Ben Franklin's World

When we think of Native Americans, many of us think of inland dwellers. People adept at navigating forests and rivers and the skilled hunters and horsemen who lived and hunted on the American Plains. But did you know that Native Americans were seafaring mariners too? Andrew Lipman, an Assistant Professor of History at Barnard College, Columbia University and author of The Saltwater Frontier: India...

When we think about early American slavery, our minds evoke images of plantations where enslaved men and women were forced to labor in agricultural fields and inside the homes of wealthy Americans. These images depict the practice of chattel slavery; a practice where early Americans treated slaves as property that they could buy, sell, trade, and use as they would real estate and draught animals....

We live in an age of information. The internet provides us with 24/7 access to all types of information—news, how-to articles, sports scores, entertainment news, and congressional votes. But what do we do with all of this knowledge? How do we sift through and interpret it all? We are not the first people to ponder these questions. Today, Alejandra Dubcovsky, an Associate Professor at University of...

In 1705 a group of colonists in Simsbury, Connecticut founded a copper mine, which the Connecticut General Assembly purchased and turned into a prison in 1773. How did an old copper mine function as a prison? Morgan Bengel, a Museum Assistant at the Old New-Gate Prison and Copper Mine, a Connecticut State Historic Site, helps us investigate both the history of early American mining and the history...

As part of its mission, the National Park Service seeks to protect and preserve places saved by the American people so that all may experience the heritage of the United States. These places include those with historical significance. Supervisory Park Ranger Garrett Cloer joins us to explore the Longfellow House-Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site so we can discover more about the Sie...

In 1959, the Omohundro Institute and University of North Carolina Press published Lester J. Cappon’s The Adams-Jefferson Letters: The Complete Correspondence between Thomas Jefferson and John and Abigail Adams. It was the first time that all 380 letters between Jefferson and the Adamses appeared in a single volume. Why did Lester Cappon and the Omohundro Institute undertake this great project? And...

John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. Two drafters and signers of the Declaration of Independence, two diplomats who served the United States abroad in Europe, and two men who went on to serve as vice president and president of the United States. Both men left indelible marks on American society. Adams and Jefferson are two founders who captivate the attention of and greatly interest Americans today, s...

The Jersey Devil is a monster legend that originated in New Jersey’s early American past. How and why did this legend emerge? And, what can it tell us about New Jersey’s past? Brian Regal, an Associate Professor of History at Kean University and the co-author of The Secret History of the Jersey Devil: How Quakers, Hucksters, and Benjamin Franklin Created A Monster, takes us into New Jersey’s past...

King Philip’s War is an event that appears over and over again in books about colonial America. So when you have an event that has been as studied as King Philip’s War has been, is there anything new that we can learn about it by re-examining it in our own time? Lisa Brooks, an Associate Professor of English and American Studies at Amherst College believes the answer to this question is “yes.” And...

As many as 70 percent of Americans consider themselves to be members of the middle class. But if you consider income as a qualifier for membership, only about 50 percent of Americans qualify for membership. So what does it meant to be middle class and why do so many Americans want to be members of it? Jennifer Goloboy, an independent scholar based in Minneapolis, Minnesota and the author of Charle...

We’re living in a period of climate change. Our Earth has been getting warmer since the mid-19th century. So how will humans adapt to and endure this period of global warming? Will they adapt to it and endure? It turns out the people of early America also lived through a period of climate change and their experiences may hold some answers for us. Sam White, an Associate Professor at The Ohio State...

The Alien and Sedition Acts consisted of four laws enacted by the United States government in 1798. The United States passed these laws during a time of great uncertainty, a time when many Americans feared for the very survival for their nation. But why did Americans fear for the United States’ existence and why did they think four laws that limited citizenship and freedom of speech would protect...

Our present-day American culture is obsessed with sports. To cite just two pieces of evidence of this, on average, more than 67,000 fans attend each National Football League game and more than 30,000 fans attend each Major League Baseball game. This is to say nothing of the millions of fans who watch these sports on television or listen to them on the radio. When did America become a place filled...

As a result of Great Britain’s victory in the Seven Years’ War, British North America expanded so that it stretched from the Atlantic seaboard west to the Mississippi River and from Hudson Bay and the Gulf of St. Lawrence south to Florida. Plus, it also included islands in the Caribbean. How exactly would Great Britain, centered on a small island over 3,000 miles away, govern this new, expanded No...

Who should determine our culture and the morals our society follows? Culture, or the intellectual achievements, attitudes, and behaviors of our particular places and social groups, is all around us. It impacts how we think and act as members of families, local communities, states, and nations. Culture is important. So how do we establish culture? Who sets the unwritten social rules and ideas that...

Early North America was a place rife with violent conflict. Between the 17th and 19th centuries we see a lot of conflict between different Native American peoples, Native American peoples and colonists, colonists from one empire versus colonists from another empire, settlers from one state quarreling with settlers from another state, and in the 19th century, we also see strife between Americans, C...

George Washington played three very important public roles during his lifetime. He served as the Commander in Chief of the Continental Army, the President of the Constitutional Convention, and as the first President of the United States. In addition to these important public roles, Washington also played a role that was very important to him. He served as a farmer and agricultural innovator. Dougl...

What was it like to live through an extraordinary time? The 1740s and 1750s proved to be an extraordinary time for many ordinary New Englanders. It was a period when itinerant preachers swept through the region and asked its people to question the fundamental assumptions of their religion: What did it mean to be a Puritan? What did it mean to be a Protestant Christian? Douglas Winiarski, a Profess...

Why did early Americans choose to become patriots or loyalists during the American Revolution? How did they make the decision to either stand with or against their neighbors? Did political beliefs really drive them to support one side of the imperial conflict over the other? In this episode, we explore answers to these questions about how and why Americans chose to support the sides they did durin...

The legacy of Alexander Hamilton tells us that he was Thomas Jefferson’s political rival, a man who fought to secure strong powers for the national government, and the first Secretary of the Treasury. What Hamilton’s legacy doesn’t tell us is that he also fought for states rights and championed civil liberties for all Americans, even those Americans who had supported the British during the America...

Douglas Winiarski answers your questions about religion in early New England with details from his book, Darkness Falls on the Land of Light: Experiencing Religious Awakenings in Eighteenth-Century New England. Darkness Falls on the Land of Light is the story of how ordinary New Englanders living through extraordinary times ended up giving birth to today’s evangelical movement. Doug performed a cl...

The Confederation period is one of the most neglected aspects of United States History. And yet, it’s a very important period. Between 1781 and 1789, the Confederation Congress established by the Articles of Confederation had to deal with war, economic depression, infighting between the states, trouble in the west, foreign meddling, and domestic insurrection. It’s a critical period where no one kn...

In 1535, Spanish holdings in the Americas proved so great that the Spanish government created the Viceroyalty of New Spain to govern all territory north of the Isthmus of Panama. The jurisdiction of New Spain included areas of upper and lower California and large areas of the American southwest and southeast, including Florida. Karoline Cook, author of Forbidden Passages: Muslims and Moriscos in C...

Did you know that maps have social lives? Maps facilitate a lot of different social and political relationships between people and nations. And they did a lot of this work for Americans throughout the early American past. Martin Brückner, a Professor of English at the University of Delaware, joins us to discuss early American maps and early American mapmaking with details from his book The Social...

What did it mean to be a person and to also be a commodity in early America? Daina Ramey Berry, author of The Price for Their Pound of Flesh: The Value of the Enslaved, from Womb to Grave, in the Building of a Nation, takes us behind the scenes of her research so we can explore how early Americans valued and commodified enslaved men, women, and children. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.c...