Ben Franklin's World

What can a portrait reveal about the history of colonial British America?

Portraits were both deeply personal and yet collaborative artifacts left behind by people of the past. When historians look at multiple portraits created around the same time and place, their similarities can reveal important social connections, trade relationships, or cultural beliefs about race and gender in early American history. 

Janine Yorimoto Boldt, Associate Curator of American Art at the Chazen Museum of Art and the researcher behind the digital project Colonial Virginia Portraits, leads us on an exploration of portraiture and what it can reveal about the early American past. 

Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/299

Complementary Episodes

🎧 Episode 024: Kimberly Alexander, 18th-Century Fashion & Material Culture

🎧 Episode 084: Zara Anishanslin, How Historians Read Historical Sources

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🎧 Episode 136: Jennifer Van Horn, Material Culture and the Making of America

🎧 Episode 292: Glenn Adamson, Craft in Early America 

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Have you ever stopped to think about how the United States became a manufacturing nation? Have you ever wondered how the United States developed not just products, but the technologies, knowledge, and machinery necessary to manufacture or produce various products?

Lindsay Schakenbach Regele has.

Lindsay is an Associate Professor of History at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio and the author of Manufacturing Advantage: War, the State, and the Origins of American Industry, 1776-1848, and she joins us today to lead our exploration into the early American origins of industrialization.

Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/298

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

🎧 Episode 113: Brian Murphy, Building the Empire State

🎧 Episode 140: Tamara Thornton, Nathaniel Bowditch

🎧 Episode 281: Caitlin Rosenthal, The Business of Slavery

🎧 Episode 292: Glen Adamson, Craft

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The history of Native American land dispossession is as old as the story of colonization. European colonists came to the Americas, and the Caribbean, wanting land for farms and settlement so they found ways to acquire lands from indigenous peoples by the means of negotiation, bad-faith dealing, war, and violence.

The Indian Removal Act of 1830 is deeply rooted in early American history.

Claudio Saunt, a scholar of Native American history at the University of Georgia, and author of the book Unworthy Republic: The Dispossession of Native Americans and the Road to Indian Territory, joins us to discuss the Indian Removal Act of 1830 and how Native Americans in the southeastern part of the United States were removed from their homelands and resettled in areas of southeastern Kansas and Oklahoma. 


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

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🎧 Episode 286: Elections in Early America: Native Sovereignty

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Is there anything more we can know about well-researched and reported events like the Boston Massacre?

Are there new ways of looking at oft-taught events that can help us see new details about them, even 250 years after they happened?

Serena Zabin, a Professor of History at Carleton College in Minnesota and the author of the award-winning book, The Boston Massacre: A Family History, joins us to discuss the Boston Massacre and how she found a new lens through which to view this famous event that reveals new details and insights.

Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/296

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🎧 Episode 294: Mary Beth Norton, 1774: The Long Year of Revolution

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What does it take to create a museum? How can a museum help visitors grapple with a very uncomfortable aspect of their nation’s past?

Ibrahima Seck, a member of the History Department at the University Cheikh Anta Diop in Dakar, Senegal, author of the book, Bouki Fait Gombo: A History of the Slave Community of Habitation Haydel (Whitney Plantation) Louisiana, 1750-1860, and the Director of Research of the Whitney Plantation museum, leads us on a behind-the-scenes tour of Whitney Plantation and through the history of slavery in early Louisiana.

Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/295

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When we think of important years in the history of the American Revolution, we might think of years like 1765 and the Stamp Act Crisis, 1773 and the Tea Crisis, 1775 and the start of what would become the War for American Independence, or 1776, the year the United States declared independence.

Award-winning historian Mary Beth Norton, the Mary Donlan Alger Professor Emerita at Cornell University and the author of 1774: The Long Year of Revolution, joins us to discuss another year that she would like us to pay attention to as we think about the American Revolution: the year 1774.

Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/294

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How did Jamaica grow to become the "crown jewel" of the British Atlantic World?

Part of the answer is that Jamaica’s women served as some of the most ardent and best supporters of the island’s practice of slavery.

Christine Walker, an Assistant Professor of History at the Yale-NUS College in Singapore and the author of the award-winning book, Jamaica Ladies: Female Slaveholders and the Creation of Britain’s Atlantic Empire, leads us on an investigation of female slave holder-ship in 17th and 18th-century Jamaica.

Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/293

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What was everyday life like for those who lived in early America?

To understand the everyday lives of early Americans we need to look at the goods they made and how they produced those goods. In essence, nothing explains the everyday as much as the goods in people’s lives.

Glenn Adamson, author of Craft: An American History, joins us to investigate craft and craftspeople in Early America.

Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/282

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This episode is a companion episode to the 2-episode World of the Wampanoag series.

This bonus episode allows us to speak with two guests from the World of the Wampanoag series: Jade Luiz, Curator of Collections at the Plimoth Patuxet Museums, and Lorén Spears, Executive Director of the Tomaquag Museum in Rhode Island.

Both Jade and Lorén help us explore their museums and what it will be like when we visit them in person.

Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/290

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Before New England was New England, it was the Dawnland. A region that remains the homeland of numerous Native American peoples, including the Wampanoag. 

When the English colonists arrived at Patuxet 400 years ago, they arrived at a confusing time. The World of the Wampanoag people had changed in the wake of a destabilizing epidemic.

This episode is part of a two-episode series about the World of the Wampanoag. In Episode 290, we investigated the life, cultures, and trade of the Wampanoag and their neighbors, the Narragansett, up to December 16, 1620, the day the Mayflower made its way into Plymouth Harbor.

In this episode, our focus will be on the World of the Wampanoag in 1620 and beyond.

Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/291

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🎧 Episode 267: Snowshoe Country

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