Stay ConnectedThis is a multiple award-winning podcast about early American history. It’s a show for people who love history and who want to know more about the historical people and events that have impacted and shaped our present-day world.
Each episode features conversations with professional historians who help shed light on important people and events in early American history.
Copyright: © Liz Covart 2024
What did the American Revolution mean and achieve? What sort of liberty and freedom did independence grant Americans and which Americans should receive them?
Americans grappled with these questions soon after the American Revolution. They debated these issues during the Constitutional Convention of 1787, in the first congresses, and as they followed events in revolutionary France and Haiti during the 1790s and early 1800s.
James Alexander Dun, an Assistant Professor of History at Princeton University and author of Dangerous Neighbors: Making the Haitian Revolution in Early America, joins us to explore the ways the Haitian Revolution shaped how Americans viewed their own revolution.
Show Notes: http://www.benfranklinsworld.com/124
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In December 1773, the Cape Cod Tea Crisis revealed that the people of “radical” Massachusetts were far from united in their support for the American Revolution. An observation that leads us to wonder: How many Americans supported the Patriot cause?
In this episode we speak with four scholars to explore the complexities of political allegiance during the American Revolution.
Show Notes: http://www.benfranklinsworld.com/123
About the Series
The mission of episodes in the Doing History: To the Revolution series is to ask not just “what is the history of the American Revolution?” but “what are the histories of the American Revolution?”
Episodes in this series will air beginning in Fall 2017.
The Doing History series is part of a partnership between Ben Franklin’s World and the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture.
Be sure to check out Doing History season 1: Doing History: How Historians Work.
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Did the Americans win the War for Independence? Or did the British simply lose the war?
The history of the American War for Independence is complicated. And history books tell many different versions of the event, which is why we need an expert to guide us through the intricacies of whether we should look at the war as an American victory, a British defeat, or in some other light.
Andrew O’Shaughnessy, author of The Men Who Lost America: British Leadership, the American Revolution, and the Fate of the Empire, joins us to explore British viewpoints of the American War for Independence.
Show Notes: http://www.benfranklinsworld.com/122
Georgian Papers Programme
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The Spanish, French, and English played large roles in the origins of colonial America. But so too did the Dutch. During the 17th century, they had a “moment" in which they influenced European colonization and development of the Atlantic World.
Wim Klooster, a Professor of History at Clark University and author of The Dutch Moment: War, Trade, and Settlement in the Seventeenth Century Atlantic World, guides us through Dutch contributions to the Atlantic World.
Show Notes: http://www.benfranklinsworld.com/121
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How do you build colonies without women?
Most of the colonial adventurers from England and France who set out for Jamestown, New France, and colonial Louisiana were men. But how do you build and sustain societies and spread European culture—in essence, fulfill the promises of a colonial program—without women?
You can’t. Which is why Marcia Zug, a Professor of Law at the University of South Carolina Law School and author of Buying a Bride: An Engaging History of Mail Order Matches, joins us to explore one of the solutions that England and France used to build their North American colonies: mail order bride programs.
Show Notes: http://www.benfranklinsworld.com/120
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On June 7, 1776, Richard Henry Lee of Virginia moved that the Second Continental Congress resolve “that these United Colonies are, and of right out to be, free and independent States…”
The Second Continental Congress adopted Lee’s motion and on June 11, 1776, it appointed a committee to draft a declaration of independence.
Today, Steve Pincus, the Bradford Durfee Professor of History at Yale University and author of The Heart of the Declaration: The Founders’ Case for an Activist Government, leads us on an investigation of the Declaration of Independence and the context in which the founders drafted it.
Show Notes: http://www.benfranklinsworld.com/119
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How did the smallest colony and smallest state in the union became the largest American participant in the slave trade?
Christy Clark-Pujara, an Assistant Professor in the Department of African-American Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and author of Dark Work: The Business of Slavery in Rhode Island, joins us to explore the history of Rhode Island and New England’s involvement with slavery.
Show Notes: http://www.benfranklinsworld.com/118
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Thomas Jefferson wrote about liberty and freedom and yet owned over six hundred slaves during his lifetime.
He’s a founder who many of us have a hard time understanding.
This why we need an expert to lead us through his life, so we can better understand who Jefferson was and how he came to his seemingly paradoxical ideas about slavery and freedom.
Annette Gordon-Reed, a professor of history and legal history at Harvard University and the winner of the National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize for her work on Thomas Jefferson and the Hemings Family, leads us on an exploration through the life and ideas of Thomas Jefferson.
Show Notes: http://www.benfranklinsworld.com/117
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When we think of the French and Indian, or Seven Years’ War, we often think of battles: The Monongahela, Ticonderoga, Québec. Yet, wars aren’t just about battles. They’re about people and governments too.
In this episode, we explore a very different aspect of the French and Indian or Seven Years’ War. We explore the war through the lens of disease and medicine and how disease prompted the British government to take steps to keep its soldiers healthy.
Our guide for this investigation is Erica Charters, an Associate Professor of the History of Medicine at the University of Oxford and author of Disease, War, and the Imperial State: The Welfare of British Armed Forces during the Seven Years’ War.
Show Notes: http://www.benfranklinsworld.com/048
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Episode 091: Gregory Dowd, Rumors, Legends, and Hoaxes in Early America
Episode 108: Ann Little, The Many Captivities of Esther Wheelwright
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Like many states in the south and west, Texas has an interesting early American past that begins with Native American settlement followed by Spanish colonization. It's also a state that was an independent nation before being admitted to the United States.
Today we explore Texas’ intriguing early American history with Andrew Torget, an Assistant Professor of History at the University of North Texas and author of Seeds of Empire: Cotton, Slavery, and the Transformation of the Texas Borderlands, 1800-1850.
Show Notes: http://www.benfranklinsworld.com/115
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