Revolutions in Retrospect

We know the stories of the Founding Fathers and the drafting of the Declaration of Independence — but what about the people who learned about it days, weeks, or even months later across the colonies and around the world? Tracing the Declaration's journey—from broadsides and public readings to censored London printings—reveals how diverse audiences such as printers, Anglican ministers, Indigenous n...

Sir James Wright very much had Georgia on his mind. The colony's last royal governor envisioned a bright future for one of British America's youngest provinces, but events soon outran his imagination.  Although Georgians were slower to embrace revolution in the 1770s than fellow subjects were in Virginia or Massachusetts Bay, a delay due in no small measure to Governor Wright's power and influence...

In 1861, the United States fractured into civil war—but the young republic had come dangerously close to a similar breaking point decades earlier. In 1798, under President John Adams, the controversial Alien and Sedition Acts inflamed partisan tensions, prompting the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions, which nearly tore the new nation apart. Amid this crisis, George Washington turned to an unlikely...

The American Revolution is often celebrated as a glorious cause, as the period when 13 colonies defied an oppressive empire, declared independence, and created a new nation. In many retellings, the revolution is a local tale of aggrieved colonists who became disenchanted with the greedy Parliament and felt betrayed by their tyrannical king. But what about the rest of that empire? Of the colonies i...

Five women—two wives, two enslaved women, and one indentured servant—were bound by their connection to the powerful Barbados politician John Peers. Between them, Hester, Susannah, Elizabeth, Dorothy, and Frances bore at least twenty children, many conceived through coercion and violence. Yet even in a world that denied them autonomy over their own bodies, these women carved out remarkable lives fo...

In the 1760s, the Atlantic world teetered on the edge of Revolution. In the years after the Seven Years' War, a global conflict that transformed Europe, West Africa, and the Americas in ways that many intended and many did not, the very fabric of that world began to unravel. First the American, then the French, followed by the Haitian, and then rebellions in South America frayed, twisted, and in s...

If you go to a tavern today, you are most likely looking for a meal and perhaps an alcoholic beverage. However, taverns functioned more broadly between the 1780s and the 1850s. Following the Revolutionary War in the new United States, taverns were legally mandated to offer lodging along with spirits. These establishments were vital hubs of travel, commerce, politics, and sociability. From stagecoa...

In 1796, workmen discovered ghosts in the Tower of London. As they stripped away wooden paneling from the walls, they found messages from the past carved deep into stone that lay below. Poems, elaborate coats of arms, simple initials, and Christian symbols all paid tribute to the final days of just some of the many people who met their end within the castle's walls. The forgotten graffiti in the T...

Death was a constant presence in early America, but grief extended far beyond the loss of loved ones. Everyday hardships—such as chronic illness, property dispossession, reproductive trauma, and bodily injury—made loss a near-constant companion. Together, these experiences of suffering produced a dense and often overlooked emotional landscape, one that shaped individual lives and the social worlds...

On January 1, 1804, Jean Jacque Dessalines and his followers announced to their countrymen and to the rest of the world that their home was no longer the French colony of San Domingue. It was now the nation of Haiti. After years of revolutionary civil war, the abolition of slavery and fears of slavery's return, Dessalines asked the citizens of Haiti "to let us swear to fight to our last breath and...

The American Revolution ushered in a bold new system of government—one that depended on an informed and educated citizenry. Once the privilege of the elite, literacy and learning suddenly became essential for ordinary Americans. But who would build the institutions to educate the public, and what should they teach? Who had the authority to produce new knowledge, and how could its accuracy be trust...

In the seventeenth-century Scottish town of Ayr, Scots swore a sacred oath to defend the Presbyterian Church of Scotland against the meddling of King Charles I. These Scots pledged to lead godly lives and submit themselves to judgment when Satan's temptations overwhelmed them. But in the years that followed, the return of the plague, the killing of a king, the outbreak of civil war, the occupation...

The American colonies declared their independence in 1776 with the famous line that "All men are created equal." But the reality of the Revolution told a different story. Women remained subordinate to men, limited by laws, social customs, and finance rules that restricted their rights and autonomy. But that is only part of the story. In this episode, Dr. Lynn Price Robbins talks with Jacqueline Be...

For centuries, Black mariners plied the waters of the Atlantic world. From the decks of ships that traversed vast distances between Brazil, Portugal, West Africa, and beyond, through dangerous swells and past enemy fleets, enslaved seamen connected continents as they labored for the Portuguese Empire in the Age of Revolutions. Despite their enslavement, they made a world that was their own. In thi...

Alexander Hamilton was just 25 when he was elected to the Continental Congress. Abigail Adams was 31 when she urged her husband John to "Remember the Ladies." Thomas Jefferson was only 32 when he drafted the Declaration of Independence. Today, we tend to picture all of them as older, grey-haired figures rather than ambitious and youthful. But as America aged, so did its leaders. In this episode, D...

In 1824, nearly 50 years after he first set foot on American shores, the Marquis de Lafayette returned to the United States of America. He longed to see the progress of the nation he helped to found, a nation whose work he knew remained unfinished. And so, in the summer of 1824, Lafayette returned to his adopted home one last time, before he bid his last adieu. In this episode, Dr. Jim Ambuske tal...