Ben Franklin's World

Just how personal was the American Revolution? What could the event and war mean for individual people and families? Daniel Mark Epstein, author of The Loyal Son: The War in Ben Franklin’s House, guides as as we explore what the Revolution meant for Benjamin Franklin and his family and how the Revolution caused a major rift between Franklin and his beloved son, William. Show Notes: https://www.ben...

It’s February 2018 and doctors have declared this year’s seasonal flu epidemic as one of the worst to hit the United States in over a decade. Yet this flu epidemic is nothing compared to the yellow fever epidemics that struck the early American republic during the 1790s and early 1800s. So what happened when epidemic diseases took hold in early America? How did early Americans deal with disease an...

The histories of early North America and the Caribbean are intimately intertwined. The same European empires we encounter in our study of early America also appear in the Caribbean. The colonies of these respective empires often traded goods, people, and ideas between each other. Marisa Fuentes, an associate professor of history and women and gender studies at Rutgers University and author of Disp...

Intelligence gathering plays an important role in the foreign policies of many modern-day nation states, including the United States. Which raises the questions: How and when did the United States establish its foreign intelligence service?
 To answer those questions we’ll need to journey back to the American Revolution. Our guide is Kenneth Daigler, an intelligence professional with 33 years expe...

History books like to tell us that Native Americans did not fully understand British methods and ideas of trade. Is this really true? Did Native Americans only understand trade as a form of simplistic, gift exchange? Jessica Stern, a Professor of History at California State University, Fullerton and the author of The Lives in Objects: Native Americans, British Colonists, and Cultures of Labor and...

New England was a place with no cash crops. It was a place where many of its earliest settlers came to live just so they could worship their Puritan faith freely. New England was also a place that became known for its strong anti-slavery sentiment during the 19th century. So how did New England also become a place that practiced slavery? Wendy Warren, an Assistant Professor of History at Princeton...

We remember Benjamin Franklin as an accomplished printer, scientist, and statesman. Someone who came from humble beginnings and made his own way in the world. Rarely do we remember Franklin as a man of faith. Benjamin Franklin spent more time grappling with questions of religion, faith, virtue, and morality in his writing than about any other topic. Thomas S. Kidd, a Professor of History at Baylor...

When we study the history of colonial North America, we tend to focus on European colonists and their rivalries with each other and with Native Americans. But humans weren’t the only living beings occupying North America during the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries. Rivalries existed between humans and animals too. And these human-animal rivalries impacted and shaped how European colonists used and s...

The French established New Orleans and the greater colony of Louisiana in 1717. By 1840, New Orleans had become the 3rd largest city in the United States. How did that happen? How did New Orleans transform from a sleepy, minor French outpost into a large and important early American city with a thriving, bustling port? Eberhard “Lo” Faber, an assistant professor of history at Loyola University, Ne...

The Declaration of Independence described “all men” as “created equal” when its authors knew they were not. So was the revolutionary idea of freedom dependent on slavery? In this last episode of the Doing History: To the Revolution series we return to the place our series began: the world of Paul Revere. We speak with Christopher Cameron, an associate professor of history at the University of Nort...

Between 1763 and 1848, 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 influen...

The American Revolution took place within a larger period known today as the “Age of Revolutions.” What does the Revolution look like when we place it within this larger context? Did it really help foment the many other failed and successful revolutions that took place during the period? Over the next two episodes of the Doing History: To the Revolution series, we’ll explore answers to these quest...

When we think about North America during the American Revolution, most of our brains show us images of eastern Canada and the thirteen British American colonies that waged a revolution and war for independence against Great Britain. But what about the rest of the North American continent? What about the areas that we know today as the midwest, the Great Plains, the southwest, the west, and the Pac...

What did British imperial officials in London and their North America-based representatives make of the American Revolution? In this episode, we explore the American Revolution through the eyes of John Murray, 4th Earl of Dunmore, a British imperial official who served the empire in North America before, during, and after the American Revolution. James Corbett David, author of Dunmore’s New World:...

At the end of the French and Indian, or Seven Years’ War in 1763, Great Britain claimed that smuggling was a BIG problem in its North American colonies and cracked down on the practice. But just how BIG of a problem was smuggling in North America? Why did British North Americans choose to engage in the illegal importation of goods like tea? Was it really all about cheaper prices? Fabrício Prado, C...

How did early Americans go from hosting social tea parties to hosting protests like the Boston Tea Party? Tea played a central role in the economic, cultural, and political lives of early Americans. As such, tea came to serve as a powerful symbol of both early American culture and of the American Revolution. In this episode of the Doing History: To the Revolution series, Jane Merritt, Jennifer And...

How much merit do the economic factors behind the cry “No Taxation Without Representation” have when we consider the origins of the American Revolution? In this episode of the Doing History: To the Revolution series we begin a 3-episode exploration of different aspects of the early American economy and what roles these economic aspects played in causing the American Revolution. Serena Zabin, a Pro...

Between 1775 and 1783, an estimated 230,000 men served in the Continental Army with another approximately 145,000 men serving in state militia units. Who were the men who served in these military ranks? What motivated them to take up arms and join the army? And what was their military experience like? In this episode of the Doing History: To the Revolution series, we explore the development of the...

Between 1775 and 1783, an estimated 230,000 men served in the Continental Army with another approximately 145,000 men serving in state militia units. But who were the men who served in these military ranks? What motivated them to take up arms and join the army? And what was their military experience like? In this episode of the Doing History: To the Revolution series we begin a 2-episode explorati...

How did Americans find out about the Revolution? What effect did printed materials like newspapers, pamphlets, and books have on shaping the debate about independence? And just how big of a role did Thomas Paine’s Common Sense play in causing Americans to declare their independence from Great Britain? In this episode of the Doing History: To the Revolution! series, we explore these question with f...

How much can the work of one historian impact how we view and study the American Revolution? We investigate the answer to this question by exploring the life and work of Pauline Maier, a historian who spent her life researching and investigating the American Revolution. Over the course of her lifetime, Maier wrote four important books about the American Revolution: From Resistance to Revolution, T...

Declaring independence from Great Britain required the formation of new governments. But why did Americans want and need new governments? And how did their interactions and experiences with their old, colonial governments inform their decisions to create new governments? Barbara Clark Smith, a curator in the division of political history at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History and...

How did the American revolutionaries organize and coordinate local, provincial, and intercolonial action? How did the revolutionaries form governments? In this episode of the Doing History: To the Revolution series we explore governance and governments of the American Revolution with three scholars: Mark Boonshoft, Benjamin Irvin, and Jane Calvert. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/153...

What caused the American Revolution? Was it the issue of ‘No Taxation without Representation?’ Was it conflict and change in the social order of colonial and British society? Or, was the Revolution about differences in ideas about governance and the roles government should play in society? In this episode of the Doing History: To the Revolution series, we explore one set of ideas about the origins...

What do we mean by the American Revolution? How do we define it? Was it a war? Was it a movement? Was it a series of movements? The Doing History: To the Revolution! Series seeks to explore not just the history of the American Revolution, but the histories of the American Revolution. In this episode, we undertake the difficult task of trying to define the American Revolution by going behind-the-sc...