History, Natural History & the Arts
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? [Read more…] about The Marquis de Lafayette (Podcast)
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.
In The Ledger and the Chain: How Domestic Slave Traders Shaped America (Basic Books, 2021), acclaimed historian Joshua D. Rothman recounts the shocking story of the domestic slave trade by tracing the lives and careers of Isaac Franklin, John Armfield, and Rice Ballard, who built the largest and most powerful slave-trading operation in American history.
Far from social outcasts, they were rich and widely respected businessmen, and their company sat at the center of capital flows connecting southern fields to northeastern banks. Bringing together entrepreneurial ambition and remorseless violence toward enslaved people, domestic slave traders produced an atrocity that forever transformed the nation. [Read more…] about How Domestic Slave Traders Shaped America
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?
In this episode of Ben Franklin’s World: A Podcast About Early American History Katherine Carté, author of Religion and the American Revolution: An Imperial History (Omohundro Institute & UNC Press, 2021), joins us to investigate the role of religion in the American Revolution.
To understand the early American history of North America, 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. [Read more…] about The Blackfeet: A History Podcast
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? [Read more…] about 18th Century Merchant Shipping in the Atlantic
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? [Read more…] about Slavery & Freedom in French Louisiana
The story of the founding of the United States is a familiar one. It usually (but not always) begins with 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? [Read more…] about Memory, History and the American Revolution
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 horses’s tail – a remnant of a grand equestrian statue of King George III, which stood in New York City’s Bowling Green park.
This episode of the Ben Franklin’s World podcast investigates 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. [Read more…] about The Horse’s Tail: Revolution & Memory in Early New York City
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, author of the award-winning book, Speaking with the Dead in Early America (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019), joins the Ben Franklin’s World podcast to investigate how white, American Protestants made their peace with death during the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries.
Juneteenth is a state holiday that commemorates June 19th, 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?
In this episode of the Ben Franklin’s World podcast, 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 (Liveright, 2021).