Ben Franklin's World: A Podcast About Early American History

2020 commemorated the 300th anniversary of French presence on Prince Edward Island. Like much of North America, the Canadian Maritime provinces of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Cape Breton Island, and Prince Edward Island were highly contested regions. In fact, the way France and Great Britain fought for presence and control of this region places the Canadian Maritimes among the most contested regions in eighteenth-century North America. Anne Marie Lane Jonah, a historian with the Parks Canada Agency, joins us to explore the history of Prince Edward Island and why Great Britain and France fought over the Canadian Maritime region. This episode originally posted as Episode 283.  Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/365 Sponsor Links Colonial Williamsburg Foundation Complementary Episodes Episode 064: Brett Rushforth, Native American Slavery in New France Episode 104: Andrew Lipman, Europeans & Native Americans on the Northeastern Coast Episode 108: Ann Little, The Many Captivities of Esther

The Mississippi Gulf Coast was the home of many different peoples, cultures, and empires during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. According to some historians, the Gulf Coast region may have been the most diverse region in early North America.
 Matthew Powell, a historian of slavery and southern history and the Executive Director of the La Pointe-Krebs House & Museum in Pascagoula, Mississippi, joins us to investigate and explore the Mississippi Gulf Coast and a prominent family who has lived there since about 1718. This episode originally posted as Episode 303. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/364 Sponsor Links Colonial Williamsburg Foundation Colonial Williamsburg Email Lists Complementary Episodes Episode 037: Kathleen DuVal, Independence Lost Episode 167: Eberhard Faber, The Early History of New Orleans Episode 283: Anne Marie Lane Jonah, Acadie 300  Episode 295: Ibrahima Seck, Whitney Plantation Museum Episode 298: Lindsey Shackenback Regele, Manufacturing Advantage List

About 620 miles north of New Orleans and 62 miles south of St. Louis, sits the town of Ste. Geneviéve, Missouri. Established in 1750 by the French, Ste. Geneviéve reveals much about what it was like to establish a colony in the heartland of North America and what it was like for colonists to live so far removed from seats of imperial power. Claire Casey, a National Park Service interpretative ranger at the Ste. Geneviéve National Historical Park, joins us to explore the early American history of Ste. Geneviéve. This episode is originally posted as Episode 318.  Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/363 Sponsor Links Colonial Williamsburg Foundation Brooding Over Bloody Revenge save 20 percent with promo code bloody20 Complementary Episodes   Episode 102: William Nester, George Rogers Clark and the Fight for the Illinois Country Episode 108: Ann Little, The Many Captivities of Esther Wheelwright Episode 120: Marcia Zug, Mail Order Brides in Early America Episode 139: Andrés Reséndez, The Other

The Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian has an exhibit called Nation to Nation: Treaties Between the United States & American Indian Nations. This exhibit allows you to see treaties the United States has made with American Indian nations and learn more about those treaties and their outcomes. David W. Penney is the Associate Director of Museum Scholarship, Exhibitions, and Public Engagement at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian. He’s also an internationally recognized scholar and curator who has a lot of expertise in Native American art history, and he was involved in creating the Nation to Nation exhibit. He joins us to guide us through this exhibit and some of the treaties the United States has made with Indigenous nations. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/362 Sponsor Links Colonial Williamsburg Foundation Colonial Williamsburg Email Lists Complementary Episodes Episode 163: The American Revolution in North America Episode 223: Susan Sleeper-Smi

July 4, 2023 marks the 247th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence and the birth of the United States. In three short years, we will be marking the 250th anniversary of these events. How are historians thinking about the American Revolution for 2026? What are they discussing when it comes to the 250th anniversary of the United States’ founding?  Lindsay M. Chervinsky, Ronald Angelo Johnson, and Kariann Akemi Yokota join us to answer these questions. All three guests are historians of the American Revolutionary Era who research the American Revolution from different perspectives. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/361 Join Ben Franklin's World! Subscribe and help us bring history right to your ears! Sponsor Links Colonial Williamsburg Foundation Complementary Episodes Episode 052: Ronald A. Johnson, Early United States-Haitian Diplomacy Episode 245: Celebrating the Fourth Episode 277: Whose Fourth of July? Episode 279: Lindsay M Chervinsky, The Cabinet: Creation of an American Ins

Juneteenth is a holiday that celebrates and commemorates the end of slavery in the United States. We choose to reflect on the end of slavery in the United States on June 19, because, on June 19, 1865, United States General Gordon Granger issued his General Order No. 3 in Galveston, Texas, informing Texans that all slaves are free. Juneteenth may feel like it is a mid-19th-century moment, but the end of slavery didn’t just occur on one day or at one time. And it didn’t just occur in the mid-19th century. The fight to end slavery was a long process that started during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.  Kyera Singleton, the Executive Director of the Royall House and Slave Quarters in Medford, Massachusetts, has spent years researching the lives of the enslaved people who lived and worked on the Royall Plantation and the significant contributions they made to ending slavery in Massachusetts. Kyera joins us to investigate the story of slavery and freedom within the first state in the United States to legal

“People are complicated” is a truism that holds in the past and the present. Seldom do we find a person where all of their actions and thoughts are black and white. What we see instead is that people are colorful because they aren’t just one thing and they don’t think and act in one way. Human identities are one area where we find a lot of colorfulness and complexity. Most humans have multiple Identities based in geography, nationality, religious affiliation, race and ethnicity, and also gender. Jen Manion, a Professor of History and of Sexuality and Women’s and Gender Studies at Amherst College and author of the book, Female Husbands: A Trans History, joins us to investigate the early American world of female husbands, people who were assigned female at birth and then transed-gender at some point in their lives to live as men. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/359 Join Ben Franklin's World! Subscribe and help us bring history right to your ears! Sponsor Links Colonial Williamsburg Foundati

For much of the colonial period, Spain claimed almost all of North America as Spanish territory. It displayed this claim on maps and in the administrative units it created to govern this vast territory: New Spain and La Florida. Charles Tingley is a Senior Research Librarian at the St. Augustine Historical Society in St. Augustine, Florida, and an expert in the history of St. Augustine. He joins us to explore the early American history of La Florida through the lens of one of its capitals: the City of St. Augustine. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/358 Join Ben Franklin's World! Subscribe and help us bring history right to your ears! Sponsor Links Colonial Williamsburg Foundation Juneteenth at Colonial Williamsburg Complementary Episodes Episode 082: Alejandra Dubcovsky, Information & Communication in the Early American South Episode 167: Eberhard Faber, The Early History of New Orleans Episode 178: Karoline Cook, Muslims & Moriscos in Colonial Spanish America Episode 241: Molly

How did the Continental Congress approach creating military forces that could go toe-to-toe with the British military during the American War for Independence? Eric Jay Dolin joins us to answer part of that question by looking at the creation of the United States’ privateer fleet. Dolin is the author of fifteen books about the maritime history of early America, including Rebels at Sea: Privateering in the American Revolution. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/357 Join Ben Franklin's World! Subscribe and help us bring history right to your ears! Sponsor Links Colonial Williamsburg Foundation Juneteenth at Colonial Williamsburg Complementary Episodes Episode 153: Committees and Congresses of the American Revolution Episode 161: Smuggling in the American Revolution Episode 208: Nathaniel Philbrick, Turning Points of the American Revolution Episode 288: Tyson Reeder, Smugglers & Patriots in the 18th-Century Atlantic World Episode 309: Philip Reid, Merchant Ships of the Eighteenth Century

In 1682, the first Assembly of Pennsylvania and the Delaware counties met in Chester, Pennsylvania, and adopted “the Great Law,” a humanitarian code that guaranteed the people of Pennsylvania liberty of conscience. “The Great Law” created an environment that not only welcomed William Penn’s fellow Quakers to Pennsylvania but also created space for the migration of other unestablished religions, such as the Lutherans, Schwenkfelders, and Moravians. Paul Peucker, an archivist and the Director of the Moravian Archives in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, joins us to investigate the establishment of the Moravian Church in North America. Paul is the author of many articles, essays, and books about the Moravians and their history, including Herrnhut: The Formation of a Moravian Community, 1722-1732. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/356 Join Ben Franklin's World! Subscribe and help us bring history right to your ears! Sponsor Links Colonial Williamsburg Foundation Eddie Arning: Artist Exhibition at the Ar

On April 10th, 1606, King James I granted the Virginia Company of London a charter. Just over a year later, on May 14, 1607, this privately-funded, joint-stock company established the first, permanent English colony in North America at Jamestown, in the colony of Virginia.  What work did the Virginia Company have to do to establish this colony? How much money did it have to raise, and from whom did it raise this money, to support its colonial venture? Misha Ewen, a Lecturer in early modern history at the University of Bristol and author of The Virginia Venture: American Colonization and English Society, 1580-1660, joins us to discuss the early history of the Virginia Company and its early investors. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/355 Join Ben Franklin's World! Subscribe and help us bring history right to your ears! Sponsor Links Colonial Williamsburg Foundation Complementary Episodes Episode 079: James Horn, What is a Historic Source? Episode 120: Marcia Zug, A History of Mail Order B

History tells us who we are and how we came to be who we are. It also allows us to look back and see how far we’ve come as people and societies. Of course, history also has the power to show us how little has changed over time. John Wood Sweet, a professor of history at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and author of the book, The Sewing Girl’s Tale: A Story of Crime and Consequences in Revolutionary America, winner of the 2023 Bancroft Prize in American History, joins us to investigate the first published rape trial in the United States and how one woman, Lanah Sawyer, bravely confronted the man who raped her by bringing him to court for his crime. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/354 Join Ben Franklin's World! Subscribe and help us bring history right to your ears! Sponsor Links Colonial Williamsburg Foundation Women’s History Month at Colonial Williamsburg Complementary Episodes Episode 020: Kyle Bulthuis, Four Steeples Over the City Streets Episode 069: Abby Chandler, L

How did Indigenous people adapt to and survive the onslaught of Indigenous warfare, European diseases, and population loss between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries?  How did past generations of Indigenous women ensure their culture would live on from one generation to the next so their people would endure? Brooke Bauer, an assistant professor of history at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville and author of the book Becoming Catawba: Catawba Women and Nation Building, 1540-1840, joins us to investigate these questions and what we might learn from the Catawba. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/353 Join Ben Franklin's World! Subscribe and help us bring history right to your ears! Sponsor Links Colonial Williamsburg Foundation Women’s History Month at Colonial Williamsburg Complementary Episodes Episode 082: Alejandra Dubcovsky, Information & Communication in the Early American South Episode 158: The Revolutionaries’ Army Episode 223: Susan Sleeper-Smith, A Native American Histor

People of African descent have made great contributions to the United States and its history. Think about all of the food, music, dance, medicine, farming and religious practices that people of African descent have contributed to American culture. Think about the sacrifices they’ve made to create and protect the United States as an independent nation. Matthew Skic, a Curator of Exhibitions at the Museum of the American Revolution in Philadelphia, joins us to investigate the life and deeds of the Forten Family. A family of African-descended people who worked in the revolutionary era and beyond to build a better world for their family, community, state, and nation. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/352 Join Ben Franklin's World! Subscribe and help us bring history right to your ears! Sponsor Links Colonial Williamsburg Foundation Complementary Episodes Episode 142: Manisha Sinha, A History of Abolition Episode 151: Defining the American Revolution Episode 157: The Revolution’s African Amer

African chattel slavery, the predominant type of slavery practiced in colonial North America and the early United States, did not represent one monolithic practice of slavery. Practices of slavery varied by region, labor systems, legal codes, and empire. Slavery also wasn’t just about enslavers enslaving people for their labor. Enslavers used enslaved people to make statements about their social status, as areas of economic investment that built generational wealth, and as a form of currency. Nicole Maskiell, an associate professor of History at the University of South Carolina and the author of Bound By Bondage: Slavery and the Creation of the Northern Gentry, joins us to investigate the practice of slavery in Dutch New Netherland and how the colony’s elite families built their wealth and power on the labor, skills, and bodies of enslaved Africans and African Americans. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/351 Join Ben Franklin's World! Subscribe and help us bring history right to your ears! S

Before the American Revolution became a war and a fight for independence, the Revolution was a movement and protest for more local control of government. So how did the American Revolution get started? Who worked to transform a series of protests into a revolution? This is a BIG question with no one answer. But one American who worked to transform protests into a coordinated revolutionary movement was a Boston politician named Samuel Adams. Stacy Schiff, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, joins us to explore and investigate the life, deeds, and contributions of Samuel Adams using details from her book, The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/350 Join Ben Franklin's World! Subscribe and help us bring history right to your ears! Sponsor Links Colonial Williamsburg Foundation Complementary Episodes Episode 130: Paul Revere’s Ride Through History Episode 145: Rosemarie Zagarri, Mercy Otis Warren and the American Revolution  Episode 152: Bernard Bailyn, The Ideologica

There are a lot of books about Benjamin Franklin. They tell us about his youth and accomplishments in business, politics, and diplomacy. They tell us about his serious interest in electricity and science, and about his philanthropic work. But only a handful of these books tell us about Benjamin Franklin as a man. What did Benjamin Franklin think about and experience when it came to his private, lived life? Nancy Rubin Stuart, an award-winning historian and journalist and author of Poor Richard’s Women: Deborah Read Franklin and the Other Women Behind the Founding Father, joins us to investigate the private life of Benjamin Franklin by using the women in his life as a window on to his experiences as a husband, father, and friend. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/349 Join Ben Franklin's World! Subscribe and help us bring history right to your ears! Sponsor Links Omohundro Institute Colonial Williamsburg Foundation The Ben Franklin's World Shop Complementary Episodes Episode 022: Vivian Br

On December 19, 1777, George Washington marched his Continental Army into its winter encampment at Valley Forge. In school we learned this was a hard, cold winter that saw the soldiers so ill-supplied they chewed on the leather of their shoes. But is this what really happened at Valley Forge? Were soldiers idle, wallowing in their misery? Ricardo Herrera, a historian of American military history and a visiting professor in the Department of National Security and Strategy at the U.S. Army War College, joins us to investigate the winter at Valley Forge with details form his book, Feeding Washington’s Army: Surviving the Valley Forge Winter of 1778. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/348 Join Ben Franklin's World! Subscribe and help us bring history right to your ears! Sponsor Links Omohundro Institute Colonial Williamsburg Foundation The Ben Franklin's World Shop Complementary Episodes Episode 158: The Revolutionaries’ Army Episode 189: Sam White, The Little Ice Age   Episode 194: Longfello

It’s impossible to overstate the importance of African and African American music to the United States’ musical traditions. Steven Lewis, a Curator of Music and Performing Arts at the Smithsonian, notes that “African American influences are so fundamental to American music there would be no American music without them.” Jon Beebe, a Jazz pianist, professional musician, and an interpretive ranger at the New Orleans Jazz National Historical Park, leads us on an exploration of how and why African rhythms and beats came to play important roles in the musical history and musical evolution of the Untied States. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/347 Join Ben Franklin's World! Subscribe and help us bring history right to your ears! Sponsor Links Omohundro Institute Colonial Williamsburg Foundation The Ben Franklin's World Shop Complementary Episodes Episode 167: Eberhard Faber, The Early History of New Orleans Episode 295: Ibrahima Seck, Whitney Plantation Museum Episode 308: Jessica Marie Johns

How did everyday Americans in the early United States use and enjoy music? How did they create and circulate new songs and musical lyrics? Our five-episode series about music in early America continues in this fourth episode about music and politics in the early United States. Billy Coleman, an Assistant Teaching Professor of History at the University of Missouri and author of the book Harnessing Harmony: Music, Power, and Politics in the United States, 1788-1865, joins us to investigate the role music played in early American politics. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/346 Join Ben Franklin's World! Subscribe and help us bring history right to your ears! Sponsor Links Omohundro Institute Colonial Williamsburg Foundation The Ben Franklin's World Shop Complementary Episodes Episode 207: Nick Bunker, Young Benjamin Franklin Episode 227: Kyle Courtney, Copyright & Fair Use in Early America Episode 243: Joseph Adelman, Revolutionary Print Networks Episode 343: Chad Hamill, Music and Song