Ben Franklin'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 independent nation.

George William Van Cleve, a researcher in law and history at the University of Seattle Law School and author of We Have Not A Government: The Articles of Confederation and the Road to the Constitution, takes us into the Confederation period so we can discover more about the Articles of Confederation, the government it established, and the problems that government confronted.

Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/179

*Correction: After production we noticed that in her second question to George, Liz noted the Articles of Confederation has a history that begins in 1787. Liz misspoke. The Second Continental Congress drafted the Articles of Confederation in 1777, ratified them in 1781, and they remained the active constitution of the United States until 1789, when the Constitution of 1787 went into effect on March 4, 1789.

Sponsor Links

• Omohundro Institute
• Georgian Papers Programme
• Citizen Transcriber Sign Up

Complementary Episodes

• Episode 018: Danielle Allen, Our Declaration
• Episode 062: Carol Berkin, The Bill of Rights
• Episode 107: Mary Sarah Bilder, Madison’s Hand: Revising the Constitutional Convention
• Episode 119: Steven Pincus: The Heart of the Declaration
• Episode 141: Drafting the Declaration of Independence
• Episode 143: Michael Klarman, The Making of the United States Constitution
• Episode 155: Pauline Maier’s American Revolution

Helpful Show Links

• Ben Franklin's World Facebook Page
• Join the Ben Franklin's World Community
• Sign-up for the Franklin Gazette Newsletter
• Ben Franklin's World iOS App
• Ben Franklin's World Android App

*Books purchased through this link will help support the production of Ben Franklin's World.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 Forbidden Passages: Muslims and Moriscos in Colonial Spanish America, serves as our guide as we explore some of the political, cultural, and religious history of New Spain. Specifically, how Spaniards and Spanish Americans used ideas about Muslims and a group of “new Christian” converts called Moriscos to define who could and should be able to settle and help colonies North America.

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

Sponsor Links

• Omohundro Institute
• HelloFresh (Promo Code BFWorld30)

Complementary Episodes

• Episode 082: Alejandra Dubcovsky, Information & Communication in the Early American South
• Episode 090: Caitlin Fitz, Age of American Revolutions
• Episode 110: Joshua Taylor, How Genealogists Research
• Episode 114: Karin Wulf, The History of Genealogy in British North America
• Episode 139: Andés Reséndez, The Other Slavery: Indian Enslavement in the Americans
• Episode 161: Smuggling and the American Revolution

Helpful Show Links

• Ben Franklin's World Facebook Page
• Join the Ben Franklin's World Community
• Sign-up for the Franklin Gazette Newsletter
• Ben Franklin's World iOS App
• Ben Franklin's World Android App

*Books purchased through this link will help support the production of Ben Franklin's World.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 The Social Life of Maps in America.


Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/177

Sponsor Links

• Omohundro Institute
• The Georgian Papers Programme
• Citizen Transcriber Sign Up 
• OI Reader App

Complementary Episodes

• Episode 015: Joyce Chaplin, Round About The Earth
• Episode 050: Marla Miller, Betsy Ross
• Episode 136: Jennifer Van Horn, Material Culture and the Making of America
• Episode 138: Patrick Spero, Frontier Politics in Early America
• Episode 167: Eberhard Faber, The Early History of New Orleans
• Episode 169: Thomas Kidd, The Religious Life of Benjamin Franklin

Helpful Show Links

• Ben Franklin's World Facebook Page
• Join the Ben Franklin's World Community
• Sign-up for the Franklin Gazette Newsletter
• Ben Franklin's World iOS App
• Ben Franklin's World Android App

*Books purchased through this link will help support the production of Ben Franklin's World.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What did it mean to be a person and to also be a commodity in early America?

Daina Ramey Berry, author of The Price for Their Pound of Flesh: The Value of the Enslaved, from Womb to Grave, in the Building of a Nation, takes us behind the scenes of her research so we can explore how early Americans valued and commodified enslaved men, women, and children.

Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/176

Sponsor Links

• Omohundro Institute
• Georgian Papers Programme
• Citizen Transcriber Sign-up

Complementary Episodes

• Episode 008: Gregory O’Malley, Final Passages: The Intercolonial Slave Trade in British America, 1619-1807
• Episode 016: Alan Taylor, The Internal Enemy, Slavery and War in Virginia, 1772-1832
• Episode 070: Jennifer Morgan, How Historians Research
• Episode 126: Terri Snyder, Death, Suicide, & Slavery in British North America
• Episode 137: Erica Dunbar, The Washingtons’ Runaway Slave, Ona Judge

Helpful Show Links

• Ben Franklin's World Facebook Page
• Join the Ben Franklin's World Community
• Sign-up for the Franklin Gazette Newsletter
• Ben Franklin's World iOS App
• Ben Franklin's World Android App

*Books purchased through this link will help support the production of Ben Franklin's World.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Just how personal was the American Revolution?

What could the event and war mean for individual people and families?

Daniel Mark Epstein, author of The Loyal Son: The War in Ben Franklin’s House, guides as 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.

Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/176

Sponsor Links

• Omohundro Institute
• Georgian Papers Programme
• Citizen Transcriber Sign Up

Complementary Episodes

• Episode 001: James Green, The Library Company of Philadelphia
• Episode 022: Vivian Bruce Conger, Deborah Read Franklin & Sally Franklin Bache
• Episode 031: Benjamin Franklin and the Papers of Benjamin Franklin
• Episode 086: George Goodwin, Benjamin Franklin in London
• Episode 123: Revolutionary Allegiances
• Episode 138: Patrick Spero, Frontier Politics in Early America
• Episode 169: Thomas Kidd, The Religious Life of Benjamin Franklin

Helpful Show Links

• Ben Franklin's World Facebook Page
• Join the Ben Franklin's World Community
• Sign-up for the Franklin Gazette Newsletter
• Ben Franklin's World iOS App
• Ben Franklin's World Android App

*Books purchased through this link will help support the production of Ben Franklin's World.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 Feverish Bodies, Enlightened Minds: Science and the Yellow Fever Controversy in the Early American Republic, has some answers for us.

Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/174

Sponsor Links

• Omohundro Institute
• The Georgian Papers Programme
• Become a Citizen Transcriber

Complementary Episodes

• Episode 005: Jeanne Abrams, Revolutionary Medicine
• Episode 052: Ronald Johnson, Early United States-Haitian Diplomacy
• Episode 116: Erica Charters, Disease & the Seven Years’ War
• Episode 124: James Alexander Dun, Making the Haitian Revolution in Early America
• Episode 164:The American Revolution in the Haitian Revolution
• Episode 169: Thomas Kidd, The Religious Life of Benjamin Franklin

Helpful Show Links

• Ben Franklin's World Facebook Page
• Join the Ben Franklin's World Community
• Sign-up for the Franklin Gazette Newsletter
• Ben Franklin's World iOS App
• Ben Franklin's World Android App

*Books purchased through this link will help support the production of Ben Franklin's World.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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. The colonies of 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 Dispossessed Lives: Enslaved Women, Violence, and the Archive, joins us to explore some of the connections mainland North America and the British Caribbean shared in their practices of slavery in urban towns.

Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/173

Sponsor Links

• Omohundro Institute
• Georgian Papers Programme
• Citizen Transcriber Sign Up

Complementary Episodes

• Episode 066: Simon Newman, How Historians Find Their Research Topics
• Episode 083: Jared Hardesty, Unfreedom: Slavery in Colonial Boston
• Episode 084: Zara Anishanslin, How Historians Read Historical Sources
• Episode 161: Smuggling and the American Revolution

Helpful Show Links

• Ben Franklin's World Facebook Page
• Join the Ben Franklin's World Community
• Sign-up for the Franklin Gazette Newsletter
• Ben Franklin's World iOS App
• Ben Franklin's World Android App

*Books purchased through this link will help support the production of Ben Franklin's World.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 is Kenneth Daigler, an intelligence professional with 33 years experience managing human sources and collection and the author of Spies, Patriots, and Traitors: American Intelligence in the Revolutionary War, will facilitate our mental time travel and exploration of this topic.

Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/172

Sponsor Links

• Omohundro Institute
• Georgian Papers Programme
• Georgian Papers Transcriber Sign-up

Complementary Episodes

• Episode 065: Alexander Rose, Washington’s Spies
• Episode 129: J.L. Bell, The Road to Concord
• Episode 130: Paul Revere’s Ride Through History
• Episode 144: Robert Parkinson, The Common Cause of the Revolution
• Episode 155: Pauline Maier’s American Revolution
• Episode 158: The Revolutionaries’ Army

Helpful Show Links

• Ben Franklin's World Facebook Page
• Join the Ben Franklin's World Community
• Sign-up for the Franklin Gazette Newsletter
• Ben Franklin's World iOS App
• Ben Franklin's World Android App

*Books purchased through this link will help support the production of Ben Franklin's World.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

History books like to tell us that Native Americans did not fully understand British methods and ideas of trade. Is this really true?

Did Native Americans only understand trade as a form of simplistic, gift exchange?

Jessica Stern, a Professor of History at California State University, Fullerton and the author of The Lives in Objects: Native Americans, British Colonists, and Cultures of Labor and Exchange in the Southeast, takes us on a journey into the southeast during the early 18th century to show us how trade between Native Americans and British colonists really took place.

Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/171

Sponsor Links

• Omohundro Institute

Complementary Episodes

• Episode 056: Daniel J. Tortora, The Anglo-Cherokee War, 1759-1761
• Episode 091: Gregory Dowd, Rumors, Hoaxes, and Legends in Early America
• Episode 104: Andrew Lipmann, The Saltwater Frontier: Europeans & Native Americans on the Northeastern Coast
• Episode 158: The Revolutionaries’ Army
• Episode 163: The American Revolution in North America

Helpful Show Links

• Ben Franklin's World Facebook Page
• Join the Ben Franklin's World Community
• Sign-up for the Franklin Gazette Newsletter
• Ben Franklin's World iOS App
• Ben Franklin's World Android App

*Books purchased through this link will help support the production of Ben Franklin's World.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

New England was a place with no cash crops. It was a place where many of its earliest settlers came to live just so they could worship their Puritan faith freely. New England was also a place that became known for its strong anti-slavery sentiment during the 19th century. So how did New England also become a place that practiced slavery?

Wendy Warren, an Assistant Professor of History at Princeton University and author of the Pulitzer Prize-finalist book New England Bound: Slavery and Colonization in Early America, joins us to explore why New Englanders practiced slavery and just how far back the region’s slave past goes.

Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/170

Sponsor Links

• Omohundro Institute
• The Great Courses Plus (Free Trial)

Complementary Episodes

• Episode 064: Brett Rushforth, Native American Slavery in New France
• Episode 083: Jared Hardesty, Unfreedom: Slavery in Colonial Boston
• Episode 104: Andrew Lipman, The Saltwater Frontier: Europeans & Native Americans on the Northeastern Coast
• Episode 118: Christy Pujara-Clark, The Business of Slavery in Rhode Island
• Episode 139: Andrés Reséndez, The Other Slavery: Indian Enslavement in the Americas
• Episode 142: Manisha Sinha, A History of Abolition
• Episode 166: Freedom and the American Revolution

Helpful Show Links

• Ben Franklin's World Facebook Page
• Join the Ben Franklin's World Community
• Sign-up for the Franklin Gazette Newsletter
• Ben Franklin's World iOS App
• Ben Franklin's World Android App

*Books purchased through this link will help support the production of Ben Franklin's World.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices