History, Natural History & the Arts
What was everyday life like for those who lived in early America? \
To get at 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. [Read more…] about Craft in Early America
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 of Ben Franklin’s World: A Podcast About Early American History 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. [Read more…] about World of the Wampanoag: 1620 and Beyond
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 of the Ben Franklin’s World podcast, 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 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.
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?
In this episode of Ben Franklin’s World: A Podcast about Early American History, Tyson Reeder, an editor of the Papers of James Madison and author of Smugglers, Pirates, and Patriots: Free Trade in the Age of Revolution (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019), helps 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.
[Read more…] about Smugglers & Patriots in the 18th-Century Atlantic World
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 the Ben Franklin’s World 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.
[Read more…] about Elections in Early America: The Electoral College (Podcast)
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?
[Read more…] about Elections in Early America: Native Sovereignty
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?
[Read more…] about Elections in Early America: Elections & Voting in the Early Republic
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?
[Read more…] about Elections in Early America: Democracy & Voting in British North America
2020 commemorates the 300th anniversary of French presence on Prince Edward Island, just north of Nova Scotia. 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.
[Read more…] about 300 Years of French Settlement on Prince Edward Island