Ben Franklin's World

“People are complicated” is a truism that holds in the past and the present. Seldom do we find a person where all of their actions and thoughts are black and white. What we see instead is that people are colorful because they aren’t just one thing and they don’t think and act in one way. Human identities are one area where we find a lot of colorfulness and complexity. Most humans have multiple Identities based in geography, nationality, religious affiliation, race and ethnicity, and also gender. Jen Manion, a Professor of History and of Sexuality and Women’s and Gender Studies at Amherst College and author of the book, Female Husbands: A Trans History, joins us to investigate the early American world of female husbands, people who were assigned female at birth and then transed-gender at some point in their lives to live as men. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/359 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 002: Cornelia King, “That So Gay” Exhibit at the Library Company of Philadelphia 🎧 Episode 013: Rachel Hope Cleves, Charity & Sylvia: A Same-Sex Marriage in Early America 🎧 Episode 080: Jen Manion, Liberty's Prisoners: Prisons and Prison Life in Early America  🎧 Episode 266: Johann Neem, Education in Early America 🎧 Episode 292: Craft in Early America 🎧 Episode 309: Philip Reid, Merchant Ships of the Eighteenth Century 🎧 Episode 354: John Wood Sweet, The Sewing Gir’s Tale 🎧 Episode 357: Eric Jay Dolin, Privateering During the American Revolution  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

For much of the colonial period, Spain claimed almost all of North America as Spanish territory. It displayed this claim on maps and in the administrative units it created to govern this vast territory: New Spain and La Florida. Charles Tingley is a Senior Research Librarian at the St. Augustine Historical Society in St. Augustine, Florida, and an expert in the history of St. Augustine. He joins us to explore the early American history of La Florida through the lens of one of its capitals: the City of St. Augustine. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/358 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 082: Alejandra Dubcovsky, Information & Communication in the Early American South 🎧 Episode 167: Eberhard Faber, The Early History of New Orleans 🎧 Episode 178: Karoline Cook, Muslims & Moriscos in Colonial Spanish America 🎧 Episode 241: Molly Warsh, Pearls & the Nature of the Spanish Empire 🎧 Episode 319: Ada Ferrer, Cuba, An Early American History 🎧 Episode 334: Brandon Bayne, Missions and Mission Building in New Spain 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

How did the Continental Congress approach creating military forces that could go toe-to-toe with the British military during the American War for Independence? Eric Jay Dolin joins us to answer part of that question by looking at the creation of the United States’ privateer fleet. Dolin is the author of fifteen books about the maritime history of early America, including Rebels at Sea: Privateering in the American Revolution. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/357 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 153: Committees and Congresses of the American Revolution 🎧 Episode 161: Smuggling in the American Revolution 🎧 Episode 208: Nathaniel Philbrick, Turning Points of the American Revolution 🎧 Episode 288: Tyson Reeder, Smugglers & Patriots in the 18th-Century Atlantic World 🎧 Episode 309: Philip Reid, Merchant Ships of the Eighteenth Century 🎧 Episode 348: Ricardo Herrera, Valley Forge 🎧 Episode 352: James Forten and the Making of the United States REQUEST A TOPIC 📨 Topic Request Form 📫 liz@benfranklinsworld.com WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter  👩‍💻 Join the BFW Listener Community 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

In 1682, the first Assembly of Pennsylvania and the Delaware counties met in Chester, Pennsylvania, and adopted “the Great Law,” a humanitarian code that guaranteed the people of Pennsylvania liberty of conscience. “The Great Law” created an environment that not only welcomed William Penn’s fellow Quakers to Pennsylvania but also created space for the migration of other unestablished religions, such as the Lutherans, Schwenkfelders, and Moravians. Paul Peucker, an archivist and the Director of the Moravian Archives in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, joins us to investigate the establishment of the Moravian Church in North America. Paul is the author of many articles, essays, and books about the Moravians and their history, including Herrnhut: The Formation of a Moravian Community, 1722-1732. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/356 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 025: Jessica Parr, Inventing George Whitefield 🎧 Episode 075: Peter Drummey, How Archives Work 🎧 Episode 134: Spence McBride, Clergymen and the Politics of Revolutionary America 🎧 Episode 135: Julie Holcomb, Moral Commerce 🎧 Episode 173: Marisa Fuentes, Colonial Port Cities and Slavery 🎧 Episode 214: Christopher Grasso, Skepticism & American Faith 🎧 Episode 311: Kate Carte, Religion and the American Revolution 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

On April 10th, 1606, King James I granted the Virginia Company of London a charter. Just over a year later, on May 14, 1607, this privately-funded, joint-stock company established the first, permanent English colony in North America at Jamestown, in the colony of Virginia.  What work did the Virginia Company have to do to establish this colony? How much money did it have to raise, and from whom did it raise this money, to support its colonial venture? Misha Ewen, a Lecturer in early modern history at the University of Bristol and author of The Virginia Venture: American Colonization and English Society, 1580-1660, joins us to discuss the early history of the Virginia Company and its early investors. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/355 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 079: James Horn, What is a Historic Source? 🎧 Episode 120: Marcia Zug, A History of Mail Order Brides in Early America 🎧 Episode 150: Woody Holton, Abigail Adams: Revolutionary Speculator 🎧 Episode 186: Max Edelson, The New Map of the British Empire 🎧 Episode 213: Rebecca Fraser, The Pilgrims of Plimoth 🎧 Episode 250: Virginia, 1619 🎧 Episode 274: Alan Gallay, Walter Ralegh: Architect of Empire 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

History tells us who we are and how we came to be who we are. It also allows us to look back and see how far we’ve come as people and societies. Of course, history also has the power to show us how little has changed over time. John Wood Sweet, a professor of history at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and author of the book, The Sewing Girl’s Tale: A Story of Crime and Consequences in Revolutionary America, winner of the 2023 Bancroft Prize in American History, joins us to investigate the first published rape trial in the United States and how one woman, Lanah Sawyer, bravely confronted the man who raped her by bringing him to court for his crime. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/354 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 020: Kyle Bulthuis, Four Steeples Over the City Streets 🎧 Episode 069: Abby Chandler, Law, Order, and Sexual Misconduct in Colonial New England 🎧 Episode 113: Brian Murphy, Building the Empire State 🎧 Episode 174: Thomas Apel, Yellow Fever in the Early American Republic 🎧 Episode 185: Joyce Goodfriend, Early New York City & Its Culture 🎧 Episode 190: Jennifer Goloboy, Origins of the American Middle Class 🎧 Episode 225: Elaine Forman Crane, The Poison Plot: Adultery & Murder In Colonial Newport 🎧 Episode 257: Catherine O’Donnell, Elizabeth Seton An Early American Life 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

How did Indigenous people adapt to and survive the onslaught of Indigenous warfare, European diseases, and population loss between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries? How did past generations of Indigenous women ensure their culture would live on from one generation to the next so their people would endure? Brooke Bauer, an assistant professor of history at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville and author of the book Becoming Catawba: Catawba Women and Nation Building, 1540-1840, joins us to investigate these questions and what we might learn from the Catawba. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/353 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 082: Alejandra Dubcovsky, Information & Communication in the Early American South 🎧 Episode 158: The Revolutionaries’ Army 🎧 Episode 223: Susan Sleeper-Smith, A Native American History of the Ohio River Valley & Great Lakes Region 🎧 Episode 323: Michael Witgen, American Expansion and the Political Economy of Plunder 🎧 Episode 342: Elizabeth Ellis, The Great Power of Small Native 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

People of African descent have made great contributions to the United States and its history. Think about all of the food, music, dance, medicine, farming and religious practices that people of African descent have contributed to American culture. Think about the sacrifices they’ve made to create and protect the United States as an independent nation. Matthew Skic, a Curator of Exhibitions at the Museum of the American Revolution in Philadelphia, joins us to investigate the life and deeds of the Forten Family. A family of African-descended people who worked in the revolutionary era and beyond to build a better world for their family, community, state, and nation. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/352 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 142: Manisha Sinha, A History of Abolition 🎧 Episode 151: Defining the American Revolution 🎧 Episode 157: The Revolution’s African American Soldiers 🎧 Episode 245: Celebrating the Fourth of July 🎧 Episode 277: Whose Fourth of July?  🎧 Episode 332: Experiences of Revolution Part 1: Occupied Philadelphia  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

African chattel slavery, the predominant type of slavery practiced in colonial North America and the early United States, did not represent one monolithic practice of slavery. Practices of slavery varied by region, labor systems, legal codes, and empire. Slavery also wasn’t just about enslavers enslaving people for their labor. Enslavers used enslaved people to make statements about their social status, as areas of economic investment that built generational wealth, and as a form of currency. Nicole Maskiell, an associate professor of History at the University of South Carolina and the author of Bound By Bondage: Slavery and the Creation of the Northern Gentry, joins us to investigate the practice of slavery in Dutch New Netherland and how the colony’s elite families built their wealth and power on the labor, skills, and bodies of enslaved Africans and African Americans. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/351 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 121: Wim Klooster, The Dutch Moment in the 17th-Century Atlantic World 🎧 Episode 139: Andrés Reséndez, The Other Slavery 🎧 Episode 170: Wendy Warren, Slavery in Early New England 🎧 Episode 185: Joyce Goodfriend, Early New York City and its Culture 🎧 Episode 220: Margaret Newell, New England Indians, Colonists, and the Origins of Slavery 🎧 Episode 242: David Young, A History of Early Delaware 🎧 Episode 256: Christian Koot, Mapping Empire in the Chesapeake 🎧 Episode 324, Andrea Mosterman, New Netherland and Slavery   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

Before the American Revolution became a war and a fight for independence, the Revolution was a movement and protest for more local control of government. So how did the American Revolution get started? Who worked to transform a series of protests into a revolution? This is a BIG question with no one answer. But one American who worked to transform protests into a coordinated revolutionary movement was a Boston politician named Samuel Adams. Stacy Schiff, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, joins us to explore and investigate the life, deeds, and contributions of Samuel Adams using details from her book, The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/350 Complementary Episodes 🎧 Episode 130: Paul Revere’s Ride Through History 🎧 Episode 145: Rosemarie Zagarri, Mercy Otis Warren and the American Revolution  🎧 Episode 152: Bernard Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution 🎧 Episode 153: Revolutionary Committees and Congresses 🎧 Episode 193: Partisans: The Friendship and Rivalry of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson 🎧 Episode 228: Eric Hinderaker, The Boston Massacre 🎧 Episode 296: Serena Zabin, The Boston Massacre: A Family 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