Ben Franklin's World

What does history have to tell us about how we, as Americans, came to define people by their race; the visual ways we have grouped people together based on their skin color, facial features, hair texture, and ancestry? As you might imagine, history has a LOT to tell us about this question! So today, we’re going to explore one aspect of the answer to this question by focusing on some of the ways religion shaped European and early American ideas about race and racial groupings. Kathryn Gin Lum is an Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Stanford University. She’s also the author of Heathen: Religion and Race in American History. Show Notes:https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/392 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 047: Christian Imperialism: Converting the World in the Early American Republic 🎧 Episode 109: The American Enlightenment & Cadwallader Colden 🎧 Episode 139: Indian Enslavement in the Americas 🎧 Episode 311: Religion and the American Revolution 🎧 Episode 334: Missions and Mission Building in New Spain 🎧 Episode 367: The Brafferton Indian School, Part 1 🎧 Episode 376: Cotton Mather’s Spanish Lessons REQUEST A TOPIC 📨  Topic Request Form  📫  liz@benfranklinsworld.com  WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter👩‍💻 BFW Listener Community🌍 The History Explorers Club   LISTEN 🍎  Apple Podcasts   💚  Spotify   🎶  Amazon Music   🛜 Pandora  CONNECT 🦋  Liz on Bluesky  👩‍💻  Liz on LinkedIn  🛜  Liz’s Website  SAY THANKS 💜  Leave a review on Apple Podcasts  💚  Leave a rating on Spotify  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

27 Aug 202455min

Do you ever wonder how governments met and worked in colonial British America? Williamsburg, Virginia, served as the capital of Virginia between 1699 and 1779. During its 80 years of service as capital, Williamsburg represented the center of British authority in Virginia. This meant the Royal Governor of the colony lived in Williamsburg. Indigenous, colonial, and other delegations came to Williamsburg to negotiate treaties and trade with Virginia. And, the colonial government met in Williamsburg’s capitol building to pass laws, listen to court cases, and debate ideas. Katie Schinabeck, a historian of historical memory and the American Revolution and the Digital Projects Researcher at Colonial Williamsburg’s Innovation Studios, takes us on a behind-the-scenes tour of Williamsburg’s colonial capitol building to explore how the government of colonial Virginia worked and operated. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/391 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 084: How Historians Read Historical Sources 🎧 Episode 099: Pirates & Pirate Nests in the British Atlantic World 🎧 Episode 153: Committees and Congresses: Governments of the American Revolution 🎧 Episode 202: The Early History of the United States Congress 🎧 Episode 259: American Legal History & the Bill of Rights 🎧 Episode 315: History and American Democracy 🎧 Episode 328: Warren Milteer, Free People of Color in Early America 🎧 Episode 389: Nicole Eustace, Indigenous Justice in Early America REQUEST A TOPIC 📨  Topic Request Form  📫  liz@benfranklinsworld.com  WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter👩‍💻 BFW Listener Community🌍 The History Explorers Club   LISTEN 🍎  Apple Podcasts   💚  Spotify   🎶  Amazon Music   🛜 Pandora  CONNECT 🦋  Liz on Bluesky  👩‍💻  Liz on LinkedIn  🛜  Liz’s Website  SAY THANKS 💜  Leave a review on Apple Podcasts  💚  Leave a rating on Spotify  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

13 Aug 20241h 2min

When we think about the American Revolution, the French Revolution, or the Haitian Revolution, we think about the ideals of freedom and equality. These ideals were embedded and discussed in all of these revolutions. What we don’t always think about when we think about these revolutions are the objects that inspired, came out of, and were circulated as they took place.  Ashli White, an Associate Professor of History at the University of Miami in Florida, joins us to investigate the “revolutionary things” that were created and circulated during the American, French, and Haitian Revolutions with details from her book Revolutionary Things: Material Culture and Politics in the Late Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/390 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 124: James Alexander Dun, Making the Haitian Revolution in Early America 🎧 Episode 136: Jennifer Van Horn, Material Culture and the Making of America 🎧 Episode 164: The American Revolution in the Age of Revolutions 🎧 Episode 165: The Age of Revolutions 🎧 Episode 177, Martin Brückner, The Social Life of Maps in America 🎧 Episode 306: The Horse’s Tail: Revolution & Memory in Early New York City 🎧 Episode 319: Cuba: An Early American History   REQUEST A TOPIC 📨  Topic Request Form  📫  liz@benfranklinsworld.com  WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter👩‍💻 BFW Listener Community🌍 The History Explorers Club   LISTEN 🍎  Apple Podcasts   💚  Spotify   🎶  Amazon Music   🛜 Pandora  CONNECT 🦋  Liz on Bluesky  👩‍💻  Liz on LinkedIn  🛜  Liz’s Website  SAY THANKS 💜  Leave a review on Apple Podcasts  💚  Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

30 Juli 20241h 2min

Early North America was a place that contained hundreds of distinct Indigenous nations and peoples who spoke at least 2,000 distinct languages. In the early sixteenth century, Spain began to establish colonies on mainland North America, and they were followed by the French, Dutch, and English, and the forced migration of enslaved Africans who represented at least 45 different ethnic and cultural groups. With such diversity, Early North America was full of cross-cultural encounters. What did it look like when people of different ethnicities, races, and cultures interacted with one another? How were the people involved in cross-cultural encounters able to understand and overcome their differences? Nicole Eustace is an award-winning historian at New York University. Using details from her Pulitzer-prize-winning book, Covered with Night: A Story of Murder and Indigenous Justice in Early America, Nicole will take us through one cross-cultural encounter in 1722 between the Haudenosaunee and Susquehannock peoples and English colonists in Pennsylvania. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/389 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 080: Liberty’s Prisoners: Prisons and Prison Life in Early America  🎧 Episode 171: Native Americans, British Colonists, and Trade in North America 🎧 Episode 220: New England Indians, Colonists, and the Origins of Slavery  🎧 Episode 264: Treaty of Canandaigua 🎧 Episode 356: The Moravian Church in North America 🎧 Episode 362: Treaties Between the US and American Indian Nations  REQUEST A TOPIC 📨  Topic Request Form  📫  liz@benfranklinsworld.com  WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter👩‍💻 BFW Listener Community🌍 The History Explorers Club   LISTEN 🍎  Apple Podcasts   💚  Spotify   🎶  Amazon Music   🛜 Pandora  CONNECT 🦋  Liz on Bluesky  👩‍💻  Liz on LinkedIn  🛜  Liz’s Website  SAY THANKS 💜  Leave a review on Apple Podcasts  💚  Leave a rating on Spotify  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

16 Juli 202455min

Happy Fourth of July!  We’ve created special episodes to commemorate, celebrate, and remember the Fourth of July for years. Many of our episodes have focused on the Declaration of Independence, how and why it was created, the ideas behind it, and its sacred words: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” This year, we examine a different aspect of the Declaration of Independence: the man behind the boldest signature on the document: John Hancock. Brooke Barbier is a public historian and holds a Ph.D. in American History from Boston College. She’s also the author of the first biography in many years about John Hancock, it’s called King Hancock: The Radical Influence of a Moderate Founding Father. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/388 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 018: Our Declaration 🎧 Episode 129: John Bell, The Road to Concord, 1775 🎧 Episode 141: A Declaration in Draft 🎧 Episode 245: Celebrating the Fourth 🎧 Episode 277: Whose Fourth of July? 🎧 Episode 306: The Horse’s Tail: Revolution & Memory in Early New York City 🎧 Episode 309: Merchant Ships of the Eighteenth Century 🎧 Episode 360: Kyera Singleton, Slavery & Freedom in Massachusetts REQUEST A TOPIC 📨  Topic Request Form  📫  liz@benfranklinsworld.com  WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter👩‍💻 BFW Listener Community🌍 The History Explorers Club   LISTEN 🍎  Apple Podcasts   💚  Spotify   🎶  Amazon Music   🛜 Pandora  CONNECT 🦋  Liz on Bluesky  👩‍💻  Liz on LinkedIn  🛜  Liz’s Website  SAY THANKS 💜  Leave a review on Apple Podcasts  💚  Leave a rating on Spotify  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

2 Juli 20241h 5min

When we think of California, we might think about sunny weather, Hollywood, beaches, wine country, and perhaps the Gold Rush. What we don’t usually think about when we think about California is the state’s long history of slavery. Jean Pfaelzer, a Californian and a Professor Emerita of English, Asian Studies, and Women and Gender Studies at the University of Delaware, joins us to lead us through some of California’s long 250-year history of slavery with details from her book, California: A Slave State.  Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/387 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 014: West of the Revolution: An Uncommon History of 1776 🎧 Episode 067: An Environmental History of Early California and Hawaii  🎧 Episode 115: The Early American History of Texas 🎧 Episode 139: The Other Slavery: Indian Enslavement in the Americas 🎧 Episode 233: A History of Russian America  🎧 Episode 277: Whose Fourth of July? 🎧 Episode 312: The Domestic Slave Trade 🎧 Episode 371: An Archive of Indigenous Slavery  🎧 Episode 384: Making Maine: A Journey to Statehood   REQUEST A TOPIC 📨  Topic Request Form  📫  liz@benfranklinsworld.com  WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter👩‍💻 BFW Listener Community🌍 The History Explorers Club   LISTEN 🍎  Apple Podcasts   💚  Spotify   🎶  Amazon Music   🛜 Pandora  CONNECT 🦋  Liz on Bluesky  👩‍💻  Liz on LinkedIn  🛜  Liz’s Website  SAY THANKS 💜  Leave a review on Apple Podcasts  💚  Leave a rating on Spotify  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

25 Juni 20241h 3min

In this special Juneteenth episode, as we honor the emancipation of enslaved African Americans, we delve into the work of those working to preserve slave dwellings across the United States, safeguarding the essential stories these structures embody. In our conversation, Joseph McGill, the Executive Director and Founder of the Slave Dwelling Project, joins us to share why former slave dwellings are vital to our nation's history and what they reveal about the lives of those who once lived in them. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/386 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 075: How Archives Work 🎧 Episode 079: What is a Historic Source? 🎧 Episode 089: Slavery & Freedom in Early Maryland 🎧 Episode 312: The Domestic Slave Trade 🎧 Episode 331: Discovery of the Williamsburg Bray School 🎧 Episode 360: Kyera Singleton, Slavery & Freedom in Massachusetts 🎧 Episode 378: Everyday Black Living in Early America REQUEST A TOPIC 📨  Topic Request Form  📫  liz@benfranklinsworld.com  WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter👩‍💻 BFW Listener Community🌍 The History Explorers Club   LISTEN 🍎  Apple Podcasts   💚  Spotify   🎶  Amazon Music   🛜 Pandora  CONNECT 🦋  Liz on Bluesky  👩‍💻  Liz on LinkedIn  🛜  Liz’s Website  SAY THANKS 💜  Leave a review on Apple Podcasts  💚  Leave a rating on Spotify  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

11 Juni 202452min

The United States Constitution of 1787 gave many Americans pause about the powers the new federal government could exercise and how the government's leadership would rest with one person, the president. The fact that George Washington would likely serve as the new nation’s first president calmed many Americans’ fears that the new nation was creating an opportunity for a hereditary monarch. Washington had proven his commitment to a democratic form of government when he gave up his army command peacefully and voluntarily. He had proven he was someone Americans could trust. Plus, George Washington had no biological heirs–no sons–to whom he might pass on the presidency. But while George Washington had no biological heirs, he did have heirs. Cassandra A. Good, an Associate Professor of History at Marymount University and author of First Family: George Washington’s Heirs and the Making of America, joins us to explore Washington’s heirs and the lives they lived. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/385 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 027: A History of Stepfamilies in Early America 🎧 Episode 033: George Washington and His Library  🎧 Episode 061: George Washinton in Retirement  🎧 Episode 074: Martha Washington  🎧 Episode 137: The Washingtons’ Runaway Slave 🎧 Episode 183: George Washinton’s Mount Vernon  🎧 Episode 222: The Early History of Washington, D.C.  🎧 Episode 265: An Early History of the White House   REQUEST A TOPIC 📨 Topic Request Form 📫 liz@benfranklinsworld.com WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter👩‍💻 BFW Listener Community🌍 The History Explorers Club   LISTEN 🍎 Apple Podcasts  💚 Spotify  🎶 Amazon Music 🛜 Pandora CONNECT 🦋 Liz on Bluesky 👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn 🛜 Liz’s Website SAY THANKS 💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts 💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

28 Maj 20241h 5min