Episode 155: Pauline Maier’s American Revolution

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.

Mary Beth Norton, Joanne Freeman, Todd Estes, and Lindsay Chervinsky join us as we journey through Maier’s body of work to better understand the American Revolution and how one historian can impact how we view and study history.

About the Series

The mission of episodes in the Doing History: To the Revolution series, is to ask not just “what is the history of the American Revolution?” but “what are the histories of the American Revolution?”

The Doing History series explores early American history and how historians work. It’s produced by the Omohundro Institute.

Be sure to check out Doing History season 1, Doing History: How Historians Work.

About the Show

Ben Franklin’s World is a podcast about early American history.

It is a show for people who love history and for those who want to know more about the historical people and events that have impacted and shaped our present-day world.

Each episode features a conversation with a historian who helps us shed light on important people and events in early American history.

Ben Franklin’s World is a production of the Omohundro Institute.

Episode Summary

Pauline Maier

Mary Beth Norton, Joanne Freeman, Todd Estes, and Lindsay Chervinsky join us as we journey through Pauline Maier’s body of work to better understand the American Revolution and how one historian can impact how we view and study history.

Pauline Maier spent her life researching and investigating the American Revolution and over the course of her lifetime, she wrote four influential books about it: From Resistance to Revolution, The Old Revolutionaries, American Scripture, and Ratification.

What You’ll Discover

  • What it was like to study early American history in the 1960s
  • How we understood the American Revolution in the 1960s
  • Crowd action and the American Revolution
  • Sons of Liberty
  • Samuel Adams
  • Legacy of the American Revolution
  • Pauline Maier
  • American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence
  • How we understand the drafting of the Declaration of Independence
  • The “other” declarations
  • The Declaration of Independence as a sacred text
  • History of the Constitution ratification debates
  • Why we should look at ratification as a simultaneous, multi-state process
  • The Documentary History of the Ratification of the Ratification
  • The “long” American Revolution
  • Washington’s use of his cabinet
  • The impact one historian’s work can have on how we understand the American Revolution

 

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Complementary Episodes

Episode 007: Sara Georgini, John Adams and the Adams Papers Editorial Project
Episode 031: Benjamin Franklin and the Papers of Benjamin Franklin Editorial Project
Episode 074: Mary Wigge, Martha Washington
Episode 098: Gautham Rao, Birth of the American Tax Man
Episode 112: Mary Beth North, The Tea Crisis of 1773
Episode 123: Revolutionary Allegiances
Episode 141: A Declaration in Draft
Episode 143: Michael Klarman, The making of the United States Constitution
Episode 152: Bernard Bailyn, Origins of the American Revolution

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