The History of the Americans

We are back in New Sweden. In 1638, shortly after establishing Fort Christina at the site of today’s Wilmington, Delaware, Peter Minuit would die in a hurricane on the way back to Sweden. The settle...

Your podcaster spent the weekend just passed in San Francisco at the Annual Meeting of the American Historical Association. I learned a lot, but especially how transparently politicized so many profe...

In podcast time, we’ve been knocking around the northeast of today’s United States for just about two years, starting with the Popham colony episodes back in December 2021.  The recent high water mark...

While the first English Civil War rages, Leonard Calvert returns to the Chesapeake in September 1644, after having been away for a bit more than a year. He carries commissions from Charles I to seize ...

This is the first of two episodes that recounts Maryland’s “Plundering Time,” when the English Civil War spilled into the Chesapeake. Protestants would rebel against Catholics, and Richard Ingle, a Pr...

This episode will be easier to follow if you have recently listened to our previous Thanksgiving Sidebar, “Notes on Thanksgiving.” Thanksgiving is less historically genuine than many Americans were l...

It is early spring 1644, and Europeans are fighting Indians in New Netherland and Maryland. In Virginia, though, it is quiet. It has been twelve years since the Second Anglo-Powhatan war ended after a...

Salina Baker lives in Austin – my town – and has just published “The Line of Splendor,”  a biographical novel of the life of General Nathanael Greene, regarded by most historians as George Washington’...

The goal of this “high altitude” episode is to establish a framework for forthcoming episodes covering the period between roughly 1640 and 1670. We look at the geopolitical landscape in the territori...

It is the early 1640s. The Dutch, who have done their level best to foster good relations with the local Indians because war isn’t good for business, have a new governor in charge at New Amsterdam. ...