How did Jamaica grow to become the “crown jewel” of the British Atlantic World? Part of the answer is that Jamaica’s women served as some of the most ardent and best supporters of the island’s practice of slavery. Christine Walker, an...
Between 1760 and 1761, Great Britain witnessed one of the largest slave insurrections in the history of its empire. Although the revolt took place on the island of Jamaica, the reverberations of this revolt stretched across the Atlantic Ocean and...
What can a family history tell us about revolutionary and early republic America? What can the letters of a wife and mother tell us about life in the Caribbean during the Age of Revolutions? These are questions Susan Clair Imbarrato, a Professor of...
In 1492, Christopher Columbus’ voyage across the Atlantic linked Europe, the Americas, and the Caribbean. As Columbus’ sponsor, Spain became the first European power to use the peoples, resources, and lands of the Americas and Caribbean as the basis...
Who do we count as family? If a relative was born in a foreign place and one of their parents was of a different race? Would they count as family? Eighteenth-century Britons asked themselves these questions. As we might suspect, their answers varied...
The Atlantic World has brought many disparate peoples together, which has caused a lot of ideas and cultures to mix. How did the Atlantic World bring so many different peoples and cultures together? How did this large intermixing of people and...
The Spanish, French, and English played large roles in the origins of colonial America. But so too did the Dutch. During the 17th century, they had a “moment” in which they influenced European colonization and development of the Atlantic World...
The Middle Passage forced millions of African men, women, and children to migrate across the Atlantic Ocean, but did you know that there existed an even more deadly voyage for slaves? For many Africans the journey into slavery did not end with their...
Arrr, so ye like pirates do ye? Did ye know that as much as 33% of pirate crews were made up of captured seamen, not pirates? We’ll be talkin' about the “Golden Age” of pirates in this here episode of Ben Franklin’s World with historian and pirate...