Ben Franklin's World

Did you know that small Native American nations had the power to dictate the terms of French colonization in the Gulf South region?

Elizabeth Ellis, an Assistant Professor of History at Princeton University and a citizen of the Peoria Tribe of Indians of Oklahoma, joins us on an exploration of the uncovered and recovered histories of the more than 40 distinct and small Native nations who called the Gulf South region home during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Ellis is the author of The Great Power of Small Nations: Indigenous Diplomacy in the Gulf South.

Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/342

Complementary Episodes

🎧 Episode 037: Kathleen DuVal, Independence Lost

🎧 Episode 064: Brett Rushforth, Native American Slavery in New France

🎧 Episode 082: Alejandra Dubcovsky, Information & Communication in the early American South

🎧 Episode 139: Andrés Reséndez, The Other Slavery

🎧 Episode 171: Jessica Stern, Native Americans, British Colonists, and Trade

🎧 Episode 233: Gwenn Miller, A History of Russian America

🎧 Episode 251: Cameron Strang, Frontiers of Science

🎧 Episode 303: Matthew Powell, La Pointe-Krebs House 

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Prepare for tricks, treats, and time travel! In honor of Halloween, we’re traveling back to the mid-seventeenth century to investigate a case of demonic possession and the practice of exorcism in New France.

Mairi Cowan, an Associate Professor of History at the University of Toronto, Mississauga, joins us to investigate the life of a young French woman named Barbe Hallay and her demonic possession. Cowan is the author of The Possession of Barbe Hallay: Diabolical Arts and Daily Life in Early Canada.

Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/341

Complementary Episodes

🎧 Episode 108: Ann Little, The Many Captivities of Esther Wheelright

🎧 Episode 197: Brett Rushforth, Native American Slavery in New France

🎧 Episode 278: Sarah Pearsall, Polygamy: An Early American History

🎧 Episode 283: Anne Marie Lane Jonah, Acadie 300

🎧 Episode 318: Ste. Geneviéve National Historical Park

🎧 Episode 334: Brandon Bayne, Missions and Mission Building in New Spain 

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The War of 1812 is an under-known conflict in United States history. It’s not a war that many Americans think about or dwell upon. And it was not a war that the United States can claim it clearly won.

Nicholas Guyatt, a Professor of North American History at the University of Cambridge, joins us to investigate the War of 1812 and the experiences of American prisoners of war using details from his book, The Hated Cage: An American Tragedy in Britain’s Most Terrifying Prison.

Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/340

Complementary Episodes

🎧 Episode 048: Kenneth Miller, Enemy Captives During the War for Independence 

🎧 Episode 051: Catherine Cangany, A History of Early Detroit

🎧 Episode 076: Nathan Perl-Rosenthal, Citizen Sailors

🎧 Episode 080: Jen Manion, Liberty’s Prisoners

🎧 Episode 096: Nicholas Guyatt, Origins of Racial Segregation in the United States

🎧 Episode 098: Gautham Rao, Birth of the American Tax Man

🎧 Episode 323: Michael Witgen, American Expansion and the Political Economy of Plunder 

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Between May 25 and September 17, 1787, delegates from each of the United States’ thirteen states assembled in Philadelphia for an event we now call the Constitutional Convention.

What do we know about the moment of the United States Constitution’s creation? What was happening around the Convention, and what issues were Americans discussing and debating as the Convention’s delegates met?

Mary Sarah Bilder, an award-winning historian and the Founders Professor of Law at Boston College Law School, joins us to investigate the context of the United States Constitution’s creation with details from her book, Female Genius: Eliza Harriot and George Washington at the Dawn of the Constitution.

Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/048

Complementary Episodes

🎧 Episode107: Mary Sarah Bilder, Madison’s Hand

🎧 Episode 137: Erica Armstrong Dunbar, Ona Judge, The Washington’s Runaway Slave

🎧 Episode 255: Martha S. Jones, Birthright Citizens

🎧 Episode 259: American Legal History & the Bill of Rights

🎧 Episode 276: Stephen Fried, Benjamin Rush

🎧 Episode 285: Elections & Voting in Early America

🎧 Episode 323: Michael Witgen, American Expansion and the Political Economy of Plunder 

🎧 Episode 332: Experiences of Revolution: Occupied Philadelphia 

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On September 17, 1787, thirty-nine delegates to the Constitutional Convention signed the United States Constitution and submitted it to the states for ratification.

In honor of Constitution Day, we join three historians from the Senate Historical Office to investigate Article 1 of the Constitution and its creation of the United States Senate.

Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/338

Complementary Episodes

🎧 Episode 040: Kathleen Bartoloni-Tuazon, For Fear of an Elective King

🎧 Episode 078: Rachel Shelden: Washington Brotherhood

🎧 Episode 107: Mary Sarah Bilder, Madison’s Hand

🎧 Episode 143: Michael Klarman, The Making of the United States Constitution

🎧 Episode 153: Committees and Congresses: Governments of the American Revolution

🎧 Episode 202: An Early History of the United States Congress

🎧 Episode 279: Lindsay Chervinsky, The Cabinet

🎧 Episode 285: Elections and Voting in the Early Republic

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What made trade with China so important to the new United States that one of Americans’ first acts after securing the United States’ independence was to establish a trade with China and other Southeast Asian countries?

Deal Norwood, an Assistant Professor of History at the University of Delaware, joins us to explore the lure of trade with China with details from his book, Trading Freedom: How Trade with China Defined Early America.

Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/337

Complementary Episodes

🎧 Episode 098: Gautham Rao, Birth of the American Tax Man

🎧 Episode 111: Jonathan Eacott, India in the Making of Britain & America

🎧 Episode 112: Mary Beth Norton, The Tea Crisis of 1773

🎧 Episode 160: The Politics of Tea

🎧 Episode 298: Lindsay Schakenbach Regele, Origins of American Manufacturing

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What did it take to stage a successful slave uprising?

Over the course of the early republic, we see a few violent slave uprisings in the United States. A particularly brutal rebellion took place in Louisiana in January 1811. Another violent rebellion took place in Southampton County, Virginia in August 1831. Neither of these rebellions led to the abolishment of slavery, but they did lead to the death of many enslaved people and their enslavers.

Vanessa Holden, an Associate Professor of History at the University of Kentucky and the author of the award-winning book Surviving Southampton, leads us through the events and circumstances of the 1831-Southampton Rebellion, a rebellion we tend to know today as Nat Turner’s Rebellion.

Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/336

Complementary Episodes

🎧 Episode 052: Ronald Johnson, Early United States-Haitian Diplomacy

🎧 Episode 124: James Alexander Dun, Making the Haitian Revolution

🎧 Episode 133: Patrick Breen, The Nat Turner Revolt

🎧 Episode 176: Daina Ramey Berry, The Value of the Enslaved

🎧 Episode 282: Vincent Brown, Tacky’s Revolt

🎧 Episode 295: Ibrahima Seck, Whitney Plantation Museum

🎧 Episode 312: Joshua D. Rothman, The Domestic Slave Trade

🎧 Episode 328: Warren Milteer, Jr., Free People of Color in Early America

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Alexander Hamilton played important roles in the founding of the United States. He served in the Continental Army, helped frame the United States Constitution, and helped place the United States on a secure economic footing with his work as the first Secretary of the Treasury.

But how did Hamilton come to know so much about the economic systems that could help the new United States build a strong economic footing?

Why did Hamilton work for and believe that the new United States should be a nation that welcomed all religions and forms of religious worship?

Andrew Porwacher, the Wick Cary Associate Professor of History at the University of Oklahoma and the Ernest May Fellow at Harvard University’s Belfer Center, joins us to investigate the Jewish world and upbringing of Alexander Hamilton.

Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/335

Complementary Episodes

🎧 Episode 057: Max Edling, War, Money, and the American State, 1783-1867

🎧 Episode 180: Kate Elizabeth Brown, Alexander Hamilton and the Making of American Law

🎧 Episode 203: Joanne Freeman, Alexander Hamilton

🎧 Episode 279: Lindsay Chervinsky, The Cabinet 

🎧 Episode 317: Jews in Early America

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Spanish explorers and colonists visited, settled, and claimed territory in 42 of the United States’ 50 states. So what does the history of Early America look like from a Spanish point of view?

Brandon Bayne, an Associate Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and author of the book Missions Begin with Blood, joins us to investigate some of the religious aspects of Spanish colonization. Specifically, the work of Spanish missionaries.

Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/334

Complementary Episodes

🎧 Episode 082: Alejandra Dubcovsky, Information & Communication in the Early American South

🎧 Episode 090: Caitlin Fitz, The Age of Revolutions 

🎧 Episode 115: Andrew Torget, The Early American History of Texas

🎧 Episode 139: Andrés Reséndez, The Other Slavery

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

🎧 Episode 189: Sam White, The Little Ice Age

🎧 Episode 241: Molly Warsh, Pearls & the Nature of the Spanish Empire

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What was everyday life like during the American War for Independence?

Our Fourth of July series continues with an investigation of how the American War for Independence impacted those who remained on the home front. As episode 332 explored how the war impacted the lives of people who lived in urban Philadelphia, this episode investigates how the war impacted the lives of people who lived in the more rural setting of Yorktown, Virginia.

Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/333

Complementary Episodes

🎧 Episode 162: Dunmore’s New World

🎧 Episode 208: Nathaniel Philbrick, Turning Points of the American Revolution

🎧 Episode 245: Celebrating the Fourth

🎧 Episode 250: Virginia 1619

🎧 Episode 277: Whose Fourth of July?

🎧 Episode 289: Marcus Nevius, Maroonage in the Great Dismal Swamp

🎧 Episode 306: The Horse’s Tail: Revolution & Memory in Early New York City

🎧 Episode 332: Occupied Philadelphia

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