The United States has a complicated history when it comes to ideas of empire and imperialism. Since it’s earliest days, the United States has wanted the power that came with being an empire even while declaring its distaste for them.

Therefore, it should not be surprising that the man who drafted the Declaration of Independence, which severed the 13 American colonies’ ties to the most powerful empire in the mid-to-late 18th-century world, also had strong views about empire: Thomas Jefferson wanted the United States to become a great and vast “Empire of Liberty.”

Frank Cogliano, a Professor of American History at the University of Edinburgh and author of Emperor of Liberty: Thomas Jefferson’s Foreign Policy, joins us to explore how Thomas Jefferson came to be a supporter and promoter of empires.

 

Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/131

 

Sponsor Links

• Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture
• William and Mary Quarterly, the leading journal of early American history since 1943
• Episode 105: Joshua Piker, How Historians Publish History (Behind-the-Scenes of the William and Mary Quarterly)

 

Complementary Episodes

• Episode 042: Heather Richardson, The History of the Republican Party
• Episode 052: Ronald A. Johnson, Early United States-Haitian Diplomacy
• Episode 090: Caitlin Fitz: Age of American Revolutions
• Episode 117: Annette Gordon-Reed: The Life & Ideas of Thomas Jefferson
• Episode 124: James Alexander Dun, Making the Haitian Revolution in Early America

 

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