Ben Franklin's World

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

Over the next two episodes, we’ll explore the World of the Wampanoag before and after 1620, a year that saw approximately 100 English colonists enter the Wampanoags’ world. Those English colonists have been called the “Pilgrims” and this year, 2020, marks the 400th anniversary of their arrival in New England.

The arrival of these English settlers brought change to the Wampanoags’ world. But many aspects of Wampanoag life and culture persisted, as did the Wampanoag who lived, and still live, in Massachusetts and beyond.

In this episode, we’ll investigate the cultures, society, and economy of the Wampanoags’ 16th- and 17th-century world. This focus will help us develop a better understanding for the peoples, places, and circumstances of the World of the Wampanoag.

This two-episode “World of the Wampanoag” series is made possible through support from Mass Humanities. 

Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this episode do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

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

Complementary Episodes

🎧 Episode 104:Native Americans and Colonists on the Northeastern Coast

🎧 Episode 132: Indigenous London: Native Travelers at the Heart of Empire

🎧 Episode 184: Thundersticks: Firearms and the Violent Transformation of Native America

🎧 Episode 220: New England Indians, Colonists, and Origins of Slavery

🎧 Episode 235: , A 17th-Century Native American Life 

🎧 Episode 267: Snowshoe Country

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The name “Great Dismal Swamp” doesn’t evoke an image of a pleasant or beautiful place, and yet, it was an important place that offered land speculators the chance to profit and enslaved men and women a chance for freedom in colonial British America and the early United States.


Marcus Nevius, an Assistant Professor of History at the University of Rhode Island and author of City of Refuge: Slavery and Petit Maroonage in the Great Dismal Swamp, 1763-1856, has offered to guide us into and through the Great Dismal Swamp and its history, so that we can better understand maroons and maroon communities in early America and learn more about how enslaved people used an environment around them to resist their enslaved condition.

Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/289

Complementary Episodes

🎧 Episode 133: Patrick Breen, The Nat Turner Rebellion

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

🎧 Episode 226: Ryan Quintana, Making the State of South Carolina

🎧 Episode 250: Virginia, 1619

🎧 Episode 263: Sari Altschuler, The Medical Imagination

🎧 Episode 282: Vincent Brown, Tacky’s Revolt

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In what ways did the Atlantic World contribute to the American Revolution?

Empire, slavery, and constant warfare interacted with each other in the Atlantic World. Which brings us to our question: In what ways did the Atlantic World and its issues contribute to the American Revolution?

Tyson Reeder, an editor of the Papers of James Madison and an affiliated assistant professor at the University of Virginia, is a scholar of the Atlantic World, who will help us see how smuggling and trade in the Luso-Atlantic, or Portuguese-Atlantic, World contributed to the development and spread of ideas about free trade and republicanism.

Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/288

Complementary Episodes

🎧 Episode 090: Caitlin Fitz, Age of American Revolutions

🎧 Episode 099: Mark Hanna, Pirates & Pirate Nests in the British Atlantic World

🎧 Episode 121: Wim Klooster, The Dutch Moment in the 17th-Century Atlantic World

🎧 Episode 161: Smuggling in the American Revolution

🎧 Episode 229: Patrick Griffin, The Townshend Moment

🎧 Episode 254: Jeffrey Sklansky, The Money Question in Early America

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Join the Omohundro Institute and Mass Humanities for a special two-episode series about the World of the Wampanoag before and after 1620. The Wampanoag’s history has always been spoken. Hear it on Ben Franklin’s World in December 2020.

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This special bonus episode previews the Ben Franklin's World Subscription program and its monthly bonus episode for program subscribers.

In this bonus episode, Historian of the United States House of Representatives Matt Wasniewski and Historical Publications Specialist Terrance Rucker answer your questions about the early history of the United States Congress.

Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/202

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For four months during the summer of 1787, delegates from the thirteen states met in Philadelphia to craft a revised Constitution that would define the government of the United States. It took them nearly the entire time to settle on the method for selecting the President, the Chief Executive. What they came up with is a system of indirect election where the states would select electors who would then cast votes for President and Vice President. Today we call these electors the Electoral College.

In this final episode of our series on Elections in Early America, we explore the origins and early development of the Electoral College and how it shaped presidential elections in the first decades of the United States with Alexander Keyssar and Frank Cogliano.

Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/287

Complementary Episodes

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

🎧 Episode 107: Mary Sarah Bilder, Madison's Hand: Revising the Constitutional Convention

🎧 Episode 131: Frank Cogliano, Thomas Jefferson's Empire of Liberty

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

🎧 Episode 179: George Van Cleve, After the Revolution: Governance During the Critical Period

🎧 Episode 193: Partisans: The Friendship & Rivalry of Adams & Jefferson

🎧 Episode 279: Lindsay Chervinsky, The Cabinet: Creation of an American Institution

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Who is American democracy for and who could participate in early American democracy?

Women and African Americans were often barred from voting in colonial and early republic elections. But what about Native Americans? Could Native Americans participate in early American democracy?

Julie Reed, an Assistant Professor of History at the Pennsylvania State University, and Kathleen DuVal, the Bowman and Gordon Gray Distinguished Term Professor of History at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, join us to investigate how the sovereignty of native nations fits within the sovereignty of the United States and its democracy.

Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/286

Complementary Episodes

🎧 Episode 037: Kathleen DuVal, Independence Lost

🎧 Episode 158: The Revolutionaries’ Army

🎧 Episode 162: Dunmore’s New World

🎧 Episode 163: The American Revolution in North America

🎧 Episode 223: Susan Sleeper-Smith, A Native American History of the Ohio River Valley & Great Lakes Region

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Independence from Great Britain provided the former British American colonists the opportunity to create a new, more democratic government than they had lived under before the American Revolution.

What did this new American government look like? Who could participate in this new American democracy? And what was it like to participate in this new democracy?

Scholars Terrance Rucker, a Historical Publications Specialist in the Office of the Historian of the U.S. House of Representatives, and Marcela Miccuci, a curator at the Museum of the American Revolution, join us to investigate the first federal elections in the United States and who could vote in early U.S. elections.

Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/285

Complementary Episodes

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

🎧 Episode 151: Defining the American Revolution

🎧 Episode 179: George Van Cleve, Governance During the Critical Period

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

🎧 Episode 203: Joanne Freeman, Alexander Hamilton

🎧 Episode 260: Creating the First Ten Amendments

🎧 Episode 277: Whose Fourth of July

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The British North American colonies formed some of the most democratic governments in the world. But that doesn't mean that all early Americans were treated equally or allowed to participate in representative government.

So who could vote in Early America? Who could participate in representative government?

Historians James Kloppenberg, the Charles Warren Professor of History at Harvard University, and Amy Watson, an Assistant Professor of History at the University of Alabama, Birmingham, help us explore who democracy was meant for and how those who lived in colonial British America understood and practiced representative government. 

Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/284

Complementary Episodes

🎧 Episode 038: Carolyn Harris, Magna Carta

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

🎧 Episode 243: Joseph Adelman, Revolutionary Print Networks

🎧 Episode 250: Virginia, 1619

🎧 Episode 255: Martha Jones, Birthright Citizens

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On Friday, September 18, 2020, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, died.

Justice Ginsburg's death has caused a lot of debate about whether the President should appoint a new justice to fill her seat and, if he does appoint someone, whether the Senate should vote on the President’s nomination before the election.

This short bonus episode offers a brief history of the Supreme Court and how it functions within the United States government. Our guest for this episode is Mary Sarah Bilder, the Founders Professor of Law at Boston College.

Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/259 Join Ben Franklin's World!

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