Ben Franklin&#039;s World

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 knew whether the United States would survive as an … [Read more...]

Episode 178, Karoline Cook, Muslims & Moriscos in Colonial Spanish America

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 , serves as our guide as we explore some of the political, cultural, and religious … [Read more...]

Episode 177, Martin Brückner, The Social Life of Maps in America

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, . Listen Now About the Show Ben Franklin’s … [Read more...]

Episode 176: Daina Ramey Berry, The Value of the Enslaved from Womb to Grave

What did it mean to be a person and to also be a commodity in early America? Daina Ramey Berry, an Associate Professor of History at the University of Texas, Austin and author of , takes us behind the scenes of her research so we can explore how early Americans valued and commodified enslaved men, women, and children. Listen Now About the Show Ben Franklin’s World is a podcast about early American history. It is a … [Read more...]

Episode 175: Daniel Mark Epstein, House Divided: The Revolution in Ben Franklin’s House

Just how personal was the American Revolution? What could the event and war mean for individual people and families? Daniel Mark Epstein, author of , guides us 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. Listen Now About the Show Ben Franklin’s World is a podcast about early American … [Read more...]

Episode 174: Thomas Apel, Yellow Fever in the Early American Republic

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 and illness? Thomas Apel, author of , has some … [Read more...]

Episode 173: Marisa Fuentes, Colonial Port Cities and Slavery

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 and the colonies in 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 , joins us to explore some of the connections … [Read more...]

Episode 172: Kenneth Daigler, Patriots, Spies, and Traitors: American Intelligence in the Revolutionary War

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 Kenneth Daigler, an intelligence professional with 33 years experience managing human sources and collection and … [Read more...]

Episode 171: Jessica Stern, Native Americans, British Colonists, and Trade in North America