In her new book Revolutionary Things: Material Culture & Politics in the Late Eighteenth- Century Atlantic World (Yale University Press, 2023), Ashli White of the University of Miami, explores the circulation of material culture during the America, French, and Haitian revolutions.
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French Revolution
Restless Roamer: James Smithson’s Final Journey
A descendant of Dutch settlers, Jacob Aaron Westervelt began his career in 1814 as an apprentice in Christian Bergh’s shipyard at the point of land on the East River known as Corlears Hook. He left his employer in 1835 to start his own operation along the river. Over a period of three decades, the yard produced 234 vessels.
One of Jacob’s first commissions in 1836 was to build the packet boat Mediator for John Griswold’s Black X Line. Founded in 1823, its ships ran between New York and London displaying a house flag with a black X on a red background. [Read more…] about Restless Roamer: James Smithson’s Final Journey
The Marquis de Lafayette (Historians Podcast)
This week on The Historians Podcast, New York City correspondent Jim Kaplan looks at the life of French aristocrat and hero of the American Revolution, Marquis de Lafayette. [Read more…] about The Marquis de Lafayette (Historians Podcast)
The Marquis de Lafayette: A Short Biography
2024 will mark the 200th anniversary of the return of the Marquis de Lafayette (Marie-Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de La Fayette) to America. In 1824, almost 50 years after the start of the American Revolution, the 68-year-old Lafayette was invited by President James Monroe, an old Revolutionary War comrade and lifelong friend, to tour the United States.
Lafayette’s visit was one the major events of the early 19th century. It had the effect of unifying a country sometime fractured by electoral discord and reminding Americans of their hard won democracy. [Read more…] about The Marquis de Lafayette: A Short Biography
Art and The French Revolution
This week on The Historians Podcast, Susanne Dunlap discusses her book The Portraitist, a novel based on the life of 18th century French artist Adélaïde Labilleo-Guiard, a feminist whose life went on amid the changes and terror of Paris in the French Revolution. She must find a way to carve out a life and a career — and stay alive in the process. [Read more…] about Art and The French Revolution
Engineering Theatre: The Brunel Legacy in London & New York
For a long time Rotherhithe was London’s natural port, gaining its name from the Anglo-Saxon term for “landing-place for cattle.” There were shipyards in the area from Elizabethan times until the early twentieth century, and working docks until the 1970s. [Read more…] about Engineering Theatre: The Brunel Legacy in London & New York
The Alien & Sedition Act of 1798
In this episode of the Ben Franklin’s World podcast, Terri Halperin, an instructor at the University of Richmond and author of The Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798: Testing the Constitution (John Hopkins University Press, 2016), helps us explore the Alien and Sedition Acts and their origins. You can listen to the podcast here: www.benfranklinsworld.com/188
1763-1848: The Age of Revolutions
Between 1763 and 1848, an age of revolutions took place in North America, South America, the Caribbean, Africa, and Europe. But why is it that we only seem to remember the American Revolution, the French Revolution, and the Haitian Revolution?
Given that the American Revolution took place before all of these other revolutions, what was its role in influencing this larger “Age of Revolutions?” Did it influence this larger period?
Ben Franklin’s World: A Podcast About Early American History’s exploration of what the American Revolution looked like within the larger period known as the “Age of Revolutions” continues as Janet Polasky, a professor of history at the University of New Hampshire and the author of Revolutions Without Borders: The Call of Liberty in the Atlantic World (Yale University Press, 2015), guides us through the period to explore answers to these questions. [Read more…] about 1763-1848: The Age of Revolutions
Making Sense of the Haitian Revolution in Early America
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. [Read more…] about Making Sense of the Haitian Revolution in Early America