History, Natural History & the Arts
What was it like to keep a pet in Early America? How did early Americans acquire pets? What kinds of animals did early Americans keep as pets?
In this episode of the Ben Franklin’s World podcast, Ingrid Tague, a Professor of History at the University of Denver and the author of Animal Companions: Pets and Social Change in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Penn State University Press, 2017), joins us to answer questions about pets and pet keeping in Early America.
What do we know about how and why England came to establish its first permanent colony at Jamestown? And what do we know about the English colony that came before it, the Colony of Roanoke?
In this episode of Ben Franklin’s World: A Podcast About Early American History, Alan Gallay, Lyndon B. Johnson chair of United States History at Texas Christian University and author of Walter Ralegh: Architect of Empire (Basic Books, 2019), leads us on exploration of the life and work of Sir Walter Ralegh (also spelled Walter Raleigh), the man who crafted the blueprint for England’s colonization plans in the Americas.
How did Americans learn to establish philanthropic institutions?
In this episode of the Ben Franklin’s World: A Podcast About Early American History, Victoria Johnson, an Associate Professor of Urban Policy and Planning at Hunter College in New York City and author of American Eden: David Hosack, Botany, and Medicine in the Garden of the Early Republic (Liveright, 2018), leads us on an investigation of the life of Dr. David Hosack and the many organizations he founded, including the Elgin Botanical Garden.
[Read more…] about 19th Century Botany, Medicine, and Philanthropy (Podcast)
What do you know about the Eleventh Amendment to the United States Constitution?
In this episode of the Ben Franklin’s World podcast, Caitlin Galante-DeAngelis Hopkins, a Lecturer in the History Department at Harvard University and a former research associate for the Harvard and Slavery Project, joins us to explore the origins of the Eleventh Amendment and why the United States added it to its Constitution. [Read more…] about Origins of the Eleventh Amendment (Podcast)
Do you have what it takes to be a pioneer?
If offered the opportunity, would you undertake a journey across the Oregon Trail in a mule-pulled covered wagon?
Today, we explore the Oregon Trail past and present with Rinker Buck, author of The Oregon Trail: A New American Journey (Simon & Schuster, 2015). [Read more…] about The Oregon Trail (Podcast)
The American Revolution inspired revolutions in France, the Caribbean, and in Latin and South America between the late 18th and mid-19th centuries.
Naturally, Spanish and Portuguese American revolutionaries turned to the United States for assistance with their fights. How did Americans in the United States respond to these calls for assistance? What did they make of these other “American Revolutions?” [Read more…] about The Age of American Revolutions (Podcast)
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 people and all of the goods you would expect to find in early Boston, New York City, Philadelphia, or Charleston. [Read more…] about A History of Early Detroit (Podcast)
When did the fighting of the American War for Independence end?
In school we learn that the war came to an end at the Battle of Yorktown. But, this lesson omits all of the fighting that took place after Charles, Earl Cornwallis’ surrender in October 1781.
[Read more…] about Fighting After Yorktown: The End of Revolutionary War
Neither colonial North America nor the United States developed apart from the rest of the world. Since their founding, both the colonies and the United States have participated in the politics, economics, and cultures of the Atlantic World.
And every so often, the politics, economics, and cultures of lands in the Pacific and Indian Oceans intersected with and influenced those of the Atlantic World. That’s why in this episode, we’re going to explore the origins of the English trade with India and how that trade connected and intersected with the English North American colonies.
[Read more…] about India and the Making of Britain & America
Colonial America comprised many different cultural and political worlds. Most colonial Americans inhabited just one world, but today, we’re going to explore the life of a woman who lived in three colonial American worlds: Frontier New England, Northeastern Wabanaki, and Catholic New France.
[Read more…] about One Woman, Three Colonial American Worlds