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
Between 1754 and 1763, North Americans participated in the French and Indian War; a world war Europeans call the Seven Years’ War.
As this world war raged, many South Carolinians, Virginians, Britons, and Cherokee people also fought a war for land, trade, and respect.
Today, we explore the Anglo-Cherokee War with Daniel Tortora, author of Carolina in Crisis: Cherokees, Colonists, and Slaves in the American Southeast.
Show Notes: http://www.benfranklinsworld.com/056
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Who was John Jay?
Jay played important and prominent roles during the founding of the United States and yet, his name isn’t one that many would list if asked to name founding fathers.
Today, we explore John Jay and his contributions to the founding of the United States with Robb Haberman, associate editor of The Selected Papers of John Jay documentary editing project.
Show Notes: http://www.benfranklinsworld.com/055
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The United States is a diverse nation of immigrants and their ancestors. With such diversity, and no one origination point for its people, how do we describe what the United States is and what its people stand for?
What is the underlying ideological current that links Americans together regardless of their ancestral or regional diversity?
We explore “American Exceptionalism” and the ideas it embodies with John D. Wilsey, author of American Exceptionalism and Civil Religion: Reassessing the History of an Idea.
Show Notes: http://www.benfranklinsworld.com/054
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Do you believe in the supernatural? In ghosts, zombies, or perhaps witches?
Today we celebrate All Hallows Eve with an exploration of the specters and witches that haunted 17th-century Massachusetts.
Our guide for this exploration is Emerson W. Baker, author of A Storm of Witchcraft: The Salem Trials and the American Experience.
Show Notes: http://www.benfranklinsworld.com/053
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Much like the United States, the colonists of Saint Domingue (present-day Haiti) sought their independence from France by fighting a war and waging a revolution. However, unlike the Americans, the San Dominguans who fought the war and waged the revolution were predominantly African and Caribbean-born slaves.
We explore the Haitian Revolution and the quest of both the United States and Saint Domingue to establish diplomatic and trade relations with each other. Our guide for this exploration is Ronald A. Johnson, a history professor at Texas State University and author of Diplomacy in Black and White: John Adams, Toussaint L’Ouverture, and Their Atlantic World Alliance.
Show Notes: http://www.benfranklinsworld.com/052
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Located 600 miles inland from Philadelphia and over 700 miles from Québec City, early Detroit could have been a backwater, a frontier post that Europeans established to protect colonial settlements from Native American attacks.
Yet Detroit emerged as a cosmopolitan entrepôt filled with many different peoples and all of the goods you would expect to find in early Boston, New York City, Philadelphia, or Charleston.
Today, we explore the early history of Detroit with Catherine Cangany, an associate professor of history at the University of Notre Dame and author of Frontier Seaport: Detroit’s Transformation into an Atlantic Entrepôt.
Show Notes: http://www.benfranklinsworld.com/051
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How did every day men and women experience life in colonial America?
How did the American Revolution transform their work and personal lives?
Today, we explore the answers to those questions by investigating the life of Betsy Ross with Marla Miller, professor of history at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst and author of Betsy Ross and the Making of America.
Show Notes: http://www.benfranklinsworld.com/050
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Why did England want to establish colonies in North America and how did Englishmen go about establishing them?
We explore the early days of English settlement in North America with Malcolm Gaskill, Professor of History at the University of East Anglia and author of Between Two Worlds: How the English Became American.
Show Notes: http://www.benfranklinsworld.com/049
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*Books purchased through this link will help support the production of Ben Franklin's World.
*Books purchased through this link will help support the production of Ben Franklin's World.
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When we think about the War for American Independence many of us conjure images of Washington crossing the Delaware, Cornwallis’ surrender at Yorktown, or perhaps the freezing winters at Valley Forge or Jockey Hollow.
What we don’t tend to think about are enemy prisoners of war, the British and German soldiers the patriot militia and Continental Army units captured during and after battles.
Today, we explore the day-to-day experiences of British and German POWs during the War for Independence with Ken Miller, Associate Professor of History at Washington College and author of Dangerous Guests: Enemy Captives and Revolutionary Communities during the War for Independence.
Show Notes: http://www.benfranklinsworld.com/048
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*Books purchased through this link will help support the production of Ben Franklin's World.
*Books purchased through this link will help support the production of Ben Franklin's World.
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Where did the United States fit within the world between 1810 and 1847?
After the United States secured its independence from Great Britain, many Americans looked at the world and wondered about their place within it.
What role would early Americans play in shaping the world around them?
Today, we explore early American conceptions of the world with Emily Conroy-Krutz, an Assistant Professor of History at Michigan State University and author of Christian Imperialism: Converting the World in the Early American Republic.
Show Notes: http://www.benfranklinsworld.com/047
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