Ben Franklin's World

How did Americans find out about the Revolution? What effect did printed materials like newspapers, pamphlets, and books have on shaping the debate about independence? And just how big of a role did Thomas Paine’s Common Sense play in causing Americans to declare their independence from Great Britain? In this episode of the Doing History: To the Revolution! series, we explore these question with four scholars of Revolutionary communication.

How much can the work of one historian impact how we view and study the American Revolution? We investigate the answer to this question by exploring the life and work of Pauline Maier, a historian who spent her life researching and investigating the American Revolution. Over the course of her lifetime, Maier wrote four important books about the American Revolution: From Resistance to Revolution, The Old Revolutionaries, American Scripture, and Ratification.

Declaring independence from Great Britain required the formation of new governments. But why did Americans want and need new governments? And how did their interactions and experiences with their old, colonial governments inform their decisions to create new governments? Barbara Clark Smith, author of The Freedoms We Lost, leads us on an exploration of how Americans interacted with their government before and after the American Revolution.

How did the American revolutionaries organize and coordinate local, provincial, and intercolonial action? How did the revolutionaries form governments? In this episode of the Doing History: To the Revolution series we explore governance and governments of the American Revolution with three scholars: Mark Boonshoft, Benjamin Irvin, and Jane Calvert.

What caused the American Revolution? Was it the issue of ‘No Taxation without Representation?’ Was it conflict and change in the social order of colonial and British society? Or, was the Revolution about differences in ideas about governance and the roles government should play in society? We explore one set of ideas about the origins of the American Revolution with Bernard Bailyn, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning book, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution.


Our series exploring the history and histories of the American Revolution kicks off with the difficult task of trying to define the American Revolution. We do this by going behind-the-scenes of the Museum of the American Revolution in Philadelphia.

Explore a different, largely unknown aspect of Abigail Adams' life: Her financial investments and speculation during the American Revolution.

Benjamin Franklin spent nearly 18 years living in London, the heart of the British Empire, both as a private citizen and as a colonial agent. How did Franklin's experiences in London shape his opportunities and view of the world? George Goodwin, author of Benjamin Franklin in London, leads us on an exploration of Franklin's life in London.

Explore how everyday men and women experienced life in colonial America and how the American Revolution transformed their personal lives and work by investigating the life of Betsy Ross.

When we discuss the military history of the American War for Independence, we focus on specific battles or details about the men who served in George Washington’s Continental Army. Rarely do we ask questions about the approximately 50,000 men who served in the British Army that opposed them.

Explore how George Washington overcame the ill-trained and inexperienced troops, inadequate pay, and supply problems that plagued the Continental Army to win the War for American Independence.

Mercy Otis Warren wasn’t your typical early American woman. She was a woman with strong political viewpoints, which she wrote about and published for the world to see and consider. In this episode, Rosemarie Zagarri, author of A Woman’s Dilemma: Mercy Otis Warren and the American Revolution, helps us kick off a new, six-episode series about the people of the American Revolution by taking us through the life of Mercy Otis Warren.

How do you get people living in thirteen different colonies to come together and fight for independence? Patriot leaders asked this question, especially as the American Revolution turned from a series of political protests against imperial policies to a bloody war for independence. Robert Parkinson, author of the award-winning book, The Common Cause: Creating Race and Nation in the American Revolution, has some ideas for how patriot leaders answered this question.

How did the framers draft the Constitution of 1787? What powers does the Constitution provide the federal government? Why do we elect the President of the United States by an electoral system rather than by popular vote? These are some of the many questions you’ve asked since November 2016. Michael Klarman, author of The Founders’ Coup: The Making of the United States Constitution joins us to discuss the United States Constitution and how and why the framers drafted it.

Most histories of American abolitionism begin just before the Civil War, during the Antebellum period. But the movement to end chattel slavery in America began long before the United States was a nation. Manisha Sinha, a professor of history at the University of Connecticut and author of the award-winning book The Slaves Cause: A History of Abolition, takes us through the early American origins of the the abolition movement.