Raid on America 1: Overview of the Anglo-Dutch Wars
Season 1 · Episode 172
Tuesday, December 31, 2024 • Duration 41:10
This is the first of two or three episodes - your podcaster hasn't decided yet -- about a daring Dutch raid on the West Indies and the English colonies of North America during the Third Anglo-Dutch War. The extended raid, led by Commander Cornelis Evertsen the Youngest of the Admiralty of the Dutch province of Zeeland and a privateer named Jacob Benckes, was a sideshow in that war, yet its consequences were far-reaching. Among other accomplishments, Evertsen, known to his fans as Kees the Devil, and Benckes, "subdued three English colonies, depopulated a fourth, captured or destroyed nearly 200 enemy vessels, inflicted a serious injury upon the Virginia tobacco trade, wiped out the English Newfoundland fisheries, and caused unending panic in the New England colonies.” They recovered New York for the Dutch to the great if fleeting joy of much of its citizenry, and so demoralized the English that Parliament turned against the war and forced Charles II to sue for peace.
The story is best understood in the context of the Anglo-Dutch Wars, which have been in the background of many of our episodes. This episode, therefore, is a primer on the first two Anglo-Dutch wars, and the run-up to the third, which will feature in the next episode.
Map of the Low Countries at the relevant time (note the corrider denoted the "Bishopbric of Leige" connecting the Dutch Republic to France):
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Useful background episode: https://thehistoryoftheamericans.com/the-fall-of-new-amsterdam-and-the-founding-of-new-york/
Selected references for this episode (Commission earned for Amazon purchases through the episode notes on our website)
Donald G. Shomette and Robert D. Haslach, Raid on America: The Dutch Naval Campaign of 1672-1674
C. R. Boxer, "Some Second Thoughts on the Third Anglo-Dutch War, 1672-1674," Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 1969.
Third Anglo-Dutch War (Wikipedia)
Four Days Battle (Wikipedia)
Raid on the Medway (Wikipedia)
New Jersey Is Revolting!
Season 1 · Episode 171
Wednesday, December 18, 2024 • Duration 33:22
In 1672, the settlers of the New Jersey proprietary colony arose in a bloodless rebellion against Philip Carteret, appointed by the proprietors as governor. The wannabe rebels formed an illegal legislature, and installed Captain James Carteret as "president," putting them in conflict with Lord John Berkeley and Sir George Carteret, James's father. The conflict had to do with taxes, quitrents, and title to land. John Ogden, ancestor of your podcaster, emerged as a key player in the "popular party." By the summer of 1673, the proprietors, with the help of the Duke of York and King Charles II, had put down the rebellion. James, now virtually disowned by his father, fled to Carolina, but along the way would be captured by the Dutch captain Cornelis Evertsen the Youngest, known to his many fans as "Kees the Devil." James, or one of his resentful allies, would describe the defenses of New York to Evertsen, setting up the Dutch reconquest of New York.
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Useful background: https://thehistoryoftheamericans.com/ohhhh-whaddabout-new-jersey/
Selected references for this episode (Commission earned for Amazon purchases through the episode notes on our website)
John E. Pomfret, Province of East New Jersey, 1609-1702: The Rebellious Proprietary
James Carteret: The Black Sheep (Interesting blog post on James Carteret)
Spanish Florida and the “Republic of Indians”
Season 1 · Episode 162
Saturday, September 7, 2024 • Duration 28:40
While the English were consolidating their territory on most of the eastern seaboard of North America in the 1600s, Spanish Florida plugged along with its sole city at St. Augustine, with little European population growth. That simple fact obscures remarkable changes in the civil society of the future Sunshine State. From the 1570s, after the Jesuits had given up, until the 1720s, a small band of Franciscan friars, at no time numbering more than around fifty, built a network of wood and thatched missions throughout the region. They converted tens of thousands of Florida Indians to Catholicism, many practicing with such diligence that a visiting Frenchman wrote that the Apalachee were “scarcely distinguishable [in their practices] from Europeans who had been Christians for centuries.”
The relationship between the Franciscans in Florida and the indigenous peoples was not only different than anywhere in English or Dutch North America, it was different from everywhere else in the Spanish New World, including New Mexico at the same time, and California and Texas in the following century. As a result, the relationship between the Spanish and the Indians of Florida was symbiotic, one of shared religion, trade, and mutual support rather than conquest.
Unfortunately, it would all fall apart when the English Carolinians marched south looking for people to enslave.
Map of Spanish Missions in Florida 1560s - 1720s:
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Selected references for this episode (Commission earned for Amazon purchases through the website)
Michael Gannon (ed), The History of Florida
Wreck of the La Nuestra Senora de Atocha
Sidebar: Herbert Hoover’s Memorial Day Speech at Valley Forge
Season 2 · Episode 74
Monday, May 30, 2022 • Duration 35:47
On May 30, 1931, the Saturday after Memorial Day, the beleaguered President Herbert Hoover addressed a crowd of 20,000 people under sweltering heat at Valley Forge. This episode looks at that speech in the context of Hoover's life and times. Contemporary listeners will see much that is familiar in Hoover's speech -- politicians are in many ways similar across generations -- and also sentiments that we have not heard from our presidents in a long time.
Twitter: @TheHistoryOfTh2
Facebook: The History of the Americans Podcast
References for this episode
William E. Leuchtenburg, Herbert Hoover
Herbert Hoover Memorial Day Address at Valley Forge, May 30, 1931
New York Times coverage
Jessie De Priest tea at White House
Men at Work - "Down Under"
Theme song to "All In The Family"
Herbert Hoover speech of November 4, 1932
The Road to Plymouth Part 1: The First Pilgrims
Season 1 · Episode 73
Friday, May 27, 2022 • Duration 37:04
We are on the road to Plymouth. There are several strands that weave together in 1620, when the Pilgrims on the Mayflower land at an abandoned Indian village known as Patuxet, at a site John Smith had named Plymouth. One of those strands is the rise of dissident Protestantism in England, and the idea that it might best be dealt with by transplanting early Separatists to the New World. The first such project, an attempt in 1597 to make a Separatist colony on islands at the mouth of the St. Lawrence River, would fail spectacularly. But it would also be an important precursor of the settlement that many -- not all, but many -- Americans identify as the national origin story.
Twitter: @TheHistoryOfTh2
Facebook: The History of the Americans Podcast
References for this episode
David B. Quinn, "The First Pilgrims," The William and Mary Quarterly, July 1966.
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (Pilgrim)
Champlain Invades New York, Again
Season 1 · Episode 72
Sunday, May 22, 2022 • Duration 36:19
Samuel de Champlain returns to New France in 1615, and leads an alliance of Huron and Algonquin tribes into western New York State to attack Onondaga, the heavily fortified heart of Iroquois territory on the site of today's Syracuse. Along the way Champlain goes fishing on Lake Huron and Lake Ontario, and we learn that he was not the first European to do. The battle itself is dramatic. The French and their allies build a huge siege tower that requires two hundred men to move in position. But not all ends well. Champlain is injured, and endures unbelievable pain in the retreat to Huronia. The outcome is a matter of some historical controversy.
Twitter: @TheHistoryOfTh2
Facebook: The History of the Americans Podcast
Selected references for this episode
David Hackett Fischer, Champlain’s Dream
Étienne Brûlé (Wikipedia)
Étienne Brûlé (Dictionary of Canadian Biography)
Susquehannock (Wikipedia)
Casablanca ("There are certain sections of New York...")
The Fifth Column Podcast
Map of Champlain's route through Huronia and into Iroquoia:
Map of Champlain's route in 1615, from Champlain's Dream
The Life and Times of Samuel Argall and Some Other Stuff
Season 1 · Episode 71
Wednesday, May 11, 2022 • Duration 28:24
We're back after our week off! In this episode we touch on our vacation driving the Natchez Trace, and then proceed briskly to the career of Samuel Argall - Pocahontas's kidnapper - in the service of the Virginia Company and himself. Most importantly, we look at the hilariously devious ruse that Argall deployed in 1613 to "displant" the French colony on Mt. Desert Island, Maine.
Twitter: @TheHistoryOfTh2
Facebook: The History of the Americans Podcast
Selected references for this episode
Seymour V. Connor, "Sir Samuel Argall: A Biographical Sketch," The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, April 1951.
Casablanca (Your papers please)
Pierre Biard
Natchez Trace
Sidebar: Justice Gorsuch and the “Insular Cases”
Season 1 · Episode 70
Wednesday, April 27, 2022 • Duration 30:55
This episode is a “Sidebar,” which is our term for an episode that is off the timeline of the History of the Americans. This episode centers on a concurring opinion delivered by Justice Neil Gorsuch in a case handed down by the United States Supreme Court only a few days ago, on April 21, 2022. The case, United States vs. Vaello Madero, addresses a pretty unexciting question to most of us -- whether the Constitution requires Congress to extend Supplemental Security Income benefits to residents of Puerto Rico to the same extent it makes those benefits available to the residents of the States. That is not the interesting part.
Justice Gorsuch's concurring opinion is, however, very interesting, an eloquent re-telling of the history of a series of cases -- the "Insular Cases" -- handed down in the years following the Spanish-American war, the moment in which the United States started dabbling in the European habit of true empire building. The Insular Cases are both an analytical mess and remain on the books as bad law today, as Justice Gorsuch compellingly argues. Enjoy!
Selected references for this episode
United States v. Vaello Madero
Daniel Immerwahr, How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States
Insular Cases (Wikipedia)
Plessy v. Ferguson (Wikipedia)
U.S. Citizen Vs U.S. National: Differences
"Breaker Morant," epitaph scene
Jamestown and the Powhatans Part 11: London Town
Episode 69
Friday, April 22, 2022 • Duration 39:06
It is late winter, 1616. When last we left our lovers, John and Rebecca Rolfe were in receipt of a request from the Virginia Company to come to London. They had a young son, Thomas, barely a year old, so this must not have been an easy decision to make.
This episode is about that trip to London in 1616 and 1617. The young family sailed in April 1616 on Samuel Argall’s frigate Treasurer, the same ship onto which Pocahontas had been lured and kidnapped three years before. In addition to the Rolfes, Powhatan’s son-in-law, Uttamatomakin, came along at the paramount chief’s behest to learn what he could of the English. And the English would learn a lot about them.
Twitter: @TheHistoryOfTh2
Facebook: The History of the Americans Podcast
References for this episode
Camilla Townsend, Pocahontas And The Powhatan Dilemma
David Price, Love and Hate in Jamestown: John Smith, Pocahontas, and the Start of a New Nation
The Blue Brothers (Tunnel scene)
Jamestown and the Powhatans Part 10: True Love
Season 1 · Episode 68
Thursday, April 14, 2022 • Duration 40:36
This episode is about the kidnapping and ransom of Pocahontas in 1613, the romancing of her by John Rolfe, her conversion to Christianity, and their marriage in 1614, which settled the First Anglo-Powhatan War. We look at the two protagonists, their different personalities, their motives, and the extent of their emotional attachment. My primary source for this episode is a very interesting book written only in 2004 by Camilla Townsend, “Pocahontas and the Powhatan Dilemma.” Professor Townsend reads all the various accounts of Pocahontas’ life critically, in the sense of thoughtfully, trying to imagine what she must have felt under the circumstances described by the various European men who encountered her and wrote down what they believed happened.
Twitter: @TheHistoryOfTh2
Facebook: The History of the Americans Podcast
References for this episode
Camilla Townsend, Pocahontas And The Powhatan Dilemma
Mawage
John Philip Sousa, "Powhatan's Daughter March"
Errata: I misspoke when I said that Thomas Rolfe would have many children - he had many grandchildren, all descended from his only daughter, Jane Rolfe, who would marry Robert Bolling. Their son John Bolling would have six children, all of whom would marry and have children of their own.
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