Episode 243: Joseph Adelman, Revolutionary Print Networks

by Emily SneffJune 18, 2019

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For the American Revolution to be successful, it needed ideas people could embrace and methods for spreading those ideas. It also needed ways for revolutionaries to coordinate across colonial lines.

How did revolutionaries develop and spread their ideas? How did they communicate and coordinate plans of action?

Joseph Adelman, an Assistant Professor of History at Framingham State University and author of Revolutionary Networks: The Business and Politics of Printing the News, 1763-1789, joins us to investigate the roles printers and their networks played in developing and spreading ideas of the American Revolution.

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

Joseph Adelman, an Assistant Professor of History at Framingham State University and author of Revolutionary Networks: The Business and Politics of Printing the News, 1763-1789, joins us to investigate the roles printers and their networks played in developing and spreading ideas of the American Revolution.

As we explore the work of printers and their ability to create and spread information, Joe reveals the physical and intellectual labor of the early American printer; How print shops worked and the different media they produced; And, details about how printers developed and used information networks to feed their presses and the American Revolution.

What You’ll Discover

Early American printers and their work
The types of work printers printed
The printing family and the roles it played in the print shop
Printer networks
The business of printing in the 18th century
How printers made money
Tools of the printing trade
How printers acquired the tools of the printing trade
How Benjamin Franklin made money as a printer
Eighteenth-century newspapers
Links between printers, newspapers, and the post office
How printers chose what information to print
How early American printers avoided printing fake news
Historical sources that tell us about early American printers
Book history and its methodology for historical research
The idea of a free and open press
How printers shaped the ideas of the American Revolution
Printers and reporting the Boston Tea Party
Why we need to understand printers to understand the American Revolution

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Time Warp Question

In your opinion, what might have happened if Franklin hadn’t sold his printing business to Hall and he had had to weather the American Revolution as a working printer? How would printer Franklin have handled the American Revolution and do you think he would have influenced the Revolution in ways that were different from how he actually influenced the Revolution?