What made trade with China so important to the new United States that one of Americans’ first acts after securing the United States’ independence was to establish a trade with China and other Southeast Asian countries? Dael Norwood, an Assistant...
In what ways did the Atlantic World contribute to the American Revolution? Empire, slavery, and constant warfare interacted with each other in the Atlantic World. Which brings us to our question: In what ways did the Atlantic World and its issues...
How do empires come to be? How are empires made and who makes them? What role do maps play in making empires? Christian Koot is a Professor of History at Towson University and the author of A Biography of a Map in Motion: Augustine Herrman’s...
Before the English settled in Jamestown, Virginia in 1607 or the Dutch settled near Albany, New York in 1615, a group of French-speaking, Catholic settlers established a settlement in Nova Scotia in 1605. By 1755, nearly 15,000 Acadians lived in...
Early North America was a place rife with violent conflict. Between the 17th and 19th centuries we can see a lot of conflict between different Native American peoples, Native American peoples and colonists, colonists from one empire versus colonists...
History books like to tell us that Native Americans did not fully understand British methods and ideas of trade. Is this really true? Did Native Americans only understand trade as a form of simplistic, gift exchange? Jessica Stern, a Professor of...
At the end of the French and Indian, or Seven Years’ War in 1763, Great Britain claimed that smuggling was a BIG problem in its North American colonies and cracked down on the practice. But just how BIG of a problem was smuggling in North America...
How much merit do the economic factors behind the cry “No Taxation Without Representation” have when we consider the origins of the American Revolution? In this episode of the Doing History: To the Revolution series we begin a 3-episode exploration...