia. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/333 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 162: Dunmore’s New World 🎧 Episode 208: Nathaniel Philbrick, Turning Points of the American Revolution 🎧 Episode 245: Celebrating the Fourth 🎧 Episode 250: Virginia 1619 🎧 Episode 277: Whose Fourth of July? 🎧 Episode 289: Marcus Nevius, Maroonage in the Great Dismal Swamp 🎧 Episode 306: The Horse’s Tail: Revolution & Memory in Early New York City 🎧 Episode 332: Occupied Philadelphia REQUEST A TOPIC 📨 Topic Request Form 📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter  👩‍💻 Join the BFW Listener Community LISTEN 🎧 🍎 Apple Podcasts  💚 Spotify  🎶 Amazon Music 🛜 Pandora CONNECT 🦋 Liz on Bluesky 👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn 🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS 💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts 💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What was everyday life like during the American War for Independence? In honor of the Fourth of July, we’ll investigate answers to this question by exploring the histories of occupied Philadelphia and Yorktown, and how civilians, those left on the home front in both of those places, experienced the war and its armies.  These episodes will allow us to see how the war impacted those who remained at home. They will also allow us to better understand the messy confusion and uncertainty Americans experienced in between the big battles and events of the American Revolution.  This first episode investigates everyday life in British-occupied Philadelphia. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/332 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 050: Marla Miller, Betsy Ross & The Making of America 🎧 Episode 149: George Goodwin, Benjamin Franklin in London 🎧 Episode 175: Daniel Mark Epstein, The Revolution in Ben Franklin’s House 🎧 Episode 208: Nathaniel Philbrick, Turning Points of the American Revolution 🎧 Episode 245: Celebrating the Fourth 🎧 Episode 277: Whose Fourth of July? 🎧 Episode 306: The Horse’s Tail: Revolution & Memory in Early New York City REQUEST A TOPIC 📨 Topic Request Form 📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter  👩‍💻 Join the BFW Listener Community LISTEN 🎧 🍎 Apple Podcasts  💚 Spotify  🎶 Amazon Music 🛜 Pandora CONNECT 🦋 Liz on Bluesky 👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn 🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS 💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts 💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In a town as old as Williamsburg, Virginia, which was established in 1638, it’s often the case that historic buildings with interesting pasts stand unnoticed and in plain sight. Such was the case for the building that once housed Williamsburg’s Bray School. A school founded by a group of Anglican clergymen with the express purpose of educating Black children in the ways of the Anglican faith. It was an education that included reading, possibly writing, and the Book of Common Prayer. In honor of Juneteenth, we explore the exciting rediscovery of Williamsburg’s Bray School with three scholars: Maureen Elgersman Lee, Director of the Bray School Lab at William & Mary; Ronald Hurst, Vice President of Museums, Preservation, and Historic Resources at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, and Nicole Brown, a historic interpreter, American Studies graduate student, and the graduate student assistant at William & Mary’s Bray School Lab. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/331 Complementary Episodes0 🎧 Episode 025: Jessica Parr, Inventing George Whitefield 🎧 Episode 073: Mark Noll, The Bible in Early America 🎧 Episode 133: Patrick Breen, The Nat Turner Revolt  🎧 Episode 311: Katherine Carté, Religion and the American Revolution 🎧 Episode 320: Ben Franklin’s London House   REQUEST A TOPIC 📨 Topic Request Form 📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter  👩‍💻 Join the BFW Listener Community LISTEN 🎧 🍎 Apple Podcasts  💚 Spotify  🎶 Amazon Music 🛜 Pandora CONNECT 🦋 Liz on Bluesky 👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn 🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS 💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts 💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We’ll never know for certain how many Americans supported the American Revolution, remained loyal to the British Crown and Parliament, or tried to find a middle way as someone who was disaffected from either loyalty. But we can know about the different ideologies that drove people to support the Revolution, to remain loyal to crown and parliament, or to become disaffected from both sides.  Brad Jones, Professor of History at California State University, Fresno and author of the book, Resisting Independence: Popular Loyalism in the Revolutionary British Atlantic, joins us to investigate what loyalists believed and how loyalism was not just a loyalty or ideology adopted by British Americans living in the 13 rebellious colonies, but by Britons across the British Atlantic World. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/330 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 119: Steve Pincus, The Heart of the Declaration 🎧 Episode 122: Andrew O’Shaugnessy, The Men Who Lost America 🎧 Episode 151: Defining the American Revolution 🎧 Episode 232: Christopher Hodson, The Acadian Diaspora 🎧 Episode 238: Stephen Brumwell, Benedict Arnold 🎧 Episode 283: Anne Marie Lane Jonah, Acadie 300 🎧 Episode 306: The Horse’s Tail 🎧 Episode 311: Katherine Carté, Religion and the American Revolution   REQUEST A TOPIC 📨 Topic Request Form 📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter  👩‍💻 Join the BFW Listener Community LISTEN 🎧 🍎 Apple Podcasts  💚 Spotify  🎶 Amazon Music 🛜 Pandora CONNECT 🦋 Liz on Bluesky 👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn 🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS 💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts 💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is an episode you’ve been waiting for! Mark Tabbert, the Director of Archives and Exhibits at the George Washington Masonic National Memorial Association and the author of Almanac of American Freemasonry and A Deserving Brother: George Washington and Freemasonry, joins us so we can investigate and better understand Freemasonry and its role in Early America. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/329 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 026: Robert Middlekauff, George Washington’s Revolution 🎧 Episode 033: Douglas Bradburn, George Washington & His Library 🎧 Episode 127: Caroline Winterer, American Enlightenments 🎧 Episode 130: Paul Revere’s Ride Through History 🎧 Episode 149: George Goodwin, Benjamin Franklin in London 🎧 Episode 207: Nick Bunker, Young Benjamin Franklin 🎧 Episode 317: Jews in Early America REQUEST A TOPIC 📨 Topic Request Form 📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter  👩‍💻 Join the BFW Listener Community LISTEN 🎧 🍎 Apple Podcasts  💚 Spotify  🎶 Amazon Music 🛜 Pandora CONNECT 🦋 Liz on Bluesky 👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn 🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS 💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts 💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We know from our explorations of early America that not all Americans were treated equally or enjoyed the freedoms and liberties other Americans enjoyed. Warren Milteer Jr., an Assistant Professor of History at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and the author of North Carolina’s Free People of Color and Beyond Slavery’s Shadow, joins us to explore the lives and experiences of free people of color, men and women who ranked somewhere in the middle or middle bottom of early American society. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/328 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 118: Christy Clark Pujara: The Business of Slavery in Rhode Island 🎧 Episode 142: Manisha Sinha, A History of Abolition 🎧 Episode 176: Daina Ramey Berry, The Value of the Enslaved from Womb to Grave 🎧 Episode 289: Marcus Nevius, Maroonage and the Great Dismal Swamp 🎧 Episode 312: Joshua Rothman, The Domestic Slave Trade   REQUEST A TOPIC 📨 Topic Request Form 📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter  👩‍💻 Join the BFW Listener Community LISTEN 🎧 🍎 Apple Podcasts  💚 Spotify  🎶 Amazon Music 🛜 Pandora CONNECT 🦋 Liz on Bluesky 👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn 🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS 💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts 💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How do we know what we know about Benjamin Franklin? We know historians, museum curators, and archivists rely on historical documents and objects to find and learn information about the past. But how does a documentary filmmaker present what they know about history through video? David Schmidt works as a senior producer at Florentine Films where he worked alongside Ken Burns to produce a 2-episode documentary about the life of Benjamin Franklin. The documentary is called Benjamin Franklin and Schmidt joins us for a behind-the-scenes tour of documentary filmmaking and to investigate some of the lesser-known details of Ben Franklin’s life. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/327 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 022: Vivian Bruce Conger, Deborah Read Franklin & Sally Franklin Bache 🎧 Episode 149: George Goodwin, Benjamin Franklin in London 🎧 Episode 169: Thomas Kid, The Religious Life of Benjamin Franklin 🎧 Episode 175: Daniel Epstein, The Revolution in Ben Franklin’s House 🎧 Episode 207: Nick Bunker, Young Benjamin Franklin 🎧 Episode 320: Ben Franklin’s London House   REQUEST A TOPIC 📨 Topic Request Form 📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter  👩‍💻 Join the BFW Listener Community LISTEN 🎧 🍎 Apple Podcasts  💚 Spotify  🎶 Amazon Music 🛜 Pandora CONNECT 🦋 Liz on Bluesky 👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn 🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS 💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts 💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

With Ukrainian sovereignty and democracy under attack, Americans have been wondering: Should our government be doing more than placing economic sanctions on Russia? Should I, as U.S. military veteran, travel to Ukraine and offer to fight in their army? What would official U.S. military involvement mean for the politics of Europe and in our age of nuclear weapons? While the situation in Ukraine is new and novel, Americans’ desire to assist other nations seeking to create or preserve their democracies and republics is not new.  Maureen Connors Santelli, an Associate Professor of History at Northern Virginia Community College and author of The Greek Fire: American-Ottoman Fervor in the Age of Revolutions, joins us to investigate the Greek Revolution and early Americans’ reactions to it. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/327 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 017: François Furstenburg, When the United States Spoke French 🎧 Episode 052: Ronald A. Johnson, Early United States-Haitian Diplomacy 🎧 Episode 124: James Alexander Dun, Making the Haitian Revolution in Early America 🎧 Episode 314: Colin Calloway, Native Americans in Early American Cities 🎧 Episode 323: Michael Witgen, American Expansion and the Political Economy of Plunder REQUEST A TOPIC 📨 Topic Request Form 📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter  👩‍💻 Join the BFW Listener Community LISTEN 🎧 🍎 Apple Podcasts  💚 Spotify  🎶 Amazon Music 🛜 Pandora CONNECT 🦋 Liz on Bluesky 👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn 🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS 💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts 💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What do we know about the American Revolution? Why is it important that we see the Revolution as a political event, a war, a time of social and economic reform, and as a time of violence and upheaval? Woody Holton, a Professor of History at the University of South Carolina and the author of Liberty is Sweet: The Hidden History of the American Revolution, joins us to explore and discuss answers to these questions so that we can better see and understand the American Revolution as a whole event. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/325 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 060: David Preston, Braddock’s Defeat 🎧 Episode 128: Alan Taylor: American Revolutions: A Continental History 🎧 Episode 144: Rob Parkinson, The Common Cause 🎧 Episode 150: Woody Holton, Abigail Adams: Revolutionary Speculator 🎧 Episode 152: Bernard Bailyn, Ideological Origins of the American Revolution 🎧 Episode 181: Max Edelson, The New Map of the British Empire 🎧 Episode 294: Mary Beth Norton, 1774: The Long Year of Revolution  🎧 Episode 296: Serena Zabin, The Boston Massacre   REQUEST A TOPIC 📨 Topic Request Form 📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter  👩‍💻 Join the BFW Listener Community LISTEN 🎧 🍎 Apple Podcasts  💚 Spotify  🎶 Amazon Music 🛜 Pandora CONNECT 🦋 Liz on Bluesky 👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn 🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS 💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts 💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

After Henry Hudson’s 1609-voyage along the river that now bears his name, Dutch traders began to visit and trade at the area they called New Netherland. In 1614, the Dutch established a trading post near present-day Albany, New York. In 1624, the Dutch West India Company built the settlement of New Amsterdam. How did the colony of New Netherland take shape? In what ways did the Dutch West India Company and private individuals use enslaved labor to develop the colony? Andrea Mosterman, an Associate Professor of History at the University of New Orleans and author of Spaces of Enslavement: A History of Slavery and Resistance in Dutch New York, joins us to explore what life was like in New Netherland and early New York, especially for the enslaved people who did much of the work to build this Dutch, and later English, colony. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/324   Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 121: Wim Klooster, The Dutch Moment in the 17th-Century Atlantic World 🎧 Episode 159: The Revolutionary Economy 🎧 Episode 161: Smuggling and the American Revolution 🎧 Episode 170: Wendy Warren, Slavery in Early New England 🎧 Episode 185: Joyce Goodfriend, Early New York City and its Culture 🎧 Episode 226: Ryan Quintana, Making the State of South Carolina 🎧 Episode 242: David Young, A History of Early Delaware 🎧 Episode 256: Christian Koot, Mapping Empire in the Chesapeake   REQUEST A TOPIC 📨 Topic Request Form 📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter  👩‍💻 Join the BFW Listener Community LISTEN 🎧 🍎 Apple Podcasts  💚 Spotify  🎶 Amazon Music 🛜 Pandora CONNECT 🦋 Liz on Bluesky 👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn 🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS 💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts 💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the Treaty of Paris, 1783, Great Britain ceded to the United States all lands east of the Mississippi River and between the southern borders of Canada and Georgia. How would the United States take advantage of its new boundaries and incorporate these lands within its governance? Answering this question presented a quandary for the young United States. The lands it sought to claim by right of treaty belonged to Indigenous peoples. Michael Witgen, a Professor of History at Columbia University and a citizen of the Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe, joins us to investigate the story of the Anishinaabeg and Anishinaabewaki, the homelands of the Anishinaabeg people, with details from his book, Seeing Red: Indigenous Land, American Expansion, and the Political Economy of Plunder in North America. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/323 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 051: Catherine Cangany, A History of Early Detroit 🎧 Episode 064: Brett Rushforth, Native American Slavery in New France 🎧 Episode 163: The American Revolution in North America 🎧 Episode 223: Susan Sleeper-Smith, A Native American History of the Ohio River Valley & Great Lakes Region 🎧 Episode 264: Michael Oberg, The Treaty of Canandaigua, 1794 🎧 Episode 286: Native Sovereignty 🎧 Episode 310: Rosalyn LaPier, History of the Blackfeet REQUEST A TOPIC 📨 Topic Request Form 📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter  👩‍💻 Join the BFW Listener Community LISTEN 🎧 🍎 Apple Podcasts  💚 Spotify  🎶 Amazon Music 🛜 Pandora CONNECT 🦋 Liz on Bluesky 👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn 🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS 💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts 💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

During the War for American Independence, the British Army attempted to create chaos and inflict economic damage to the revolutionaries’ war effort by issuing two proclamations that promised freedom to any enslaved person who ran away from their revolutionary owners. How did enslaved people make their escape to British lines? What do we know about their lives and escape experiences? Karen Cook-Bell, an Associate Professor of History at Bowie State University and author of Running From Bondage: Enslaved Women and Their Remarkable Fight for Freedom in Revolutionary America, joins us to investigate the experiences of enslaved women who feld their bondage for the British Army’s promise of freedom. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/322 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 137: Erica Dunbar, The Washingtons’ Runaway Slave, Ona Judge 🎧 Episode 142: Manisha Sinha, A History of Abolitionism 🎧 Episode 157: The Revolution’s African American Soldiers 🎧 Episode 162: Dunmore’s New World 🎧 Episode 212: Researching Biography 🎧 Episode 277: Whose Fourth of July? 🎧 Episode 312: Joshua D. Rothman, The Domestic Slave Trade REQUEST A TOPIC 📨 Topic Request Form 📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter  👩‍💻 Join the BFW Listener Community LISTEN 🎧 🍎 Apple Podcasts  💚 Spotify  🎶 Amazon Music 🛜 Pandora CONNECT 🦋 Liz on Bluesky 👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn 🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS 💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts 💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On July 5, 1852, Frederick Douglass delivered a speech to an anti-slavery society and he famously asked “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” In this episode, we explore Douglass’ thoughtful question within the context of Early America: What did the Fourth of July mean for African Americans in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries? To help us investigate this question, we are joined by Martha S. Jones, the Society of Black Alumni Presidential Professor and Professor of History at Johns Hopkins University, and Christopher Bonner, an Assistant Professor of History at the University of Maryland. This episode originally posted as Episode 277. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/321 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 018: Danielle Allen, Our Declaration 🎧 Episode 119: Steve Pincus, The Heart of the Declaration 🎧 Episode 141: A Declaration in Draft 🎧 Episode 157: The Revolution’s African American Soldiers 🎧 Episode 166: Freedom and the American Revolution 🎧 Episode 245: Celebrating the Fourth 🎧 Episode 255: Martha S. Jones, Birthright Citizens REQUEST A TOPIC 📨 Topic Request Form 📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter  👩‍💻 Join the BFW Listener Community LISTEN 🎧 🍎 Apple Podcasts  💚 Spotify  🎶 Amazon Music 🛜 Pandora CONNECT 🦋 Liz on Bluesky 👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn 🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS 💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts 💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Benjamin Franklin was born in Boston on January 17, 1706, to Abiah Folger and Josiah Franklin. Although Franklin began his life as the youngest son of a youngest son, he traveled through many parts of what is now the northeastern United States and the Province of Quebec and lived in four different cities in three different countries: Boston, Philadelphia, London, and Passy, France. In honor of Benjamin Franklin’s 316th birthday, Márcia Balisciano, the Founding Director of the Benjamin Franklin House museum in London, joins us to explore Benjamin Franklin’s life in London using details from the largest artifact Franklin left behind: his rented rooms at 36 Craven Street. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/320 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 001: James N. Green, Library Company of Philadelphia 🎧 Episode 022: Vivian Bruce Conger, Deborah Read Franklin & Sally Franklin Bache 🎧 Episode 149: George Goodwin, Benjamin Franklin in London 🎧 Episode 169: Thomas Kid, The Religious Life of Benjamin Franklin 🎧 Episode 175: Daniel Epstein, The Revolution in Ben Franklin’s House 🎧 Episode 207: Nick Bunker, Young Benjamin Franklin   REQUEST A TOPIC 📨 Topic Request Form 📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter  👩‍💻 Join the BFW Listener Community LISTEN 🎧 🍎 Apple Podcasts  💚 Spotify  🎶 Amazon Music 🛜 Pandora CONNECT 🦋 Liz on Bluesky 👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn 🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS 💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts 💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

One of the Caribbean islands that Christopher Columbus stopped at during his 1492-voyage was an alligator-shaped island that sits at the mouth of the Gulf of Mexico in between the Yucatán and Florida peninsulas. This is, of course, is the island of Cuba. What do we know about early Cuba, the island the Spanish described as the “Key to the Indies?” What kind of relationship and exchange did early Cuba have with British North America and the early United States? Ada Ferrer, a Professor of History at New York University and author of Cuba: An American History, joins us to investigate the early history of Cuba. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/048 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 090: Caitlin Fitz, Age of American Revolutions 🎧 Episode 104: Andrew Lipman, The Saltwater Frontier 🎧 Episode 139: Andrés Reséndez, The Other Slavery 🎧 Episode 161: Smuggling and the American Revolution 🎧 Episode 165: The Age of Revolutions  🎧 Episode 290: The World of the Wampanoag, Part 1 🎧 Episode 291: The World of the Wampanoag, Part 2 🎧 Episode 313: Mike Duncan, The Marquis de Lafayette   REQUEST A TOPIC 📨 Topic Request Form 📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter  👩‍💻 Join the BFW Listener Community LISTEN 🎧 🍎 Apple Podcasts  💚 Spotify  🎶 Amazon Music 🛜 Pandora CONNECT 🦋 Liz on Bluesky 👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn 🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS 💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts 💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What challenges do National Park Service interpretive rangers face when they interpret non-British colonial history? How did the relationships between Ste. Geneviéve's inhabitants and Indigenous peoples change over time? NPS Interpretive Ranger Claire Casey is back to answer more of your questions about colonial Ste. Geneviéve, Missouri and the Ste. Geneviéve National Historical Park. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/318 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

About 620 miles north of New Orleans and 62 miles south of St. Louis, sits the town of Ste. Geneviéve, Missouri. Established in 1750 by the French, Ste. Geneviéve reveals much about what it was like to establish a colony in the heartland of North America and what it was like for colonists to live so far removed from seats of imperial power. Claire Casey, a National Park Service interpretative ranger at the Ste. Geneviéve National Historical Park, joins us to explore the early American history of Ste. Geneviéve. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/318 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 102: William Nester, George Rogers Clark and the Fight for the Illinois Country 🎧 Episode 108: Ann Little, The Many Captivities of Esther Wheelwright 🎧 Episode 120: Marcia Zug, Mail Order Brides in Early America 🎧 Episode 139: Andrés Reséndez, The Other Slavery 🎧 Episode 308: Jessica Marie Johnson, Slavery and Freedom in French Louisiana REQUEST A TOPIC 📨 Topic Request Form 📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter  👩‍💻 Join the BFW Listener Community LISTEN 🎧 🍎 Apple Podcasts  💚 Spotify  🎶 Amazon Music 🛜 Pandora CONNECT 🦋 Liz on Bluesky 👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn 🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS 💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts 💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The first Jewish colonists in North America arrived in 1654. From that moment, Jews worked to build and contribute to early American society and the birth of the United States. Gemma Birnbaum and Melanie Meyers, the Executive Director and Director of Collections and Engagement at the American Jewish Historical Society, join us to explore the history and experiences of Jews in early America and their contributions to the American Revolution and the founding of the United States. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/317 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 121: Wim Klooster, The Dutch Moment in the 17th-Century Atlantic World 🎧 Episode 161: Smuggling and the American Revolution 🎧 Episode 185: Joyce Goodfriend, Early New York City and its culture 🎧 Episode 232: Christopher Hodson, The Acadian Diaspora 🎧 Episode 311: Katherine Cartè, Religion and the American Revolution REQUEST A TOPIC 📨 Topic Request Form 📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter  👩‍💻 Join the BFW Listener Community LISTEN 🎧 🍎 Apple Podcasts  💚 Spotify  🎶 Amazon Music 🛜 Pandora CONNECT 🦋 Liz on Bluesky 👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn 🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS 💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts 💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In 1803, the United States purchased the Louisiana Territory from France. This purchase included the important port city of New Orleans. But the United States did not just acquire the city’s land, peoples, and wealth– the American government also inherited the city’s Yellow Fever problem.   Kathryn Olivarius, an Assistant Professor of History at Stanford University and author of Necropolis: Disease, Power, and Capitalism in the Cotton Kingdom, leads us on an exploration of yellow fever, immunity, and inequality in early New Orleans. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/316 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 167: Eberhard Faber, The Early History of New Orleans 🎧 Episode 174: Thomas Apel, Yellow Fever in the Early America Republic 🎧 Episode 295: Ibrahima Seck, Whitney Plantation Museum 🎧 Episode 301: From Inoculation to Vaccination, Pt 1 🎧 Episode 302: From Inoculation to Vaccination, Pt 2 REQUEST A TOPIC 📨 Topic Request Form 📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter  👩‍💻 Join the BFW Listener Community LISTEN 🎧 🍎 Apple Podcasts  💚 Spotify  🎶 Amazon Music 🛜 Pandora CONNECT 🦋 Liz on Bluesky 👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn 🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS 💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts 💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What has enabled the American experiment in democracy to endure for nearly 250 years? What is it about early American history that captivates peoples’ attention and makes them want to support the creation of historical scholarship and the sharing of historical knowledge? David M. Rubenstein, the co-founder and co-chairman of The Carlyle Group and a great student and supporter of history and history education, joins us to explore his patriotic philanthropy and the history of American democracy with details from his book, The American Experiment: Dialogues on a Dream. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/315 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 018: Danielle Allen, Our Declaration 🎧 Episode 038: Carolyn Harris, Magna Carta & Its Gifts to North America 🎧 Episode 078: Rachel Shelden, Washington Brotherhood 🎧 Episode 107: Mary Sarah Bilder, Madison’s Hand 🎧 Episode 141: A Declaration in Draft 🎧 Episode 143: Michael Klarman, The Making of the United States Constitution 🎧 Episode 285: Elections and Voting in the Early Republic   REQUEST A TOPIC 📨 Topic Request Form 📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter  👩‍💻 Join the BFW Listener Community LISTEN 🎧 🍎 Apple Podcasts  💚 Spotify  🎶 Amazon Music 🛜 Pandora CONNECT 🦋 Liz on Bluesky 👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn 🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS 💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts 💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Massachusetts Historical Society has a podcast! In this bonus episode of Ben Franklin's World, we'll introduce you to The Object of History, with a full-episode preview of "Episode 4: A Miniature Portrait of Elizabeth Freeman." For more information about this new podcast and how to subscribe visit: https://masshist.org/podcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We rejoin Colin Calloway, Professor of History and Native American Studies at Dartmouth College, in this bonus episode so he can answer more of your questions about Native American experiences in early American cities. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/314 Join Ben Franklin's World! Subscribe and help us bring history right to your ears! Sponsor Links Omohundro Institute Colonial Williamsburg Foundation The Ben Franklin's World Shop Listen! Apple Podcasts Spotify Google Podcasts Amazon Music Ben Franklin's World iOS App Ben Franklin's World Android App Helpful Links Join the Ben Franklin's World Facebook Group Ben Franklin’s World Twitter: @BFWorldPodcast Ben Franklin's World Facebook Page Sign-up for the Franklin Gazette Newsletter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Have you ever considered early American cities as places where Native Americans lived, worked, and visited? Native Americans often visited early American cities and port towns, especially the towns and cities that dotted the Atlantic seaboard of British North America. Colin Calloway, an award-winning historian and a Professor History and Native American Studies at Dartmouth College, joins us to investigate Native American experiences in early American cities with details from his book, “The Chiefs Now In This City": Indians and the Urban Frontier in Early America. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/314 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 029: Colin Calloway, The Victory With No Name 🎧 Episode 132: Coll Thrush, Indigenous Londo 🎧 Episode 139: Andrés Reséndez, The Other Slavery  🎧Episode 223: Susan Sleeper-Smith, A Native American History of the Ohio River Valley & Great Lakes Region 🎧 Episode 264: Michael Oberg, The Treaty of Canandaigua REQUEST A TOPIC 📨 Topic Request Form 📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter  👩‍💻 Join the BFW Listener Community LISTEN 🎧 🍎 Apple Podcasts  💚 Spotify  🎶 Amazon Music 🛜 Pandora CONNECT 🦋 Liz on Bluesky 👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn 🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS 💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts 💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to OI Reads, an occasional series on Ben Franklin's World where we introduce you to new books that we'll think you love and that are published by the Omohundro Institute. Using details from her book, The Strange Genius of Mr. O, Carolyn Eastman, a Professor of History at Virginia Commonwealth University, acquaints us with James Ogilvie, one of early America's first bonafide celebrities. For more details about The Strange Genius of Mr. O: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/MrO Join Ben Franklin's World! Subscribe and help us bring history right to your ears! Sponsor Links Omohundro Institute Colonial Williamsburg Foundation Purchase your copy of the Strange Genius of Mr. at a 40-percent discount. Promo Code: 01BFW   Listen! Apple Podcasts Spotify Google Podcasts Amazon Music Ben Franklin's World iOS App Ben Franklin's World Android App Helpful Links Join the Ben Franklin's World Facebook Group Ben Franklin’s World Twitter: @BFWorldPodcast Ben Franklin's World Facebook Page Sign-up for the Franklin Gazette Newsletter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You know “America’s favorite fighting Frenchman” is the Marquis de Lafayette. But what do you know about Lafayette and his life? How and why did this French-born noble end up fighting in the American Revolution? Mike Duncan, a self-described history geek, public historian, and the podcaster behind the award-winning podcast The History of Rome and the popular podcast Revolutions, joins us to investigate the life of the Marquis de Lafayette with details from his book, Hero of Two Worlds: The Marquis de Lafayette in the Age of Revolution. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/313 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Bonus Episode: The Marquis de Lafayette and the Hermione  🎧 Episode 071: Bruce Venter, Saratoga & Hubbardton, 1777 🎧 Episode 203: Joanne Freeman, Alexander Hamilton 🎧 Episode 208: Nathaniel Philbrick, Turning Points of the American Revolution 🎧 Episode 311: Katherine Carté, Religion and the American Revolution REQUEST A TOPIC 📨 Topic Request Form 📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter  👩‍💻 Join the BFW Listener Community LISTEN 🎧 🍎 Apple Podcasts  💚 Spotify  🎶 Amazon Music 🛜 Pandora CONNECT 🦋 Liz on Bluesky 👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn 🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS 💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts 💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The transatlantic slave trade dominated in North America during the 17th and 18th centuries. But by 1808, a different slave trade came to dominate in the young United States, the domestic or internal slave trade.
 Joshua D. Rothman, an award-winning historian, Professor of History at the University of Alabama, and author of the book, The Ledger and the Chain: How Domestic Slave Traders Shaped America, leads us on an exploration of the United States’ domestic slave trade and the lives of three slave traders who helped to define this trade. 
 Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/312 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 063: Megan Kate Nelson, Ruin Nation: Destruction and the Civil War 🎧 Episode 118: Christy Clark-Pujara, The Business of Slavery in Rhode Island 🎧 Episode 135: Julie Holcomb, The Transatlantic Boycott of Slave Labor  🎧 Episode 142: Manisha Sinha, A History of Abolition 🎧 Episode 176: Daina Ramey Berry, The Value of the Enslaved from Womb to Grave 🎧 Episode 281: Caitlin Rosenthal, The Business of Slavery REQUEST A TOPIC 📨 Topic Request Form 📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter  👩‍💻 Join the BFW Listener Community LISTEN 🎧 🍎 Apple Podcasts  💚 Spotify  🎶 Amazon Music 🛜 Pandora CONNECT 🦋 Liz on Bluesky 👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn 🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS 💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts 💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Investigations of the American Revolution often include explorations of politics, ideology, trade and taxation, imperial control, and social strife. What about religion? What role did religion play in the American Revolution? Katherine Carté, an Associate Professor of History at Southern Methodist University and the author of Religion and the American Revolution: An Imperial History, joins us to investigate the role of religion in the American Revolution. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/311 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 025: Jessica Parr, Inventing George Whitefield 🎧 Episode 134: Spence McBride, Clergymen and the Politics of Revolutionary America 🎧 Episode 152: Origins of the American Revolution 🎧 Episode 214: Christopher Grasso, Skepticism & American Faith 🎧 Episode 307: Michael Hattem, History and the American Revolution REQUEST A TOPIC 📨 Topic Request Form 📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter  👩‍💻 Join the BFW Listener Community LISTEN 🎧 🍎 Apple Podcasts  💚 Spotify  🎶 Amazon Music 🛜 Pandora CONNECT 🦋 Liz on Bluesky 👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn 🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS 💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts 💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

To understand early American history, we need to investigate and understand North America as an Indigenous space. A place where Native American populations, politics, religion, and trade networks prevailed for centuries before and after the arrival of Europeans and enslaved Africans. In this episode, we travel into the heart of the North American continent to explore the life, history and culture of the Blackfeet People with Rosalyn LaPier, a University of Montana professor, historian, ethnobotanist, and award-winning Indigenous writer. Rosalyn is a member of the Blackfeet Tribe of Montana and a member of the Métis, one of the three recognized Aboriginal peoples in Canada. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/310 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 286: Native American Sovereignty  🎧 Episode 290: The World of the Wampanoag: Before 1620 🎧 Episode 291: The World of the Wampanoag: 1620 and Beyond 🎧 Episode 301: From Inoculation to Vaccination, Part 1 🎧 Episode 302: From Inoculation to Vaccination, Part 2   REQUEST A TOPIC 📨 Topic Request Form 📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter  👩‍💻 Join the BFW Listener Community LISTEN 🎧 🍎 Apple Podcasts  💚 Spotify  🎶 Amazon Music 🛜 Pandora CONNECT 🦋 Liz on Bluesky 👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn 🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS 💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts 💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

By the eighteenth century, the Atlantic Ocean had become a busy highway of ships crisscrossing its waters. What do we know about the ships that made these transatlantic voyages and connected the eighteenth-century British Atlantic world through trade, people, and information? Phillip Reid, a historian of the Atlantic World and maritime technology and author of The Merchant Ship in the British Atlantic, joins us to explore the eighteenth-century British merchant ship and the business of transatlantic shipping. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/309 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 008: Gregory O’Malley, Final Passages: The Intercolonial Slave Trade of British America, 1619-1807 🎧 Episode 012: Dane Morrison, The South Seas & the Discovery of American Identity 🎧 Episode 015: Joyce Chaplin, Circumnavigation from Magellan to Orbit 🎧 Episode 099: Mark Hanna, Pirates & Pirate Nests in the British Atlantic World 🎧 Episode 140: Tamara Thornton, Nathaniel Bowditch: 19th-Century Man of Business, Science, and the Sea   REQUEST A TOPIC 📨 Topic Request Form 📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter  👩‍💻 Join the BFW Listener Community LISTEN 🎧 🍎 Apple Podcasts  💚 Spotify  🎶 Amazon Music 🛜 Pandora CONNECT 🦋 Liz on Bluesky 👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn 🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS 💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts 💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The story of freedom in colonial New Orleans and Louisiana pivoted on the choices black women made to retain control of their bodies, families, and futures. How did black women in colonial Louisiana navigate French and Spanish black and slavery codes to retain control of their bodies, families, and futures? Jessica Marie Johnson, Assistant Professor of History at Johns Hopkins University and author of the award-winning book Wicked Flesh: Black Women, Intimacy, and Freedom in the Atlantic World, joins us to investigate answers to this question and to reveal what viewing the history of the Atlantic World through the histories of slavery and gender can show us about what life was really like for colonists, settlers, and the enslaved. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/308 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 037: Kathleen DuVal, Independence Lost 🎧 Episode 120: Marcia Zug, A History of Mail Order Brides in Early America 🎧 Episode 167: Eberhard Faber, The Early History of New Orleans 🎧 Episode 232: Christopher Hodson, The Acadian Diaspora 🎧 Episode 282: Vincent Brown, Tacky’s Revolt 🎧 Episode 289: Marcus Nevius, Maroonage & the Great Dismal Swamp 🎧 Episode 295: Ibrahima Seck, Whitney Plantation Museum 🎧 Episode 303: Matthew Powell, La Pointe-Krebs House   REQUEST A TOPIC 📨 Topic Request Form 📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter  👩‍💻 Join the BFW Listener Community LISTEN 🎧 🍎 Apple Podcasts  💚 Spotify  🎶 Amazon Music 🛜 Pandora CONNECT 🦋 Liz on Bluesky 👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn 🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS 💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts 💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In Episode 307, Michael Hattem helped us investigate the role history played in the American Revolution and the ways early historians used history as a tool to unite Americans as one people after the Revolution. This bonus episode brings us back together with Michael Hattem so we can explore a few topics we didn’t have time to explore in our full-length episode: A listener question about how British Americans thought about the British Empire’s responsibility to protect them and historical schools of thought, how schools of thought develop, and the different schools of historical thought when it comes to the American Revolution. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/307 Become a Subscriber! https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/subscribe Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The story of the founding of the United States is a familiar one. It usually (but not always) begins with the English settlement at Jamestown, Virginia in 1607, describes the founding and development of thirteen British North American colonies that hugged North America’s eastern seaboard, and then delves into the imperial reforms and conflicts that caused the colonists to respond with violent protests during the 1760s and 1770s. Then there is the war, which began in April 1775 and ended in 1783. The adoption of the Declaration of Independence in 1776. And the story of how against all odds, the Americans persevered and founded an independent United States. Have you ever wondered where this familiar narrative came from and why it was developed? Michael Hattem, a historian of Early America who has a research expertise in the age and memory of the American Revolution, joins us to investigate the creation of the “grand narrative” about the Revolution and the United States’ founding, with details from his book, Past and Prologue: Politics and Memory in the American Revolution. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/307 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 031: Michael Hattem, Benjamin Franklin and the Papers of the Benjamin Franklin Editorial Project 🎧 Episode 107: Mary Sarah Bilder, Madison’s Hand: Revising the Constitutional Convention 🎧 Episode 245: Celebrating the Fourth of July 🎧 Episode 250: Virginia, 1619 🎧 Episode 306: The Horse’s Tail: Revolution & Memory in Early New York City REQUEST A TOPIC 📨 Topic Request Form 📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter  👩‍💻 Join the BFW Listener Community LISTEN 🎧 🍎 Apple Podcasts  💚 Spotify  🎶 Amazon Music 🛜 Pandora CONNECT 🦋 Liz on Bluesky 👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn 🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS 💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts 💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The words of the Declaration of Independence are not the only aspect of the American Revolution that carry power. Visual and material objects from during and after the Revolution also carry power and meaning. Objects like monuments, uniforms, muskets, powder horns, and the Horse’s Tail, a remnant of a grand equestrian statue of King George III, which stood in New York City’s Bowling Green park. Historians Wendy Bellion, Leslie Harris, and Arthur Burns join us to investigate the history of revolutionary New York City and how New Yorkers came to their decisions to both install and tear down a statue to King George III, and what happened to this statue after it came down. This episode is sponsored in part by Humanities New York. The mission of Humanities New York is to strengthen civil society and the bonds of community, using the humanities to foster engaging inquiry and dialog around social and cultural concerns. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/306 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 058: Andrew Schocket, Fighting over the Founders: How We Remember the American Revolution 🎧 Episode 136: Jennifer Van Horn, Material Culture and the Making of America 🎧 Episode 144: Robert Parkinson, The Common Cause of the American Revolution 🎧 Episode 185: Joyce Goodfriend, Early New York City and Its Culture 🎧 Episode 245: Celebrating the Fourth 🎧 Episode 277: Whose Fourth of July   REQUEST A TOPIC 📨 Topic Request Form 📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter  👩‍💻 Join the BFW Listener Community LISTEN 🎧 🍎 Apple Podcasts  💚 Spotify  🎶 Amazon Music 🛜 Pandora CONNECT 🦋 Liz on Bluesky 👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn 🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS 💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts 💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Death is one of the few universals in life. Everyone who is born, will die. How do the living make peace with death? While different cultures make peace with death in different ways, Erik Seeman joins us to investigate how white, American Protestants made their peace with death during the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. Erik Seeman is a Professor of History at the University at Buffalo. He’s an award-winning historian who has written three books on death practices in early America, including his most recent book, Speaking with the Dead in Early America.  Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/305 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 125: Terri Snyder, Death, Slavery, & Suicide in British North America 🎧 Episode 182: Douglas Winiarski, The Great Awakening in New England 🎧 Episode 214: Christopher Grasso, Skepticism & American Faith 🎧 Episode 231: Sara Georgini, The Religious Lives of the Adams Family 🎧 Episode 301: From Inoculation to Vaccination, Part 1   REQUEST A TOPIC 📨 Topic Request Form 📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter  👩‍💻 Join the BFW Listener Community LISTEN 🎧 🍎 Apple Podcasts  💚 Spotify  🎶 Amazon Music 🛜 Pandora CONNECT 🦋 Liz on Bluesky 👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn 🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS 💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts 💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Juneteenth is a state holiday that commemorates June 19, 1865, the day slavery ended in Texas. Over the last decade, a push to make Juneteenth a national holiday to commemorate the end of slavery in the United States has gained momentum. What do we know about Juneteenth and its origins? Annette Gordon-Reed, an award-winning historian at Harvard University and Harvard Law School, is a native Texan and she joins us to discuss the early history of Texas and the origins of the Juneteenth holiday with details from her book, On Juneteenth. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/304 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 067, John Ryan Fischer, Cattle Colonialism 🎧 Episode 115: Andrew Torget, The Early History of Texas 🎧 Episode 117: Annette Gordon-Reed, The Life and Ideas of Thomas Jefferson 🎧 Episode 139: Andrés Reséndez, The Other Slavery 🎧 Episode 209: Considering Biography 🎧 Episode 250: Virginia, 1619 🎧 Episode 281: Caitlin Rosenthal, The Business of Slavery 🎧 Episode 282: Vincent Brown, Tacky’s Revolt  REQUEST A TOPIC 📨 Topic Request Form 📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter  👩‍💻 Join the BFW Listener Community LISTEN 🎧 🍎 Apple Podcasts  💚 Spotify  🎶 Amazon Music 🛜 Pandora CONNECT 🦋 Liz on Bluesky 👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn 🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS 💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts 💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Mississippi Gulf Coast was the home of many different peoples, cultures, and empires during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. According to some historians, the Gulf Coast region may have been the most diverse region in early North America.
 Matthew Powell, a historian of slavery and southern history and the Executive Director of the La Pointe-Krebs House & Museum in Pascagoula, Mississippi, joins us to investigate and explore the Mississippi Gulf Coast and a prominent family who has lived there since about 1718. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/303 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 037: Kathleen DuVal, Independence Lost 🎧 Episode 167: Eberhard Faber, The Early History of New Orleans 🎧 Episode 283: Anne Marie Lane Jonah, Acadie 300 🎧 Episode 295: Ibrahima Seck, Whitney Plantation Museum 🎧 Episode 298: Lindsey Shackenback Regele, Manufacturing Advantage  REQUEST A TOPIC 📨 Topic Request Form 📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter  👩‍💻 Join the BFW Listener Community LISTEN 🎧 🍎 Apple Podcasts  💚 Spotify  🎶 Amazon Music 🛜 Pandora CONNECT 🦋 Liz on Bluesky 👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn 🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS 💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts 💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Before its eradication in 1980, smallpox was the most feared disease in many parts of the world. Known as the “king of terrors” and the “disease of diseases” the search for a way to lessen and avoid smallpox was on! How did vaccination come about? What are vaccination’s connections to smallpox inoculation? And how did news and practice of vaccination spread throughout North America? These questions will be our focus in this second, and final, episode in our “From Inoculation to Vaccination” series. In this episode, we join experts Dr. René Najera, Farren Yero, and Andrew Wehrman for a journey through the history of smallpox, the creation of the world’s first vaccine, and first mass public health initiative.  Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/302 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 005 Jeanne Abrams, Revolutionary Medicine  🎧 Episode 116 Erica Charters, Disease & the Seven Years’ War 🎧 Episode 174 Thomas Apel, Yellow Fever in the Early American Republic 🎧 Episode 263 Sari Altschuler, The Medical Imagination 🎧 Episode 273 Victoria Johnson, David Hosack, Botany, and Medicine in the Early Republic 🎧 Episode 276: Stephen Fried, Benjamin Rush 🎧 Episode 301 From Inoculation to Vaccination  REQUEST A TOPIC 📨 Topic Request Form 📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter  👩‍💻 Join the BFW Listener Community LISTEN 🎧 🍎 Apple Podcasts  💚 Spotify  🎶 Amazon Music 🛜 Pandora CONNECT 🦋 Liz on Bluesky 👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn 🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS 💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts 💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Smallpox was the most feared disease in North America and in many parts of the world before its eradication in 1980. So how did early Americans live with smallpox and work to prevent it? How did they help eradicate this terrible disease? Over the next two episodes, we’ll explore smallpox in North America. We’ll investigate how smallpox came to North America, how North Americans worked to contain, control, and prevent outbreaks of the disease, and how the story of smallpox is also the story of immunization. In this episode, we join experts Dr. René Najera, Farren Yero, Ben Mutschler, and Andrew Wehrman for a journey through the history of smallpox and the world’s first immunization procedure: inoculation.  Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/301 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 005: Jeanne Abrams, Revolutionary Medicine  🎧 Episode 116: Erica Charters, Disease & the Seven Years’ War 🎧 Episode 174: Thomas Apel, Yellow Fever in the Early American Republic 🎧 Episode 263 Sari Altschuler, The Medical Imagination 🎧 Episode 273: Victoria Johnson, David Hosack, Botany, and Medicine in the Early Republic 🎧 Episode 276: Stephen Fried, Benjamin Rush   REQUEST A TOPIC 📨 Topic Request Form 📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter  👩‍💻 Join the BFW Listener Community LISTEN 🎧 🍎 Apple Podcasts  💚 Spotify  🎶 Amazon Music 🛜 Pandora CONNECT 🦋 Liz on Bluesky 👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn 🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS 💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts 💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What do historians wish more people better understood about early American history and why do they wish people had that better understanding? In celebration of the 300th episode of Ben Franklin’s World, we posed these questions to more than 30 scholars. What do they think? Join the celebration to discover more about Early America and take a behind-the-scenes tour of your favorite history podcast. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/300 REQUEST A TOPIC 📨 Topic Request Form 📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter  👩‍💻 Join the BFW Listener Community LISTEN 🎧 🍎 Apple Podcasts  💚 Spotify  🎶 Amazon Music 🛜 Pandora CONNECT 🦋 Liz on Bluesky 👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn 🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS 💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts 💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What can a portrait reveal about the history of colonial British America? Portraits were both deeply personal and yet collaborative artifacts left behind by people of the past. When historians look at multiple portraits created around the same time and place, their similarities can reveal important social connections, trade relationships, or cultural beliefs about race and gender in early American history.  Janine Yorimoto Boldt, Associate Curator of American Art at the Chazen Museum of Art and the researcher behind the digital project Colonial Virginia Portraits, leads us on an exploration of portraiture and what it can reveal about the early American past.  Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/299 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 024: Kimberly Alexander, 18th-Century Fashion & Material Culture 🎧 Episode 084: Zara Anishanslin, How Historians Read Historical Sources 🎧 Episode 106: Jane Kamensky, The World of John Singleton Copley 🎧 Episode 136: Jennifer Van Horn, Material Culture and the Making of America 🎧 Episode 292: Glenn Adamson, Craft in Early America    REQUEST A TOPIC 📨 Topic Request Form 📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter  👩‍💻 Join the BFW Listener Community LISTEN 🎧 🍎 Apple Podcasts  💚 Spotify  🎶 Amazon Music 🛜 Pandora CONNECT 🦋 Liz on Bluesky 👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn 🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS 💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts 💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Have you ever stopped to think about how the United States became a manufacturing nation? Have you ever wondered how the United States developed not just products, but the technologies, knowledge, and machinery necessary to manufacture or produce various products? Lindsay Schakenbach Regele has. Lindsay is an Associate Professor of History at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio and the author of Manufacturing Advantage: War, the State, and the Origins of American Industry, 1776-1848, and she joins us today to lead our exploration into the early American origins of industrialization. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/298 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 098: Gautham Rao, Birth of the American Tax Man 🎧 Episode 113: Brian Murphy, Building the Empire State 🎧 Episode 140: Tamara Thornton, Nathaniel Bowditch 🎧 Episode 281: Caitlin Rosenthal, The Business of Slavery 🎧 Episode 292: Glen Adamson, Craft   REQUEST A TOPIC 📨 Topic Request Form 📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter  👩‍💻 Join the BFW Listener Community LISTEN 🎧 🍎 Apple Podcasts  💚 Spotify  🎶 Amazon Music 🛜 Pandora CONNECT 🦋 Liz on Bluesky 👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn 🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS 💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts 💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The history of Native American land dispossession is as old as the story of colonization. European colonists came to the Americas, and the Caribbean, wanting land for farms and settlement so they found ways to acquire lands from indigenous peoples by the means of negotiation, bad-faith dealing, war, and violence. The Indian Removal Act of 1830 is deeply rooted in early American history. Claudio Saunt, a scholar of Native American history at the University of Georgia, and author of the book Unworthy Republic: The Dispossession of Native Americans and the Road to Indian Territory, joins us to discuss the Indian Removal Act of 1830 and how Native Americans in the southeastern part of the United States were removed from their homelands and resettled in areas of southeastern Kansas and Oklahoma. 
 Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/048 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 034: Mark Cheatham, Andrew Jackson, Southerner 🎧 Episode 158: The Revolutionaries’ Army 🎧 Episode 162: Dunmore’s World 🎧 Episode 163: The American Revolution in North America 🎧 Episode 286: Elections in Early America: Native Sovereignty REQUEST A TOPIC 📨 Topic Request Form 📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter  👩‍💻 Join the BFW Listener Community LISTEN 🎧 🍎 Apple Podcasts  💚 Spotify  🎶 Amazon Music 🛜 Pandora CONNECT 🦋 Liz on Bluesky 👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn 🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS 💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts 💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Is there anything more we can know about well-researched and reported events like the Boston Massacre? Are there new ways of looking at oft-taught events that can help us see new details about them, even 250 years after they happened? Serena Zabin, a Professor of History at Carleton College in Minnesota and the author of the award-winning book, The Boston Massacre: A Family History, joins us to discuss the Boston Massacre and how she found a new lens through which to view this famous event that reveals new details and insights. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/296 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 159: Serena Zabin, The Revolutionary Economy 🎧 Episode 228: Eric Hinderaker, The Boston Massacre 🎧 Episode 229: Patrick Griffin, The Townshend Moment 🎧 Episode 230: Mitch Kachun, The First Martyr of Liberty 🎧 Episode 294: Mary Beth Norton, 1774: The Long Year of Revolution REQUEST A TOPIC 📨 Topic Request Form 📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter  👩‍💻 Join the BFW Listener Community LISTEN 🎧 🍎 Apple Podcasts  💚 Spotify  🎶 Amazon Music 🛜 Pandora CONNECT 🦋 Liz on Bluesky 👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn 🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS 💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts 💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What does it take to create a museum? How can a museum help visitors grapple with a very uncomfortable aspect of their nation’s past? Ibrahima Seck, a member of the History Department at the University Cheikh Anta Diop in Dakar, Senegal, author of the book, Bouki Fait Gombo: A History of the Slave Community of Habitation Haydel (Whitney Plantation) Louisiana, 1750-1860, and the Director of Research of the Whitney Plantation museum, leads us on a behind-the-scenes tour of Whitney Plantation and through the history of slavery in early Louisiana. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/295 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 017: François Furstenberg, When the United States Spoke French 🎧 Episode 124: James Alexander Dun, Making the Haitian Revolution in Early America 🎧 Episode 125: Terri Snyder, Death, Suicide, and Slavery in British North America 🎧 Episode 137: Erica A. Dunbar, The Washingtons’ Runaway Slave, Ona Judge 🎧 Episode 167: Eberhard Faber, The Early History of New Orleans 🎧 Episode 281: Caitlin Rosenthal, The Business of Slavery 🎧 Episode 282: Vincent Brown, Tacky’s Revolt   REQUEST A TOPIC 📨 Topic Request Form 📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter  👩‍💻 Join the BFW Listener Community LISTEN 🎧 🍎 Apple Podcasts  💚 Spotify  🎶 Amazon Music 🛜 Pandora CONNECT 🦋 Liz on Bluesky 👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn 🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS 💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts 💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When we think of important years in the history of the American Revolution, we might think of years like 1765 and the Stamp Act Crisis, 1773 and the Tea Crisis, 1775 and the start of what would become the War for American Independence, or 1776, the year the United States declared independence. Award-winning historian Mary Beth Norton, the Mary Donlan Alger Professor Emerita at Cornell University and the author of 1774: The Long Year of Revolution, joins us to discuss another year that she would like us to pay attention to as we think about the American Revolution: the year 1774. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/294 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Bonus: The Boston Stamp Act Riots  🎧 Episode 112: Mary Beth Norton, The Tea Crisis of 1773 🎧 Episode 144: Robert Parkinson, The Common Cause of the American Revolution 🎧 Episode 160: The Politics of Tea 🎧 Episode 161: Smuggling and the American Revolution 🎧 Episode 229: Patrick Griffin, The Townshend Moment 🎧 Episode 243: Joseph Adelman, Revolutionary Networks   REQUEST A TOPIC 📨 Topic Request Form 📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter  👩‍💻 Join the BFW Listener Community LISTEN 🎧 🍎 Apple Podcasts  💚 Spotify  🎶 Amazon Music 🛜 Pandora CONNECT 🦋 Liz on Bluesky 👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn 🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS 💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts 💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How did Jamaica grow to become the "crown jewel" of the British Atlantic World? Part of the answer is that Jamaica’s women served as some of the most ardent and best supporters of the island’s practice of slavery. Christine Walker, an Assistant Professor of History at the Yale-NUS College in Singapore and the author of the award-winning book, Jamaica Ladies: Female Slaveholders and the Creation of Britain’s Atlantic Empire, leads us on an investigation of female slave holder-ship in 17th and 18th-century Jamaica. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/293 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 008: Gregory O’Malley, Final Passages  🎧 Episode 036: Abigail Swingen, Competing Visions of Empire 🎧 Episode 070: Jennifer Morgan, How Historians Research 🎧 Episode 236: Daniel Livesay, Mixed-Race Britons & Atlantic Family 🎧 Episode 282: Vincent Brown, Tacky’s Revolt REQUEST A TOPIC 📨 Topic Request Form 📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter  👩‍💻 Join the BFW Listener Community LISTEN 🎧 🍎 Apple Podcasts  💚 Spotify  🎶 Amazon Music 🛜 Pandora CONNECT 🦋 Liz on Bluesky 👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn 🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS 💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts 💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What was everyday life like for those who lived in early America? To understand the everyday lives of early Americans we need to look at the goods they made and how they produced those goods. In essence, nothing explains the everyday as much as the goods in people’s lives. Glenn Adamson, author of Craft: An American History, joins us to investigate craft and craftspeople in Early America. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/282 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 050: Marla Miller, Betsy Ross and the Making of America 🎧 Episode 130: Paul Revere’s Ride Through History 🎧 Episode 160: The Politics of Tea 🎧 Episode 207: Nick Bunker, Young Benjamin Franklin 🎧 Episode 234: Richard Bushman, Farms & Farm Families in Early America 🎧 Episode 243: Joseph Adelman: Revolutionary Print Networks  🎧 Episode 288: Tyson Reeder, Smugglers & Patriots in the 18th-Century Atlantic World REQUEST A TOPIC 📨 Topic Request Form 📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter  👩‍💻 Join the BFW Listener Community LISTEN 🎧 🍎 Apple Podcasts  💚 Spotify  🎶 Amazon Music 🛜 Pandora CONNECT 🦋 Liz on Bluesky 👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn 🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS 💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts 💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode is a companion episode to the 2-episode World of the Wampanoag series. This bonus episode allows us to speak with two guests from the World of the Wampanoag series: Jade Luiz, Curator of Collections at the Plimoth Patuxet Museums, and Lorén Spears, Executive Director of the Tomaquag Museum in Rhode Island. Both Jade and Lorén help us explore their museums and what it will be like when we visit them in person. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/290 Become a subscriber! https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/subscribe Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Before New England was New England, it was the Dawnland. A region that remains the homeland of numerous Native American peoples, including the Wampanoag.  When the English colonists arrived at Patuxet 400 years ago, they arrived at a confusing time. The World of the Wampanoag people had changed in the wake of a destabilizing epidemic. This episode is part of a two-episode series about the World of the Wampanoag. In Episode 290, we investigated the life, cultures, and trade of the Wampanoag and their neighbors, the Narragansett, up to December 16, 1620, the day the Mayflower made its way into Plymouth Harbor. In this episode, our focus will be on the World of the Wampanoag in 1620 and beyond. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/291 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 104: Native Americans and Colonists on the Northeastern Coast 🎧 Episode 132: Indigenous London: Native Travelers at the Heart of Empire 🎧 Episode 184: Thundersticks: Firearms and the Violent Transformation of Native America 🎧 Episode 220: New England Indians, Colonists, and Origins of Slavery 🎧 Episode 235: A 17th-Century Native American Life  🎧 Episode 267: Snowshoe Country   REQUEST A TOPIC 📨 Topic Request Form 📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter  👩‍💻 Join the BFW Listener Community LISTEN 🎧 🍎 Apple Podcasts  💚 Spotify  🎶 Amazon Music 🛜 Pandora CONNECT 🦋 Liz on Bluesky 👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn 🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS 💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts 💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Before New England was New England, it was the Dawnland. A region that remains the homeland of numerous Native American peoples, including the Wampanoag. Over the next two episodes, we’ll explore the World of the Wampanoag before and after 1620, a year that saw approximately 100 English colonists enter the Wampanoags’ world. Those English colonists have been called the “Pilgrims” and this year, 2020, marks the 400th anniversary of their arrival in New England. The arrival of these English settlers brought change to the Wampanoags’ world. But many aspects of Wampanoag life and culture persisted, as did the Wampanoag who lived, and still live, in Massachusetts and beyond. In this episode, we’ll investigate the cultures, society, and economy of the Wampanoags’ 16th- and 17th-century world. This focus will help us develop a better understanding for the peoples, places, and circumstances of the World of the Wampanoag. This two-episode “World of the Wampanoag” series is made possible through support from Mass Humanities.  Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this episode do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/290 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 104:Native Americans and Colonists on the Northeastern Coast 🎧 Episode 132: Indigenous London: Native Travelers at the Heart of Empire 🎧 Episode 184: Thundersticks: Firearms and the Violent Transformation of Native America 🎧 Episode 220: New England Indians, Colonists, and Origins of Slavery 🎧 Episode 235: , A 17th-Century Native American Life  🎧 Episode 267: Snowshoe Country   REQUEST A TOPIC 📨 Topic Request Form 📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter  👩‍💻 Join the BFW Listener Community LISTEN 🎧 🍎 Apple Podcasts  💚 Spotify  🎶 Amazon Music 🛜 Pandora CONNECT 🦋 Liz on Bluesky 👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn 🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS 💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts 💚 Leave a rating on Spotify   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The name “Great Dismal Swamp” doesn’t evoke an image of a pleasant or beautiful place, and yet, it was an important place that offered land speculators the chance to profit and enslaved men and women a chance for freedom in colonial British America and the early United States.
 Marcus Nevius, an Assistant Professor of History at the University of Rhode Island and author of City of Refuge: Slavery and Petit Maroonage in the Great Dismal Swamp, 1763-1856, has offered to guide us into and through the Great Dismal Swamp and its history, so that we can better understand maroons and maroon communities in early America and learn more about how enslaved people used an environment around them to resist their enslaved condition. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/289 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 133: Patrick Breen, The Nat Turner Rebellion 🎧 Episode 176: Daina Ramey Berry, The Value of the Enslaved from Womb to Grave 🎧 Episode 226: Ryan Quintana, Making the State of South Carolina 🎧 Episode 250: Virginia, 1619 🎧 Episode 263: Sari Altschuler, The Medical Imagination 🎧 Episode 282: Vincent Brown, Tacky’s Revolt REQUEST A TOPIC 📨 Topic Request Form 📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter  👩‍💻 Join the BFW Listener Community LISTEN 🎧 🍎 Apple Podcasts  💚 Spotify  🎶 Amazon Music 🛜 Pandora CONNECT 🦋 Liz on Bluesky 👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn 🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS 💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts 💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In what ways did the Atlantic World contribute to the American Revolution? Empire, slavery, and constant warfare interacted with each other in the Atlantic World. Which brings us to our question: In what ways did the Atlantic World and its issues contribute to the American Revolution? Tyson Reeder, an editor of the Papers of James Madison and an affiliated assistant professor at the University of Virginia, is a scholar of the Atlantic World, who will help us see how smuggling and trade in the Luso-Atlantic, or Portuguese-Atlantic, World contributed to the development and spread of ideas about free trade and republicanism. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/288 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 090: Caitlin Fitz, Age of American Revolutions 🎧 Episode 099: Mark Hanna, Pirates & Pirate Nests in the British Atlantic World 🎧 Episode 121: Wim Klooster, The Dutch Moment in the 17th-Century Atlantic World 🎧 Episode 161: Smuggling in the American Revolution 🎧 Episode 229: Patrick Griffin, The Townshend Moment 🎧 Episode 254: Jeffrey Sklansky, The Money Question in Early America REQUEST A TOPIC 📨 Topic Request Form 📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter  👩‍💻 Join the BFW Listener Community LISTEN 🎧 🍎 Apple Podcasts  💚 Spotify  🎶 Amazon Music 🛜 Pandora CONNECT 🦋 Liz on Bluesky 👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn 🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS 💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts 💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Join the Omohundro Institute and Mass Humanities for a special two-episode series about the World of the Wampanoag before and after 1620. The Wampanoag’s history has always been spoken. Hear it on Ben Franklin’s World in December 2020. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This special bonus episode previews the Ben Franklin's World Subscription program and its monthly bonus episode for program subscribers. In this bonus episode, Historian of the United States House of Representatives Matt Wasniewski and Historical Publications Specialist Terrance Rucker answer your questions about the early history of the United States Congress. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/202 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For four months during the summer of 1787, delegates from the thirteen states met in Philadelphia to craft a revised Constitution that would define the government of the United States. It took them nearly the entire time to settle on the method for selecting the President, the Chief Executive. What they came up with is a system of indirect election where the states would select electors who would then cast votes for President and Vice President. Today we call these electors the Electoral College. In this final episode of our series on Elections in Early America, we explore the origins and early development of the Electoral College and how it shaped presidential elections in the first decades of the United States with Alexander Keyssar and Frank Cogliano. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/287 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 040: Kathleen Bartoloni-Tuazon, For Fear of an Elective King 🎧 Episode 107: Mary Sarah Bilder, Madison's Hand: Revising the Constitutional Convention 🎧 Episode 131: Frank Cogliano, Thomas Jefferson's Empire of Liberty 🎧 Episode 143: Michael Klarman, The Making of the United States Constitution 🎧 Episode 179: George Van Cleve, After the Revolution: Governance During the Critical Period 🎧 Episode 193: Partisans: The Friendship & Rivalry of Adams & Jefferson 🎧 Episode 279: Lindsay Chervinsky, The Cabinet: Creation of an American Institution REQUEST A TOPIC 📨 Topic Request Form 📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter  👩‍💻 Join the BFW Listener Community LISTEN 🎧 🍎 Apple Podcasts  💚 Spotify  🎶 Amazon Music 🛜 Pandora CONNECT 🦋 Liz on Bluesky 👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn 🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS 💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts 💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Who is American democracy for and who could participate in early American democracy? Women and African Americans were often barred from voting in colonial and early republic elections. But what about Native Americans? Could Native Americans participate in early American democracy? Julie Reed, an Assistant Professor of History at the Pennsylvania State University, and Kathleen DuVal, the Bowman and Gordon Gray Distinguished Term Professor of History at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, join us to investigate how the sovereignty of native nations fits within the sovereignty of the United States and its democracy. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/286 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 037: Kathleen DuVal, Independence Lost 🎧 Episode 158: The Revolutionaries’ Army 🎧 Episode 162: Dunmore’s New World 🎧 Episode 163: The American Revolution in North America 🎧 Episode 223: Susan Sleeper-Smith, A Native American History of the Ohio River Valley & Great Lakes Region   REQUEST A TOPIC 📨 Topic Request Form 📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter  👩‍💻 Join the BFW Listener Community LISTEN 🎧 🍎 Apple Podcasts  💚 Spotify  🎶 Amazon Music 🛜 Pandora CONNECT 🦋 Liz on Bluesky 👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn 🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS 💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts 💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Independence from Great Britain provided the former British American colonists the opportunity to create a new, more democratic government than they had lived under before the American Revolution. What did this new American government look like? Who could participate in this new American democracy? And what was it like to participate in this new democracy? Scholars Terrance Rucker, a Historical Publications Specialist in the Office of the Historian of the U.S. House of Representatives, and Marcela Miccuci, a curator at the Museum of the American Revolution, join us to investigate the first federal elections in the United States and who could vote in early U.S. elections. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/285 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 107: Mary Sarah Bilder, Madison’s Hand 🎧 Episode 151: Defining the American Revolution 🎧 Episode 179: George Van Cleve, Governance During the Critical Period 🎧 Episode 202: The Early History of the United States Congress 🎧 Episode 203: Joanne Freeman, Alexander Hamilton 🎧 Episode 260: Creating the First Ten Amendments 🎧 Episode 277: Whose Fourth of July   REQUEST A TOPIC 📨 Topic Request Form 📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter  👩‍💻 Join the BFW Listener Community LISTEN 🎧 🍎 Apple Podcasts  💚 Spotify  🎶 Amazon Music 🛜 Pandora CONNECT 🦋 Liz on Bluesky 👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn 🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS 💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts 💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The British North American colonies formed some of the most democratic governments in the world. But that doesn't mean that all early Americans were treated equally or allowed to participate in representative government. So who could vote in Early America? Who could participate in representative government? Historians James Kloppenberg, the Charles Warren Professor of History at Harvard University, and Amy Watson, an Assistant Professor of History at the University of Alabama, Birmingham, help us explore who democracy was meant for and how those who lived in colonial British America understood and practiced representative government.  Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/284 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 038: Carolyn Harris, Magna Carta 🎧 Episode 143: Michael Klarman, The Making of the United States Constitution 🎧 Episode 243: Joseph Adelman, Revolutionary Print Networks 🎧 Episode 250: Virginia, 1619 🎧 Episode 255: Martha Jones, Birthright Citizens   REQUEST A TOPIC 📨 Topic Request Form 📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter  👩‍💻 Join the BFW Listener Community LISTEN 🎧 🍎 Apple Podcasts  💚 Spotify  🎶 Amazon Music 🛜 Pandora CONNECT 🦋 Liz on Bluesky 👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn 🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS 💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts 💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices