Historically Thinking

My guest today is Martin Clagget, author of A Spark of Revolution: William Small, Thomas Jefferson, and James Watt; The Curious Connection Between the American Revolution and the Industrial Revolution. It’s the first biography of William Small ever written. If Small is remembered at all, it’s because he was the tutor of Thomas Jefferson at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg. But Clagget meticulously demonstrates that his life contained much more than that.  For Small was a Scotsman who was clearly one of the great eighteenth century polymaths. His interests extended from the moral philosophy of the Scottish “common sense” school, to medicine and surgery, and even to building and tinkering with machines. Amazingly enough, all of these talents were employed in his short life. Not only did he become a fixture of Williamsburg society, educating a future generation of revolutionary leaders, but on returning to Britain he settled in the growing almost-industrial city of Birmingham. There he became fast friend with Matthew Boulton, a pioneering industrialist, and brought together the influential group of thinkers and  tinkerers known as the “Lunar Society.” And there in Birmingham  he encountered a fellow Scot, James Watt, and interested Boulton in Watt’s design for a steam engine. Indeed, so closely linked was Small to the project, that had he lived he would have split the royalties on the steam engine with Watt and Boulton. Truly Small was at the heart of two revolutions, both the American Revolution, and the Industrial Revolution that sprang forth from the English Midlands.   For Further Investigation Martin Clagett speaks at Monticello about his book. Martin Clagett, Scientific Jefferson, Revealed Jenny Uglow, The Lunar Men–"In the 1760s a group of amateur experimenters met and made friends in the English Midlands. Most came from humble families, all lived far from the center of things, but they were young and their optimism was boundless: together they would change the world."

Colonel Robert Gibbon Johnson of Salem County, New Jersey Joseph T. Buckingham, editor of the Boston Courier in the 1830s, had a way with invective: The mere fungus of an offensive plant which one cannot touch without an immediate application of soap and water with an infusion of eau de cologne, to sweeten the hand…O ye caterers of luxuries, ye gods and godesses of the science of cookery! Deliver us from tomatoes. You have to wonder what Buckingham said about politicians. Everything has a history, and that includes tomatoes. For when Buckingham wrote his anti-tomato diatribe, not very coincidentally the United States was in the midst of tomato-eating health craze that included (for some) the consumption of life-enhancing tomato pills; while in that very year, Italians persisted in eating pasta that had been cooked in broth for as much as hour before being tossed with pork lard and eaten by hand. These and other excellent facts are found in William Alexander’s Ten Tomatoes That Changed the World: A History. His previous books include The $64 Tomato: How One Man Nearly Lost His Sanity, Spent a Fortune, and Endured an Existential Crisis in the Quest for the Perfect Garden. For Further Investigation If you haven't already listened to it, find out more about Dr. Wiley and his crusade for pure food in my conversation with Jonathan Reese; for a discussion that busted lots of myths regarding food, and how we came to eat things the way we do, see the conversation with Rachael Laudan Bill Alexander's website The Tomato Pill Craze New York Times article on the GMO tomato Andrew Smith, Pure Ketchup: A History of America's National Condiment, with Recipes Massimo Mortinari, A Short History of Spaghetti with Tomato Sauce: The Unbelievable True Story of the World's Most Beloved Dish

By 1861, there were 250,000 free people of color living in the American South. They were signs of contradiction amidst a slave society built upon the concept of white supremacy in a racial hierarchy. Laws curtailed and denied their rights seemingly in every conceivable way, from prohibiting their legal testimony against whites to barring them from the ballot box. Whites attempted to control them through classification, variously and contradictorily terming them "negroes," "mulattoes," "mustees," "Indians," "mixed--bloods," or simply "free people of color". The last of these was the only one which these people seemed to accept for themselves, and make their own. But while these free people of color faced every conceivable attempt to deny them of power and personhood, they succeeded in raising families, building communities, establishing businesses and organizations, and enabling them to flourish. Some even rose to economic prominence in their own communities, even gaining the respect of their white neighbors. And often both groups interacted: in business, in churches, and even in families. My guest Warren Eugene Milteer, Jr., has written three books about free people of color: Hertford County, North Carolina’s Free People of Color; North Carolina’s Free People of Color, 1715-1885; and Beyond Slavery’s Shadow: Free People of Color in the South. As you can see from the tiles, they have moved from investigating a North Carolina county, to gradually encompassing the entire American South. This is therefore a very comprehensive and purposeful project; as you'll find out in our conversation, it's also a deeply personal one. Warren Milteer is Assistant Professor of History at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. For Further Investigation This is the third and final podcast of the month focusing on the experience of Black Americans in both slavery and freedom. In Episode 266, I had a conversation with Isabela Morales about the incredible story of the Townsend family; and in Episode 267, David Hackett Fischer described some of the regional cultures of Blacks in early America. Melvin Patrick Ely,  Israel on the Appomattox: A Southern Experiment in Black Freedom from the 1790s through the Civil War. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004. Jack D. Forbes, Africans and Native Americans: The Language of Race and the Evolution of Red-Black Peoples. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993. Luther P. Jackson, Free Negro Labor and Property Holding in Virginia, 1830–1860. New York: D. Appleton-Century, 1942.  Patricia Phillips Marshall and Jo Ramsay Leimenstoll. Thomas Day: Master Craftsman and Free Man of Color. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press,2010.  A. B.Wilkinson, Blurring the Lines of Race and Freedom: Mulattoes and Mixed Bloods in English Colonial America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2020.

In early December, 1777, Joseph Plumb Martin and his comrades in the Continental Army sat down to feast upon a Our Hero: Rhode Island Quaker ironworker turned Major General and logistician Thanksgiving meal, mandated by the Second Continental Congress.  “...To add something extraordinary to our present stock of provisions, our country, ever mindful of its suffering army,” wrote Martin decades later, “ opened her sympathizing heart so wide, upon this occasion, as to give us something to make the world stare.  And what do you think it was dear reader?—Guess.—You cannot guess, be you as much of a Yankee as you will.  I will tell you: it gave each and every man a half a gill of rice, and a table spoon full of vinegar!!” Martin’s faux banquet was the result not of tightfistedness, but of bankruptcy and what my guest Ricardo Herrera describes as “the slow moving, staggering debacle that was its supply and transportation system.” If it’s true that amateurs study tactics, and professionals study logistics, then Herrara’s new book Feeding Washington’s Army: Surviving the Valley Forge Winter of 1778  is definitely for professionals—but there is much in it for others to learn from as well. Ricardo A. Herrera is professor of military history at the School of Advanced Military Studies at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College. The views that he expresses here are not those of the SAMS, the Department of the Army, the Department of Defense, the United States Government; really, any person or institution other than Ricardo Herrera himself. For Further Investigation We've talked about Harry Lee with biographer Ryan Cole for two hours; and in Episode 110 about Nathanael Greene and the campaign for the South with John Buchanan, author of The Road to Charleston. Wayne K. Bodle, Valley Forge Winter: Civilians and Soldiers in War (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2002) Bodle, “Generals and ‘Gentlemen’: Pennsylvania Politics and the Decision for Valley Forge,” Pennsylvania History 62, no. 1 (Winter 1995): 59–89 Benjamin H. Newcomb, “Washington’s Generals and the Decision to Quarter at Valley Forge,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 117, no. 4 (Oct 1993): 311–29 Ricardo A. Herrera, “‘[T]he zealous activity of Capt. Lee’: Light-Horse Harry Lee and Petite Guerre.” The Journal of Military History 79, no. 1 (January 2015): 9-36 Herrera, “‘[O]ur Army will hut this Winter at Valley forge’: George Washington, Decision-Making, and the Councils of War.” Army History, no. 117 (Fall 2020): 6-26 Herrera, “Foraging and Combat Operations at Valley Forge, February-March 1778.”  Army History, no. 79 (Spring 2011): 6-29 Valley Forge National Historic Park Valley Forge Muster Roll You might remember that I tried to pronounce auftragstaktik, at least once. Rick Herrera doesn't really care if I pronounced it correctly or not...as you can see here in this YouTube conversation "The Myth of Auftragstktik and the history of Mission Command"

In 1609 a free man of African and European ancestry, Juan Rodriguez, left the Dutch ship Jonge Tobias anchored off Manhattan Island with “eighty hatchets and some knives” to set himself up in trading with the local Indians. Ashore in coming years he fought off Dutch rivals, married an Indian woman, and started a family, all the while prospering by trading in bear and beaver pelts. His is one of the many stories presented by David Hackett Fischer in his new book African Founders: How Enslaved People Expanded American Ideals, which examines nine Afro-European regional cultures in North America. Following in the footsteps of his previous books Albion’s Seed, Liberty and Freedom, and Champlain’s Dream, in African Founders, Fischer seeks to determine in this case how individuals both free and enslaved within these cultures “acted with purpose and resolve to change the ways that free and open systems worked in what is now the United States.” David Hackett Fischer is University Professor and Warren Professor of History Emeritus at Brandeis University. Author of numerous books in addition to those already mentioned, his Washington’s Crossing won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize in History.

Hello, when Samuel Townsend died in 1856 near Huntsville, Alabama, he was the era’s equivalent of a multimillionaire. He had thousands of acres of cotton-land, and hundreds of enslaved people who planted, harvested, and processed that cotton to make him rich. Like many other parents, he left it all to his five sons, four daughters, and two nieces. But in this case all of them were slaves. And that crucial event is not even the beginning of the intricate, horrible, thrilling, and ennobling story of the Townsend family, which Isabela Morales tells in her new book Happy Dreams of Liberty: An American Family in Slavery and Freedom.  R. Isabela Morales is the Editor and Project Manager of the Princeton & Slavery Project and the Digital Projects Manager at the Stoutsburg Sourland African American Museum. She received her PhD in history from Princeton University. Happy Dreams of Liberty is published by Oxford University Press. For Further Investigation For more on the internal slave trade, and the kidnapping of free blacks in the north for enslavement in the South, see Episode 141; for a discussion on American slavery, see Episode 25 The Septimus D. Cabaniss Papers at the University of Alabama–Isabela writes "The full collection has been digitized, so you can explore the actual letters and other sources I use in the book." Direct link to the 1856 will of Samuel Townsend Martha Hodes, The Sea Captain's Wife: A True Story of Love, Race, and War in the Nineteenth Century (W. W. Norton, 2006) Tiya Miles, Ties That Bind: The Story of an Afro-Cherokee Family in Slavery and Freedom (University of California Press, 2005) Daniel Sharfstein, The Invisible Line: Three African American Families and the Secret Journey from Black to White (The Penguin Press, 2011)

You might as well admit it; you’ve always wondered how you would do in a vicious struggle for power. Those thoughts might be prompted by an over-long project planning meeting for a new software produce, an angry meeting of a humanities department with an associate dean, or from binge-watching Game of Thrones one too many times. But for high-ranking officials in authoritarian regimes, such thoughts are simply part of careful and judicious Thinking Ahead. In his new book Prestige, Manipulation, and Coercion: Elite Power Struggles in the Soviet Union and China after Stalin and Mao, Joseph Torigian anaylyzes four power struggles in Leninist regimes, arguing that party institutions did not prevent power struggles from being shaped by “the politics of personal prestige, historical antagonisms, backhanded political maneuvering, and violence.” If he’s right, then we might even be able to learn something about the future from studying the past. Joseph Torigian is an assistant professor at the School of International Service at American University and a Global Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center’s History and Public Policy Program. For Further Investigation Some of the same events discussed here  with Tony Saich, when in Episode 213 we discussed the one-hundred year long history of the Chinese Communist Party. Another conversation in which historical knowledge is applied to political possibilities.

Some 5,000 years ago nomadic peoples of central Asia settled on the Iranian plateau. Their descendants would be the nucleus of an extraordinary empire that reached north to the lands of their ancestors, eastwards to India and China, and west as far as the Libyan desert and the Aegean Sea. These were the Persians, who not only created the first of the world-empires, but also brought about the first period of significant and continuous contact between the east and the west.  What is typically known about the Persians comes from Herodotus, who in his Histories told the story of how Persia came to invade Greece, and how the Greeks were able to repel the greatest empire yet known to mankind. But what is the Persian version of the story? What would the Persians have said about themselves? With me to discuss the Persian Empire of the Achaemenid Kings is Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones, chair of ancient history at Cardiff University, and director of the Ancient Iran Program for the British Institute of Persian Studies. His latest book is Persians: The Age of the Great Kings, and it is the subject of our conversation today. For Further Investigation Early in the conversation, when discussing the importance of the Persian's nomadic past, I made reference to a conversation with Pamela Crossley. This was Episode 185; her book on the importance of nomadic thought and culture for all of Eurasia is Hammer and Anvil: Nomad Rulers at the Forge of the Modern World. Lloyd had some tough things to say about Herodotus; for a different perspective, see my conversation in Episode 116 on "The First Historian" with Jennifer Roberts, a Herodotus scholar.

This is the second and final part of my conversation with Olivier Zunz about his new biography of Alexis de Tocqueville, The Man Who Understood Democracy, just published by Princeton University Press. When last we left Tocqueville, he had just experienced a brilliant success with the publication of the first volume of Democracy in America. In this conversation, we will as promised discuss Tocqueville’s formative trip to Britain, and how it influenced his writing of volume II of Democracy; his political career; his experiences of the revolution of 1848, and the Second Empire; his great work The Ancien Régime and the French Revolution; and his death at a moment when it seemed that in both France and America the experiment to which he had devoted his life was on the point of failure. Olivier Zunz is the James Madison Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Virginia. He is the author, most recently, of Philanthropy in America: A History (also published by Princeton University Press ). He has edited the Library of America edition of Democracy in America, Tocqueville’s Recollections: The French Revolution of 1848 and Its Aftermath, Alexis de Tocqueville and Gustave de Beaumont in America: Their Friendship and Their Travels, all in collaboration with the translator Arthur Goldhammer. He has also co-edited The Tocqueville Reader: A Life in Letters and Politics. For Further Investigation Exploring American Democracy with Alexis de Tocqueville as Guide: a 2015 seminar led by Olivier Zunz and Arthur Goldhammer at the University of Virginia still has a website, with an unparalleled collection of resources, including bibliographies of magnificent detail. Arthur Goldhammer describes his collaboration with Olivier Zunz: a "harmonious collaboration" that became an "intellectual friendship" The benchmark historical-critical edition of Democracy in America by Eduardo Nolla

In 1835 a young French author on the verge of publishing his first book wrote “the best thing that can happen to me is if no one read my book, and I have not yet lost hope that this happiness will be mine.” But Alexis de Tocqueville’s hopes were not fulfilled. Although the first printing was just 500 copies, Tocqueville almost immediately became an intellectual celebrity. When he heard people speaking about his book, said Tocqueville, he wondered “whether they are really talking about me.” Olivier Zunz argues in his new biography The Man Who Understood Democracy: A Life of Alexis de Tocqueville that Tocqueville was a passionate advocate for democracy, judging it the only system that could provide both liberty and equality. He did this both as a scholar and a politician, dying at a moment when it seemed that in both France and America the experiment to which he had devoted his life was on the point of failure. In the first of two conversations, Zunz and I discuss Tocqueville's family; his early life and intellectual development; his unhappy attempt at a legal career; and his famous journey to the young United States. We conclude this conversation with the moment described above, when the publication of the first volume of Democracy in America led to Tocqueville's instant intellectual celebrity. In our second conversation, we will discuss his turn to political action, and its outcomes. Olivier Zunz is the James Madison Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Virginia. He is the author, most recently, of Philanthropy in America: A History (also published by Princeton University Press ). He has edited the Library of America edition of Democracy in America, Tocqueville’s Recollections: The French Revolution of 1848 and Its Aftermath, Alexis de Tocqueville and Gustave de Beaumont in America: Their Friendship and Their Travels, all in collaboration with the translator Arthur Goldhammer. He has also co-edited The Tocqueville Reader: A Life in Letters and Politics. For Further Investigation Exploring American Democracy with Alexis de Tocqueville as Guide: a 2015 seminar led by Olivier Zunz and Arthur Goldhammer at the University of Virginia still has a website, with an unparalleled collection of resources, including bibliographies of magnificent detail. Arthur Goldhammer describes his collaboration with Olivier Zunz: a "harmonious collaboration" that became an "intellectual friendship" The benchmark historical-critical edition of Democracy in America by Eduardo Nolla