Ben Franklin's World

This is an episode you’ve been waiting for!Mark Tabbert, the Director of Archives and Exhibits at the George Washington Masonic National Memorial Association and the author of Almanac of American Freemasonry and A Deserving Brother: George Washington and Freemasonry, joins us so we can investigate and better understand Freemasonry and its role in Early America.Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/329 Complementary Episodes🎧 Episode 026: Robert Middlekauff, George Washington’s Revolution🎧 Episode 033: Douglas Bradburn, George Washington & His Library🎧 Episode 127: Caroline Winterer, American Enlightenments🎧 Episode 130: Paul Revere’s Ride Through History🎧 Episode 149: George Goodwin, Benjamin Franklin in London🎧 Episode 207: Nick Bunker, Young Benjamin Franklin🎧 Episode 317: Jews in Early America REQUEST A TOPIC📨 Topic Request Form📫 liz@benfranklinsworld.comWHEN YOU'RE READY🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter 👩‍💻 Join the BFW Listener CommunityLISTEN 🎧🍎 Apple Podcasts 💚 Spotify 🎶 Amazon Music🛜 PandoraCONNECT🦋 Liz on Bluesky👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn🛜 Liz’s WebsiteSAY THANKS💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We know from our explorations of early America that not all Americans were treated equally or enjoyed the freedoms and liberties other Americans enjoyed.Warren Milteer Jr., an Assistant Professor of History at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and the author of North Carolina’s Free People of Color and Beyond Slavery’s Shadow, joins us to explore the lives and experiences of free people of color, men and women who ranked somewhere in the middle or middle bottom of early American society.Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/328 Complementary Episodes🎧 Episode 118: Christy Clark Pujara: The Business of Slavery in Rhode Island🎧 Episode 142: Manisha Sinha, A History of Abolition🎧 Episode 176: Daina Ramey Berry, The Value of the Enslaved from Womb to Grave🎧 Episode 289: Marcus Nevius, Maroonage and the Great Dismal Swamp🎧 Episode 312: Joshua Rothman, The Domestic Slave Trade  REQUEST A TOPIC📨 Topic Request Form📫 liz@benfranklinsworld.comWHEN YOU'RE READY🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter 👩‍💻 Join the BFW Listener CommunityLISTEN 🎧🍎 Apple Podcasts 💚 Spotify 🎶 Amazon Music🛜 PandoraCONNECT🦋 Liz on Bluesky👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn🛜 Liz’s WebsiteSAY THANKS💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How do we know what we know about Benjamin Franklin? We know historians, museum curators, and archivists rely on historical documents and objects to find and learn information about the past. But how does a documentary filmmaker present what they know about history through video?David Schmidt works as a senior producer at Florentine Films where he worked alongside Ken Burns to produce a 2-episode documentary about the life of Benjamin Franklin. The documentary is called Benjamin Franklin and Schmidt joins us for a behind-the-scenes tour of documentary filmmaking and to investigate some of the lesser-known details of Ben Franklin’s life.Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/327 Complementary Episodes🎧 Episode 022: Vivian Bruce Conger, Deborah Read Franklin & Sally Franklin Bache🎧 Episode 149: George Goodwin, Benjamin Franklin in London🎧 Episode 169: Thomas Kid, The Religious Life of Benjamin Franklin🎧 Episode 175: Daniel Epstein, The Revolution in Ben Franklin’s House🎧 Episode 207: Nick Bunker, Young Benjamin Franklin🎧 Episode 320: Ben Franklin’s London House  REQUEST A TOPIC📨 Topic Request Form📫 liz@benfranklinsworld.comWHEN YOU'RE READY🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter 👩‍💻 Join the BFW Listener CommunityLISTEN 🎧🍎 Apple Podcasts 💚 Spotify 🎶 Amazon Music🛜 PandoraCONNECT🦋 Liz on Bluesky👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn🛜 Liz’s WebsiteSAY THANKS💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

With Ukrainian sovereignty and democracy under attack, Americans have been wondering: Should our government be doing more than placing economic sanctions on Russia? Should I, as U.S. military veteran, travel to Ukraine and offer to fight in their army? What would official U.S. military involvement mean for the politics of Europe and in our age of nuclear weapons?While the situation in Ukraine is new and novel, Americans’ desire to assist other nations seeking to create or preserve their democracies and republics is not new. Maureen Connors Santelli, an Associate Professor of History at Northern Virginia Community College and author of The Greek Fire: American-Ottoman Fervor in the Age of Revolutions, joins us to investigate the Greek Revolution and early Americans’ reactions to it.Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/327 Complementary Episodes🎧 Episode 017: François Furstenburg, When the United States Spoke French🎧 Episode 052: Ronald A. Johnson, Early United States-Haitian Diplomacy🎧 Episode 124: James Alexander Dun, Making the Haitian Revolution in Early America🎧 Episode 314: Colin Calloway, Native Americans in Early American Cities🎧 Episode 323: Michael Witgen, American Expansion and the Political Economy of Plunder REQUEST A TOPIC📨 Topic Request Form📫 liz@benfranklinsworld.comWHEN YOU'RE READY🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter 👩‍💻 Join the BFW Listener CommunityLISTEN 🎧🍎 Apple Podcasts 💚 Spotify 🎶 Amazon Music🛜 PandoraCONNECT🦋 Liz on Bluesky👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn🛜 Liz’s WebsiteSAY THANKS💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What do we know about the American Revolution? Why is it important that we see the Revolution as a political event, a war, a time of social and economic reform, and as a time of violence and upheaval?Woody Holton, a Professor of History at the University of South Carolina and the author of Liberty is Sweet: The Hidden History of the American Revolution, joins us to explore and discuss answers to these questions so that we can better see and understand the American Revolution as a whole event.Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/325 Complementary Episodes🎧 Episode 060: David Preston, Braddock’s Defeat🎧 Episode 128: Alan Taylor: American Revolutions: A Continental History🎧 Episode 144: Rob Parkinson, The Common Cause🎧 Episode 150: Woody Holton, Abigail Adams: Revolutionary Speculator🎧 Episode 152: Bernard Bailyn, Ideological Origins of the American Revolution🎧 Episode 181: Max Edelson, The New Map of the British Empire🎧 Episode 294: Mary Beth Norton, 1774: The Long Year of Revolution 🎧 Episode 296: Serena Zabin, The Boston Massacre  REQUEST A TOPIC📨 Topic Request Form📫 liz@benfranklinsworld.comWHEN YOU'RE READY🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter 👩‍💻 Join the BFW Listener CommunityLISTEN 🎧🍎 Apple Podcasts 💚 Spotify 🎶 Amazon Music🛜 PandoraCONNECT🦋 Liz on Bluesky👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn🛜 Liz’s WebsiteSAY THANKS💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

After Henry Hudson’s 1609-voyage along the river that now bears his name, Dutch traders began to visit and trade at the area they called New Netherland. In 1614, the Dutch established a trading post near present-day Albany, New York. In 1624, the Dutch West India Company built the settlement of New Amsterdam.How did the colony of New Netherland take shape? In what ways did the Dutch West India Company and private individuals use enslaved labor to develop the colony?Andrea Mosterman, an Associate Professor of History at the University of New Orleans and author of Spaces of Enslavement: A History of Slavery and Resistance in Dutch New York, joins us to explore what life was like in New Netherland and early New York, especially for the enslaved people who did much of the work to build this Dutch, and later English, colony.Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/324  Complementary Episodes🎧 Episode 121: Wim Klooster, The Dutch Moment in the 17th-Century Atlantic World🎧 Episode 159: The Revolutionary Economy🎧 Episode 161: Smuggling and the American Revolution🎧 Episode 170: Wendy Warren, Slavery in Early New England🎧 Episode 185: Joyce Goodfriend, Early New York City and its Culture🎧 Episode 226: Ryan Quintana, Making the State of South Carolina🎧 Episode 242: David Young, A History of Early Delaware🎧 Episode 256: Christian Koot, Mapping Empire in the Chesapeake   REQUEST A TOPIC📨 Topic Request Form📫 liz@benfranklinsworld.comWHEN YOU'RE READY🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter 👩‍💻 Join the BFW Listener CommunityLISTEN 🎧🍎 Apple Podcasts 💚 Spotify 🎶 Amazon Music🛜 PandoraCONNECT🦋 Liz on Bluesky👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn🛜 Liz’s WebsiteSAY THANKS💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the Treaty of Paris, 1783, Great Britain ceded to the United States all lands east of the Mississippi River and between the southern borders of Canada and Georgia. How would the United States take advantage of its new boundaries and incorporate these lands within its governance?Answering this question presented a quandary for the young United States. The lands it sought to claim by right of treaty belonged to Indigenous peoples.Michael Witgen, a Professor of History at Columbia University and a citizen of the Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe, joins us to investigate the story of the Anishinaabeg and Anishinaabewaki, the homelands of the Anishinaabeg people, with details from his book, Seeing Red: Indigenous Land, American Expansion, and the Political Economy of Plunder in North America.Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/323 Complementary Episodes🎧 Episode 051: Catherine Cangany, A History of Early Detroit🎧 Episode 064: Brett Rushforth, Native American Slavery in New France🎧 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🎧 Episode 264: Michael Oberg, The Treaty of Canandaigua, 1794🎧 Episode 286: Native Sovereignty🎧 Episode 310: Rosalyn LaPier, History of the Blackfeet REQUEST A TOPIC📨 Topic Request Form📫 liz@benfranklinsworld.comWHEN YOU'RE READY🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter 👩‍💻 Join the BFW Listener CommunityLISTEN 🎧🍎 Apple Podcasts 💚 Spotify 🎶 Amazon Music🛜 PandoraCONNECT🦋 Liz on Bluesky👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn🛜 Liz’s WebsiteSAY THANKS💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

During the War for American Independence, the British Army attempted to create chaos and inflict economic damage to the revolutionaries’ war effort by issuing two proclamations that promised freedom to any enslaved person who ran away from their revolutionary owners. How did enslaved people make their escape to British lines? What do we know about their lives and escape experiences?Karen Cook-Bell, an Associate Professor of History at Bowie State University and author of Running From Bondage: Enslaved Women and Their Remarkable Fight for Freedom in Revolutionary America, joins us to investigate the experiences of enslaved women who feld their bondage for the British Army’s promise of freedom.Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/322 Complementary Episodes🎧 Episode 137: Erica Dunbar, The Washingtons’ Runaway Slave, Ona Judge🎧 Episode 142: Manisha Sinha, A History of Abolitionism🎧 Episode 157: The Revolution’s African American Soldiers🎧 Episode 162: Dunmore’s New World🎧 Episode 212: Researching Biography🎧 Episode 277: Whose Fourth of July?🎧 Episode 312: Joshua D. Rothman, The Domestic Slave Trade REQUEST A TOPIC📨 Topic Request Form📫 liz@benfranklinsworld.comWHEN YOU'RE READY🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter 👩‍💻 Join the BFW Listener CommunityLISTEN 🎧🍎 Apple Podcasts 💚 Spotify 🎶 Amazon Music🛜 PandoraCONNECT🦋 Liz on Bluesky👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn🛜 Liz’s WebsiteSAY THANKS💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On July 5, 1852, Frederick Douglass delivered a speech to an anti-slavery society and he famously asked “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?”In this episode, we explore Douglass’ thoughtful question within the context of Early America: What did the Fourth of July mean for African Americans in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries?To help us investigate this question, we are joined by Martha S. Jones, the Society of Black Alumni Presidential Professor and Professor of History at Johns Hopkins University, and Christopher Bonner, an Assistant Professor of History at the University of Maryland.This episode originally posted as Episode 277.Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/321 Complementary Episodes🎧 Episode 018: Danielle Allen, Our Declaration🎧 Episode 119: Steve Pincus, The Heart of the Declaration🎧 Episode 141: A Declaration in Draft🎧 Episode 157: The Revolution’s African American Soldiers🎧 Episode 166: Freedom and the American Revolution🎧 Episode 245: Celebrating the Fourth🎧 Episode 255: Martha S. Jones, Birthright Citizens REQUEST A TOPIC📨 Topic Request Form📫 liz@benfranklinsworld.comWHEN YOU'RE READY🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter 👩‍💻 Join the BFW Listener CommunityLISTEN 🎧🍎 Apple Podcasts 💚 Spotify 🎶 Amazon Music🛜 PandoraCONNECT🦋 Liz on Bluesky👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn🛜 Liz’s WebsiteSAY THANKS💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Benjamin Franklin was born in Boston on January 17, 1706, to Abiah Folger and Josiah Franklin. Although Franklin began his life as the youngest son of a youngest son, he traveled through many parts of what is now the northeastern United States and the Province of Quebec and lived in four different cities in three different countries: Boston, Philadelphia, London, and Passy, France.In honor of Benjamin Franklin’s 316th birthday, Márcia Balisciano, the Founding Director of the Benjamin Franklin House museum in London, joins us to explore Benjamin Franklin’s life in London using details from the largest artifact Franklin left behind: his rented rooms at 36 Craven Street.Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/320 Complementary Episodes🎧 Episode 001: James N. Green, Library Company of Philadelphia🎧 Episode 022: Vivian Bruce Conger, Deborah Read Franklin & Sally Franklin Bache🎧 Episode 149: George Goodwin, Benjamin Franklin in London🎧 Episode 169: Thomas Kid, The Religious Life of Benjamin Franklin🎧 Episode 175: Daniel Epstein, The Revolution in Ben Franklin’s House🎧 Episode 207: Nick Bunker, Young Benjamin Franklin  REQUEST A TOPIC📨 Topic Request Form📫 liz@benfranklinsworld.comWHEN YOU'RE READY🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter 👩‍💻 Join the BFW Listener CommunityLISTEN 🎧🍎 Apple Podcasts 💚 Spotify 🎶 Amazon Music🛜 PandoraCONNECT🦋 Liz on Bluesky👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn🛜 Liz’s WebsiteSAY THANKS💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts💚 Leave a rating on Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices