WEBVTT
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Hello, everyone.
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Welcome to the Revolution 250 podcast.
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I am Bob Allison.
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I chair the Rev 250 advisory group.
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I also teach at Suffolk University.
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Revolution 250 is a
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consortium of 75 plus
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organizations in
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Massachusetts planning
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commemorations of the
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American Revolution.
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And our guest today is Jim Amboski.
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By the way, Jim, I should have asked,
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is that how you pronounce your name?
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You're like one of the few
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people who actually got it
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right on the first try.
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So thank you very much.
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You're welcome.
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You're welcome.
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And Jim is the historian,
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senior producer of Worlds
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Turned Upside Down.
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He also is the,
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he works at the Roy
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Rosenzweig Center for
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History and New Media at
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George Mason University.
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Your doctorate's from UVA,
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and then you did your
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undergraduate work and your
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master's at Miami University in Ohio.
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So welcome, Jim.
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Well, thank you very much, Bob,
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for having me.
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And I'm
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Really excited to have this conversation.
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It's great.
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So Worlds Turned Upside Down
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is a terrific podcast that
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tells the story of the
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revolution with historians, drama,
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you do narration.
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You have a great voice, by the way.
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Thanks.
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Yeah.
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It was a
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An idea I had actually in my
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previous job when I was at
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George Washington's Mount Vernon,
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but it wasn't going to be a
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series that would be really
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kind of fit for Mount Vernon.
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I was much more interested
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in telling an expansive
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story that didn't
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necessarily focus on George Washington.
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And I was also...
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Had the back of my mind, well,
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with the coming 250th of the revolution,
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well, maybe I'll write a book,
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a kind of big synthesis
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that would appeal to public audiences.
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And I have to say, and as you know,
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and as some of your audience members know,
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it's very tough to write a book.
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And I'm having a...
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difficult enough time to
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write that first book.
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But also I had gotten into
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podcasting at Mount Vernon and I thought,
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well,
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maybe this could be a podcast series.
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And when the opportunity
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came up to move to George Mason in 2022,
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I brought this idea with me.
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And we really wanted to leverage
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all of the good and amazing
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scholarship and new
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discoveries in the last 20,
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25 years to create an
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expansive story that really
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challenged what people
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thought they knew about the
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revolution of simply not a
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story about the birth of
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the United States, but really, you know,
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from our perspective,
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an empire that fell apart
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of a transatlantic crisis
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and imperial civil war that
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shaped the lives of
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thousands and millions of people.
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Jim Collison, Right.
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Yeah,
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I was just listening to the first
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episode about Jumanville, Len,
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and the way you tell that story,
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it's really, it's as though you're there.
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Tim Grahl, Oh, good.
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Yeah, and it's, it's a great,
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it's a really
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a terrific example of what
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we're trying to do with the
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series overall.
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I mean,
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most of the times when we start the
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story of the Seven Years' War,
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which creates the
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conditions for the revolution,
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it starts with Washington
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and Jumovie Glenn.
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We wanted to ask the question,
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what if we started that
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story from Jumovie's
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perspective as he's lying there wounded?
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And what possibilities does
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that open up for telling
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our audiences about New France,
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about indigenous cultures,
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and about why those guys
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are there in the first place?
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And, you know,
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use that as a very clear
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signal that this is going
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to be a little different
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than what you've heard before.
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Right.
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Because when you start with Washington,
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it also preordains where
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the story is going.
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Right.
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We know how it turns out.
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Right.
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No one at that no one in
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1754 knew how any of this
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was going to turn out.
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Right, right.
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Washington is an ambitious
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young Virginia aristocrat
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who has aspirations to get
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a red coat and a commission
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in the British Army,
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and he's not at that moment
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the man he will become.
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But as you're absolutely right,
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we are sometimes
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preconditioned that if we start with that
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version of the story, well,
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we know where it's going to go.
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Let's see if we can trouble the narrative,
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as the great historian Bill
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Cronin likes to say,
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and mess with people's
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assumptions and lead them
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to different possibilities.
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Right.
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And so how has your
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understanding of all of
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this changed as you've been
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doing the series,
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trying to look at it from
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different points of view,
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different perspectives,
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and trouble the narrative?
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It's a terrific question.
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And actually,
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the first three episodes are
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emblematic of my kind of
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own journey and developed this series.
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The original idea for the
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series is that episode one
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would essentially be the
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climactic end of the Seven Years' War.
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But during the interview process,
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we talked to Christiane
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Crouch at Bard College,
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a terrific scholar of New
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France in the 18th century,
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particularly thinking about
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masculinity and martial valor.
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That interview was
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revelatory in the sense
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that she talked a lot about
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why New France or why
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French colonists were so
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adept at working with
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native peoples of what
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native peoples had on their
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own agendas vis-a-vis of
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both the British and the French.
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And why the French were able to,
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essentially, up until 1754, they were,
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I guess you could arguably say,
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the most dominant European
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power in North America,
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despite their relatively
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small population.
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So that is a great example
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of following your sources.
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And in any case,
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Christiane was a key source for us.
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It led us to rethink the
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first three episodes and
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really say to ourselves, all right,
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if we're really going to do
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this in a way that we...
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that to meet the promise
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that we've set for ourselves,
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let's actually tell the
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story of the Seven Years
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War and in three episodes.
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Right.
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And leverage all this great
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stuff that Christians has
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given us and and then to
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rethink the series from there.
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And it's been it was the right decision.
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Right.
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At the end of the day.
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Right.
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Yeah,
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I don't want to deprive anyone of the
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surprise you get from
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listening to the world's
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turned upside down,
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but there are other things
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that change as you've gone
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along from the first three episodes.
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Yeah, I think so.
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We have been, I wouldn't say changed,
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but we've been found ways
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to implement more
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concretely than we had
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originally imagined in terms of, you know,
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we're on a video podcast right now.
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And so if we were to pull up a map of,
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We could easily see it.
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But in our case, our show is audio only.
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And so we are thinking very
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creatively about how to
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describe visual resources like maps.
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There's a powder horn that
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comes up in episode three
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that was just a fun
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challenge to figure out.
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And it's how to make all
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this work in a compelling way.
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That's good.
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So we're talking with Jim
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Amboski from the Roy
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Rosenzweig Center for
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History and New Media at
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George Mason University, the historian,
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senior producer for The
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World's Turned Upside Down Project.
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And again,
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you have your hands in a lot of
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things in the 18th century, well,
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even 19th century.
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Another of your projects is
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the 1828 catalog for Jefferson,
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the library Jefferson created for UVA.
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So that's an interesting
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idea.
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Yeah,
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so I'm happy to talk a little bit
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about that.
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So that was during my
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postdoctoral fellowship
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days at the University of
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Virginia Law Library.
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And as many folks might know,
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but they can go on the
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website and learn more
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there at the 1828 Catalog Project,
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is that when Jefferson was
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designing the University of
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Virginia in the 1820s, he had a very
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he had a very clear idea
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about how he wanted the law to be taught.
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And by the 19th century,
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as Jefferson is becoming more
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curious to know if the
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Republican is going to survive.
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He's more afraid of what the
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federal government's going to do.
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He's also increasingly
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concerned that British law
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in the 18th century, such that it exists,
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there really isn't British law,
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but we'll just use that term,
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that English judicial
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decisions from the reign of
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George III onward and other
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have essentially infected American law.
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And that American jurists
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like his nemesis and cousin,
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John Marshall,
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is using this case law to
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make decisions in American courts.
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And what Jefferson says is, no,
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we can't be having that.
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The purest expression of our
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law as it was at the time
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of the colonial founding in
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the 17th century was by Sir Edward Cook.
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And so we want to design a
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curriculum that focuses on Cook.
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Lawyers out there will know
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that Cook is a very,
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very dense individual.
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compared to Blackstone,
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which is very readable.
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Oh, yeah.
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And Jefferson constructed
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and personally chose the
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books for the legal library
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at UVA in the 1820s to
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realize his vision.
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So the project was already
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underway by the time I got there.
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My colleague, Dr. Randy Flaherty,
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who is now head of special
00:08:55.105 --> 00:08:56.505
collections at the Lowell Library,
00:08:57.186 --> 00:08:59.086
had begun this during her
00:08:59.126 --> 00:09:00.607
own postdoctoral fellowship.
00:09:01.067 --> 00:09:01.948
And then my colleague and I,
00:09:01.989 --> 00:09:02.649
Lauren Moulds,
00:09:03.288 --> 00:09:05.432
began to try to realize the
00:09:05.491 --> 00:09:07.514
digital version of it.
00:09:07.553 --> 00:09:09.154
The digital version of it is
00:09:09.475 --> 00:09:10.596
essentially a website that
00:09:10.636 --> 00:09:12.038
allows you to browse the
00:09:12.097 --> 00:09:14.081
books that would have been on the shelf.
00:09:14.600 --> 00:09:15.841
Many of them have been digitized.
00:09:15.881 --> 00:09:17.024
Many of them are in the
00:09:17.104 --> 00:09:19.745
special collections at the Law Library.
00:09:19.947 --> 00:09:21.187
The goal with it was to help
00:09:21.668 --> 00:09:23.428
show how Jefferson was
00:09:23.509 --> 00:09:24.908
responding to these changes
00:09:24.948 --> 00:09:25.749
that he abhorred in the
00:09:25.928 --> 00:09:27.570
19th century by creating a
00:09:27.649 --> 00:09:29.009
legal framework through
00:09:29.049 --> 00:09:31.030
education that would allow the Union,
00:09:31.431 --> 00:09:32.551
or at least Virginia,
00:09:32.971 --> 00:09:34.711
to endure and to resist
00:09:34.871 --> 00:09:36.091
challenges and impositions
00:09:36.231 --> 00:09:38.972
of a more English-style law
00:09:39.013 --> 00:09:40.013
he was uncomfortable with.
00:09:40.352 --> 00:09:40.793
Right, right.
00:09:41.333 --> 00:09:42.193
And it's interesting that he
00:09:42.214 --> 00:09:43.293
and Marshall both studied
00:09:43.333 --> 00:09:44.615
under George Wythe.
00:09:44.695 --> 00:09:44.855
Right.
00:09:46.345 --> 00:09:47.644
You know, Jefferson, Adams,
00:09:47.684 --> 00:09:49.605
others write about slogging through Cook,
00:09:49.625 --> 00:09:50.686
how dense Cook is.
00:09:50.765 --> 00:09:52.126
But then they really cherish Cook.
00:09:52.206 --> 00:09:54.207
His ideas were right.
00:09:54.587 --> 00:09:54.827
Yeah.
00:09:54.888 --> 00:09:55.447
Oh, yeah.
00:09:55.687 --> 00:09:56.368
There's a letter.
00:09:56.788 --> 00:09:58.688
I think he's writing to John Page.
00:09:58.749 --> 00:10:01.289
Jefferson's writing to John Page, like 17,
00:10:01.289 --> 00:10:02.330
early 1760s.
00:10:02.910 --> 00:10:04.510
And he just says that,
00:10:04.770 --> 00:10:06.172
essentially says the devil
00:10:06.231 --> 00:10:08.011
Cook in recognition that
00:10:08.032 --> 00:10:09.312
it's just so dense.
00:10:10.293 --> 00:10:11.774
Like some of the footnotes
00:10:12.053 --> 00:10:13.433
in that book are longer
00:10:13.474 --> 00:10:14.975
than the actual text of the book,
00:10:15.034 --> 00:10:15.815
which is hilarious.
00:10:15.855 --> 00:10:16.014
Yeah.
00:10:16.754 --> 00:10:17.895
You had to get through it.
00:10:18.076 --> 00:10:19.155
That's what you had to do.
00:10:19.317 --> 00:10:20.096
And they revered him.
00:10:20.557 --> 00:10:21.096
Yeah.
00:10:21.277 --> 00:10:21.437
Yeah.
00:10:21.998 --> 00:10:23.018
So you didn't become a
00:10:23.057 --> 00:10:24.798
lawyer as a result of this experience.
00:10:25.339 --> 00:10:25.799
I know,
00:10:25.840 --> 00:10:27.399
but I did take an extreme interest
00:10:27.460 --> 00:10:30.542
in legal history, which was a very,
00:10:30.562 --> 00:10:33.263
you know, formative place to do that.
00:10:33.302 --> 00:10:34.464
One of the great law school.
00:10:34.864 --> 00:10:35.063
Yeah.
00:10:35.323 --> 00:10:35.464
Yeah.
00:10:36.745 --> 00:10:37.865
And another of your projects
00:10:38.085 --> 00:10:39.905
is on the Scottish court of sessions,
00:10:39.966 --> 00:10:40.866
digital archive.
00:10:40.907 --> 00:10:41.206
That's a,
00:10:42.446 --> 00:10:44.106
tremendous resource that you
00:10:44.206 --> 00:10:45.827
have been again speaking of
00:10:45.908 --> 00:10:47.208
legal history you've now
00:10:47.528 --> 00:10:49.429
gotten this archive of the
00:10:49.490 --> 00:10:51.029
scottish court obsessions
00:10:51.130 --> 00:10:53.011
in this way of looking at
00:10:53.052 --> 00:10:54.231
this atlantic world in a
00:10:54.272 --> 00:10:56.273
different way and seeing so
00:10:56.332 --> 00:10:57.913
yeah can you tell us a bit
00:10:57.933 --> 00:11:00.254
about this yeah so my my
00:11:00.315 --> 00:11:01.716
own personal research is on
00:11:01.775 --> 00:11:02.615
scotland and the american
00:11:02.635 --> 00:11:03.756
revolution I'm particularly
00:11:03.797 --> 00:11:05.158
interested in immigrants but
00:11:06.485 --> 00:11:07.785
My postdoctoral fellowship
00:11:08.066 --> 00:11:10.427
at UVA Law was on the basis
00:11:10.767 --> 00:11:13.087
of 58 linear feet,
00:11:13.107 --> 00:11:15.268
so think about 58 banker's boxes,
00:11:15.668 --> 00:11:18.850
of these printed court
00:11:18.889 --> 00:11:20.809
records from Scotland's Court of Session,
00:11:20.850 --> 00:11:22.750
which is Scotland's Supreme Civil Court.
00:11:23.431 --> 00:11:24.991
And the important thing to know is that
00:11:26.500 --> 00:11:27.299
England and Scotland have
00:11:27.379 --> 00:11:28.642
two distinct legal systems.
00:11:29.241 --> 00:11:31.264
So England, like the American colonies,
00:11:31.303 --> 00:11:32.044
was common law.
00:11:32.885 --> 00:11:34.167
Scotland is civil law.
00:11:34.206 --> 00:11:36.349
So it's based on Roman canonical law.
00:11:37.429 --> 00:11:38.812
And they began to make the
00:11:38.851 --> 00:11:41.553
decision in 1710 to print
00:11:42.254 --> 00:11:43.336
all of the documents that
00:11:43.355 --> 00:11:44.417
would come before the court.
00:11:45.077 --> 00:11:46.298
The briefs, the evidence,
00:11:46.499 --> 00:11:47.279
things like that.
00:11:48.120 --> 00:11:49.783
in part because to eliminate
00:11:49.942 --> 00:11:55.068
errors from Clark's copying manuscripts.
00:11:55.470 --> 00:11:57.851
It led to this profusion of
00:11:59.094 --> 00:12:00.034
printed documentary
00:12:00.095 --> 00:12:01.437
material that you would see
00:12:01.456 --> 00:12:02.357
the individual lawyers
00:12:02.398 --> 00:12:03.558
would have their own collections,
00:12:04.039 --> 00:12:05.682
their professional societies would,
00:12:05.741 --> 00:12:06.523
the judges would.
00:12:07.163 --> 00:12:08.984
So UVA ended up with the
00:12:09.024 --> 00:12:10.024
collections of two men
00:12:10.065 --> 00:12:12.025
named William Craig Lord Craig,
00:12:12.067 --> 00:12:12.826
who was a judge on the
00:12:12.907 --> 00:12:15.389
court in the 18th and 19th centuries,
00:12:15.928 --> 00:12:16.710
and Andrew Skeen,
00:12:16.730 --> 00:12:17.549
who was very briefly
00:12:17.610 --> 00:12:18.951
Solicitor General for Scotland.
00:12:20.272 --> 00:12:21.692
The thing to know about
00:12:21.732 --> 00:12:24.254
these wonderful documents is that, yes,
00:12:24.294 --> 00:12:26.416
there can be some dense legalese in there,
00:12:26.956 --> 00:12:28.437
but because they're civil documents,
00:12:28.476 --> 00:12:29.258
they're telling stories
00:12:29.298 --> 00:12:30.298
about people's lives,
00:12:30.379 --> 00:12:31.600
not about their criminality,
00:12:32.080 --> 00:12:33.841
but about who they were and
00:12:34.000 --> 00:12:36.602
the trials and tribulations they faced.
00:12:37.504 --> 00:12:39.205
So you can imagine in an
00:12:39.664 --> 00:12:41.186
aristocratic world like Scotland,
00:12:41.225 --> 00:12:42.326
there are a lot of cases
00:12:42.366 --> 00:12:43.227
that deal with land
00:12:43.268 --> 00:12:45.729
inheritance and things of this nature.
00:12:45.788 --> 00:12:47.530
But you're also quite
00:12:47.551 --> 00:12:50.072
amazingly given access to
00:12:50.793 --> 00:12:51.634
people's marriages as
00:12:51.673 --> 00:12:52.553
they're falling apart,
00:12:53.715 --> 00:12:55.076
bad deals that have taken
00:12:55.135 --> 00:12:56.756
place between business partners.
00:12:57.278 --> 00:12:58.298
And in my case, more...
00:12:59.178 --> 00:13:00.539
more fascinatingly for me,
00:13:01.081 --> 00:13:02.741
is that we see a lot of
00:13:02.861 --> 00:13:04.783
people trying to resolve
00:13:05.344 --> 00:13:06.884
legal problems that came
00:13:07.085 --> 00:13:08.407
out of the American Revolution.
00:13:08.927 --> 00:13:10.087
So think, for instance,
00:13:10.528 --> 00:13:12.629
Glaswegian merchants who
00:13:13.149 --> 00:13:14.490
are trying to recover debts
00:13:14.831 --> 00:13:16.153
from the state of Virginia
00:13:16.633 --> 00:13:17.913
in the aftermath of the war,
00:13:18.654 --> 00:13:21.336
or American loyalists who
00:13:22.738 --> 00:13:24.278
either don't necessarily
00:13:24.318 --> 00:13:25.600
have a claim that has to do
00:13:25.620 --> 00:13:27.282
with their loyalty, but they're using
00:13:28.022 --> 00:13:30.583
loyalty as a strategy to try
00:13:30.644 --> 00:13:32.105
to win the judge's sympathy.
00:13:33.345 --> 00:13:35.145
We see that in quite a number of cases.
00:13:36.466 --> 00:13:38.048
It all speaks to the idea
00:13:38.107 --> 00:13:40.828
that even as the war ends
00:13:40.908 --> 00:13:42.210
officially in September 1783,
00:13:42.210 --> 00:13:44.110
the war goes on in
00:13:44.191 --> 00:13:46.331
courtrooms for years afterwards.
00:13:46.873 --> 00:13:48.113
Some historians have accounted for that,
00:13:48.153 --> 00:13:49.394
but we need a lot more work
00:13:49.453 --> 00:13:50.934
to really grapple with the
00:13:51.014 --> 00:13:53.677
legal fallout of the revolution.
00:13:55.283 --> 00:13:55.724
Fascinating.
00:13:56.085 --> 00:13:57.086
We're talking with Jim
00:13:57.126 --> 00:13:58.870
Amboski from the Roy
00:13:58.909 --> 00:14:00.533
Rosenzweig Center for
00:14:00.572 --> 00:14:02.235
History and New Media and the
00:14:02.980 --> 00:14:05.461
producer of Worlds Turned Upside Down.
00:14:05.481 --> 00:14:08.043
And is this, by the way,
00:14:08.102 --> 00:14:09.182
you said your real interest
00:14:09.222 --> 00:14:10.903
is in Scotland and the war.
00:14:11.183 --> 00:14:12.964
Is this where your real,
00:14:13.745 --> 00:14:14.565
you've really done a lot
00:14:14.585 --> 00:14:16.125
with loyalists and loyalists.
00:14:17.046 --> 00:14:19.886
Why are the Scots, the Scots in America,
00:14:19.907 --> 00:14:22.687
do they tend to be more loyal than, say,
00:14:22.768 --> 00:14:24.187
other ethnic groups?
00:14:25.229 --> 00:14:26.448
It's a terrific question.
00:14:27.089 --> 00:14:28.610
It kind of depends on when they come.
00:14:29.509 --> 00:14:30.671
There's an earlier migration
00:14:30.730 --> 00:14:33.912
in the 1730s and 1740s,
00:14:34.211 --> 00:14:34.852
particularly from the
00:14:34.932 --> 00:14:36.293
highlands and western islands,
00:14:36.734 --> 00:14:37.953
when really the clan system
00:14:37.994 --> 00:14:40.075
begins to accelerate its decline.
00:14:41.556 --> 00:14:43.275
Those folks who go to New York,
00:14:43.336 --> 00:14:44.116
North Carolina,
00:14:44.616 --> 00:14:46.158
they tend to be what we
00:14:46.177 --> 00:14:47.418
would later call patriots,
00:14:47.639 --> 00:14:50.361
people who fight for the
00:14:50.402 --> 00:14:52.102
American cause and the revolution.
00:14:52.764 --> 00:14:53.344
In part,
00:14:53.403 --> 00:14:55.225
we think that's true because they
00:14:55.265 --> 00:14:56.746
came over in the early 18th century,
00:14:56.787 --> 00:14:58.447
they had become seasoned in
00:14:58.508 --> 00:15:00.450
American politics and ideology,
00:15:01.470 --> 00:15:02.571
and they had more invested,
00:15:02.650 --> 00:15:04.993
more at stake by that point.
00:15:05.734 --> 00:15:07.034
The folks that I'm interested in,
00:15:07.095 --> 00:15:08.716
the folks that come post
00:15:08.735 --> 00:15:09.956
Seven Years War forward,
00:15:10.017 --> 00:15:10.998
but particularly the 1760s
00:15:11.097 --> 00:15:11.477
and early 1770s,
00:15:13.820 --> 00:15:14.400
A lot of them
00:15:15.140 --> 00:15:16.922
disproportionately tend to be loyalists.
00:15:17.602 --> 00:15:18.442
In part,
00:15:18.703 --> 00:15:21.085
as my colleague Matthew Janique
00:15:21.105 --> 00:15:21.686
would argue,
00:15:21.706 --> 00:15:22.706
who's written a terrific book
00:15:22.745 --> 00:15:24.307
on the Highland soldier in
00:15:24.347 --> 00:15:26.969
North America during this period, in part,
00:15:27.029 --> 00:15:28.309
they remain loyal because
00:15:28.370 --> 00:15:32.332
they see themselves as able
00:15:32.373 --> 00:15:33.433
to take advantage of what
00:15:33.474 --> 00:15:34.914
the empire has to offer to
00:15:34.955 --> 00:15:37.197
them when opportunities,
00:15:37.537 --> 00:15:39.038
when society has since
00:15:39.197 --> 00:15:40.198
failed them in Scotland,
00:15:40.239 --> 00:15:41.259
but they can still go
00:15:41.879 --> 00:15:43.321
to the colonies and get land.
00:15:44.381 --> 00:15:46.003
And because they see this as
00:15:46.043 --> 00:15:47.964
being done in an empire
00:15:48.043 --> 00:15:49.225
headed by a king who
00:15:50.385 --> 00:15:51.307
created the conditions to
00:15:51.346 --> 00:15:52.187
make this possible,
00:15:52.488 --> 00:15:53.548
they're willing to fight for it.
00:15:54.469 --> 00:15:55.669
And so if you know Flora MacDonald,
00:15:55.690 --> 00:15:57.610
the famous Jacobite heroine
00:15:58.692 --> 00:16:00.953
that helps Bonnie Prince
00:16:00.994 --> 00:16:04.235
Charlie escape from Culloden in the 1746,
00:16:04.235 --> 00:16:05.716
she and her husband and her
00:16:05.777 --> 00:16:06.977
children are all loyalists.
00:16:07.918 --> 00:16:09.820
And they pay the price for that loyalty.
00:16:10.293 --> 00:16:10.673
Interesting.
00:16:11.073 --> 00:16:13.015
So what happens to them as a result of,
00:16:13.557 --> 00:16:14.197
it seems like they're on
00:16:14.217 --> 00:16:16.100
the wrong side in both of these cases.
00:16:16.179 --> 00:16:17.341
Exactly.
00:16:17.861 --> 00:16:18.562
Yeah, exactly.
00:16:18.602 --> 00:16:19.504
In Flora's case,
00:16:20.105 --> 00:16:20.926
and Flora Frazier has
00:16:20.946 --> 00:16:21.566
written a really great
00:16:21.605 --> 00:16:22.748
biography of her recently,
00:16:22.788 --> 00:16:24.470
but in Flora McDonald's case,
00:16:26.206 --> 00:16:28.067
her husband and the sort of
00:16:28.107 --> 00:16:30.090
militia that he's associated with,
00:16:30.149 --> 00:16:31.009
they are defeated at the
00:16:31.049 --> 00:16:31.931
Battle of Moores Creek
00:16:31.971 --> 00:16:34.773
Bridge in February 1776.
00:16:34.773 --> 00:16:37.414
It basically breaks the back of Loyalism,
00:16:37.434 --> 00:16:39.115
and particularly Scotch
00:16:39.135 --> 00:16:41.258
Highlander Loyalism in North Carolina.
00:16:42.479 --> 00:16:44.100
And for the next few years,
00:16:44.480 --> 00:16:46.701
while her husband is
00:16:46.761 --> 00:16:49.484
imprisoned in Philadelphia and New York,
00:16:50.203 --> 00:16:52.306
Flora is staying with family.
00:16:52.346 --> 00:16:53.807
Her property's been confiscated.
00:16:54.107 --> 00:16:54.889
Eventually,
00:16:55.408 --> 00:16:56.090
she and her husband are
00:16:56.129 --> 00:16:58.893
reunited in Nova Scotia in 1778,
00:16:58.893 --> 00:17:00.494
and she makes her way back
00:17:00.533 --> 00:17:01.534
to Scotland from that.
00:17:01.595 --> 00:17:03.636
But they lose two sons during the war.
00:17:03.658 --> 00:17:04.739
They're both in the service.
00:17:05.819 --> 00:17:06.059
Yeah.
00:17:06.480 --> 00:17:06.901
Amazing.
00:17:07.181 --> 00:17:07.520
Amazing.
00:17:07.842 --> 00:17:08.803
We're talking with Jim
00:17:08.843 --> 00:17:09.864
Amboski from the Roy
00:17:09.903 --> 00:17:10.944
Rosenfleek Center for
00:17:10.984 --> 00:17:12.425
History and New Media.
00:17:13.166 --> 00:17:13.287
And
00:17:14.622 --> 00:17:16.123
producer of The World's
00:17:16.182 --> 00:17:17.002
Turned Upside Down.
00:17:17.042 --> 00:17:20.365
So how many episodes is this going to be?
00:17:21.405 --> 00:17:22.846
Do you see Worlds Turned Upside Down?
00:17:23.767 --> 00:17:25.988
Five seasons of at least 50 episodes.
00:17:26.208 --> 00:17:28.308
And so the original plan was
00:17:28.328 --> 00:17:29.630
to have 10 episode seasons.
00:17:29.730 --> 00:17:30.150
But again,
00:17:30.230 --> 00:17:31.310
going back to our kind of
00:17:31.411 --> 00:17:34.093
earlier part of our
00:17:34.133 --> 00:17:34.952
conversation where we
00:17:34.992 --> 00:17:36.114
talked about where we got
00:17:36.233 --> 00:17:38.434
more great stuff than we anticipated.
00:17:39.035 --> 00:17:40.036
We've essentially decided to
00:17:40.135 --> 00:17:41.756
add episodes because we
00:17:41.875 --> 00:17:43.916
want to take advantage of
00:17:43.957 --> 00:17:45.178
all the great scholarship
00:17:45.357 --> 00:17:47.479
that people were so generous with.
00:17:47.878 --> 00:17:49.819
And we can tell these really
00:17:49.940 --> 00:17:51.861
creative stories grounded
00:17:51.921 --> 00:17:52.820
in the scholarship and the
00:17:52.840 --> 00:17:53.842
primary sources that we
00:17:53.862 --> 00:17:54.862
didn't anticipate when we
00:17:54.882 --> 00:17:55.642
started our plan.
00:17:55.662 --> 00:17:56.762
That's great.
00:17:56.982 --> 00:17:57.363
That's great.
00:17:58.124 --> 00:18:00.183
And I guess if you did try
00:18:00.203 --> 00:18:01.765
to do this as a video series,
00:18:01.805 --> 00:18:02.786
that would really change.
00:18:02.826 --> 00:18:04.125
And having audio has certain
00:18:04.165 --> 00:18:05.826
advantages in what you can do.
00:18:06.666 --> 00:18:08.628
Yeah, I think, well, the cost goes down,
00:18:08.669 --> 00:18:08.969
certainly.
00:18:11.290 --> 00:18:12.030
But it is,
00:18:12.131 --> 00:18:13.653
it's interesting to think about
00:18:13.673 --> 00:18:14.553
the differences between the
00:18:14.653 --> 00:18:16.315
audio form and the video form.
00:18:16.375 --> 00:18:20.298
I think in the audio form,
00:18:20.337 --> 00:18:21.378
we can almost do more
00:18:21.459 --> 00:18:22.538
narration than you might
00:18:22.579 --> 00:18:24.161
expect in a video format.
00:18:24.240 --> 00:18:24.621
I mean,
00:18:25.162 --> 00:18:27.282
we study these things all the time.
00:18:27.323 --> 00:18:28.364
We kind of look for best
00:18:28.403 --> 00:18:29.305
practices and what our
00:18:29.365 --> 00:18:30.226
colleagues are doing and
00:18:30.266 --> 00:18:32.106
what professional folks
00:18:32.146 --> 00:18:33.208
like Ken Burns are doing
00:18:34.008 --> 00:18:34.769
and thinking about how to
00:18:34.808 --> 00:18:35.809
construct our narration.
00:18:36.400 --> 00:18:37.119
And kind of the differences
00:18:37.140 --> 00:18:38.000
we've noticed right in the
00:18:38.040 --> 00:18:39.662
video is that the narration
00:18:39.741 --> 00:18:40.622
tends to be shorter,
00:18:40.682 --> 00:18:44.084
whereas in the podcast format,
00:18:44.104 --> 00:18:45.545
we can go a little bit long for it.
00:18:46.484 --> 00:18:48.486
But also, you know,
00:18:48.846 --> 00:18:50.267
eventually I do kind of
00:18:50.307 --> 00:18:51.647
have the documentary book now,
00:18:51.708 --> 00:18:52.988
so maybe someday I'll do
00:18:53.127 --> 00:18:53.909
something in video.
00:18:54.568 --> 00:18:55.028
That's good.
00:18:56.190 --> 00:18:57.130
And what kind of an audience
00:18:57.471 --> 00:18:58.250
have you developed?
00:18:59.008 --> 00:18:59.208
Yeah,
00:18:59.248 --> 00:19:00.308
we've been very fortunate to have
00:19:00.548 --> 00:19:01.289
essentially a global
00:19:01.309 --> 00:19:02.309
audience with audience
00:19:02.349 --> 00:19:03.490
primarily in the United States,
00:19:03.590 --> 00:19:06.313
but a fairly large audience
00:19:07.513 --> 00:19:09.095
in the United States, Europe,
00:19:09.154 --> 00:19:10.296
North America and whatnot.
00:19:11.797 --> 00:19:12.737
We tend to have folks who
00:19:12.797 --> 00:19:13.938
are very interested in the
00:19:13.998 --> 00:19:15.338
history of the American Revolution,
00:19:16.079 --> 00:19:16.740
very interested in the
00:19:16.759 --> 00:19:18.101
history of early America or
00:19:18.161 --> 00:19:18.942
history in general,
00:19:19.481 --> 00:19:20.502
which has been really nice.
00:19:20.742 --> 00:19:23.224
And we also have a very, I would say,
00:19:23.704 --> 00:19:24.885
very sophisticated audience.
00:19:25.746 --> 00:19:26.386
One of the things that we
00:19:26.426 --> 00:19:27.386
have found is that
00:19:28.428 --> 00:19:30.108
in thinking about ourselves
00:19:30.169 --> 00:19:31.410
in relation to other shows
00:19:32.309 --> 00:19:36.333
and other studios is that the British,
00:19:36.373 --> 00:19:37.993
through the BBC podcasts and whatnot,
00:19:38.874 --> 00:19:41.316
they do something that a lot of us,
00:19:41.355 --> 00:19:42.596
I think, don't in the United States,
00:19:42.655 --> 00:19:44.477
which is to trust the audience,
00:19:44.757 --> 00:19:47.078
to trust that they can handle complexity.
00:19:47.858 --> 00:19:48.660
And so we've taken the
00:19:48.700 --> 00:19:49.900
position that we are going
00:19:49.960 --> 00:19:51.721
to try to meet that challenge.
00:19:52.682 --> 00:19:53.722
When I was at Mount Vernon,
00:19:53.762 --> 00:19:54.982
I hosted conversations at
00:19:55.002 --> 00:19:55.943
the Washington Library
00:19:56.433 --> 00:19:57.114
And Mike Duncan,
00:19:57.153 --> 00:19:57.734
who has written a really
00:19:57.775 --> 00:19:58.994
great book on Lafayette,
00:19:59.535 --> 00:20:00.276
was one of our guests.
00:20:00.316 --> 00:20:00.955
And that's one of the most
00:20:00.996 --> 00:20:02.195
important lessons I took
00:20:02.236 --> 00:20:03.517
away from our conversation there.
00:20:03.557 --> 00:20:06.178
He said, you have to trust the audience.
00:20:06.837 --> 00:20:08.838
They can handle the nuance.
00:20:09.019 --> 00:20:10.819
And there's a certain limit
00:20:10.880 --> 00:20:11.799
you can go overboard,
00:20:11.861 --> 00:20:12.681
and you have to be very
00:20:12.740 --> 00:20:13.820
careful where that is.
00:20:13.921 --> 00:20:17.282
But if you give them more of
00:20:17.323 --> 00:20:18.242
a richer picture,
00:20:18.262 --> 00:20:20.463
then they walk away knowing
00:20:20.624 --> 00:20:22.644
something more than they did before.
00:20:22.664 --> 00:20:24.145
That's true.
00:20:24.586 --> 00:20:24.865
That's true.
00:20:25.511 --> 00:20:26.593
And it's one of the ironies.
00:20:26.633 --> 00:20:26.833
I mean,
00:20:26.853 --> 00:20:29.153
you look at someone like you with a Ph.D.
00:20:29.193 --> 00:20:32.635
in history in a different
00:20:32.655 --> 00:20:34.257
world or world of maybe 50 years ago,
00:20:34.317 --> 00:20:35.538
you would be teaching.
00:20:35.597 --> 00:20:36.618
And we see we've seen the
00:20:36.659 --> 00:20:38.259
history enrollments have been going down,
00:20:38.299 --> 00:20:39.380
but still there is this
00:20:39.941 --> 00:20:41.741
tremendous hunger for history.
00:20:42.061 --> 00:20:43.303
And there are folk people
00:20:43.343 --> 00:20:44.462
like you who are producing
00:20:45.144 --> 00:20:46.884
really interesting work for
00:20:46.944 --> 00:20:49.145
this audience that isn't an academic one.
00:20:50.074 --> 00:20:52.335
right right and it's it's it
00:20:52.394 --> 00:20:54.797
is an interesting imbalance
00:20:54.876 --> 00:20:56.038
right it's it's not great
00:20:56.077 --> 00:20:56.837
that our enrollments are
00:20:56.877 --> 00:20:59.619
falling it's it's it's
00:20:59.720 --> 00:21:01.079
perilous uh you know to our
00:21:01.121 --> 00:21:02.260
society it's perilous to
00:21:02.280 --> 00:21:04.261
democracy uh history is a
00:21:04.301 --> 00:21:05.163
way to have an informed
00:21:05.202 --> 00:21:06.763
citizenry enough yeah every
00:21:06.864 --> 00:21:07.903
time we needed an informed
00:21:07.943 --> 00:21:09.204
citizenry boy it's right
00:21:09.244 --> 00:21:12.067
now uh and so so we have to
00:21:12.126 --> 00:21:13.047
figure out how to
00:21:14.627 --> 00:21:15.528
and I don't have a good
00:21:15.568 --> 00:21:16.628
concrete solution for this,
00:21:16.749 --> 00:21:20.310
but how to get those
00:21:20.351 --> 00:21:22.071
numbers back up to leverage
00:21:22.112 --> 00:21:22.991
the kind of good work that
00:21:23.011 --> 00:21:24.853
we're doing in the public history space.
00:21:25.373 --> 00:21:26.013
But increasingly,
00:21:26.094 --> 00:21:28.114
academics by and large are
00:21:28.153 --> 00:21:29.115
reaching out to the public.
00:21:29.494 --> 00:21:30.556
How do we leverage that
00:21:30.615 --> 00:21:31.875
enthusiasm for the work
00:21:31.895 --> 00:21:33.876
that we're producing to
00:21:34.096 --> 00:21:35.337
inspire people to take more
00:21:35.377 --> 00:21:37.259
history courses, to become history majors,
00:21:38.318 --> 00:21:40.079
to become fully fledged and
00:21:40.119 --> 00:21:42.221
form members of society that we need?
00:21:42.846 --> 00:21:43.047
Yeah.
00:21:43.967 --> 00:21:44.647
Now,
00:21:44.948 --> 00:21:46.587
how has George Mason become one of the
00:21:46.647 --> 00:21:47.387
leaders in this?
00:21:47.488 --> 00:21:48.608
It's really interesting that
00:21:48.669 --> 00:21:50.209
this particular university
00:21:50.249 --> 00:21:51.750
really is focusing on this
00:21:51.769 --> 00:21:53.309
in such a big way,
00:21:53.329 --> 00:21:55.611
but also a very important way.
00:21:55.631 --> 00:21:55.711
Yeah.
00:21:55.851 --> 00:21:56.770
Very fortunate to be here at
00:21:56.790 --> 00:21:59.451
George Mason because it's
00:21:59.711 --> 00:22:00.612
an interesting story.
00:22:00.872 --> 00:22:03.022
Mason was founded about 51,
00:22:03.022 --> 00:22:04.673
52 years ago as a branch
00:22:04.712 --> 00:22:07.273
campus of University of Virginia.
00:22:07.733 --> 00:22:08.794
It's northern branch campus.
00:22:08.814 --> 00:22:10.154
It became its own independent thing.
00:22:10.755 --> 00:22:12.737
But then 30 years ago, actually,
00:22:12.737 --> 00:22:13.978
30 years ago this year,
00:22:13.998 --> 00:22:16.601
our late colleague, Roy Rosenzweig,
00:22:16.701 --> 00:22:18.422
founded the Center for
00:22:18.461 --> 00:22:19.262
History and New Media,
00:22:19.502 --> 00:22:20.523
which at the time
00:22:20.584 --> 00:22:22.165
essentially consisted of him as he,
00:22:22.665 --> 00:22:23.807
I gather he liked to joke,
00:22:23.886 --> 00:22:25.188
hanging a sign on his
00:22:25.248 --> 00:22:26.108
office door and saying,
00:22:26.128 --> 00:22:27.230
this is what we're doing.
00:22:27.851 --> 00:22:28.731
But this was, you know,
00:22:28.771 --> 00:22:30.192
this is the mid-90s when
00:22:31.574 --> 00:22:33.835
the rise of the internet and
00:22:34.076 --> 00:22:35.757
digital technology became
00:22:35.936 --> 00:22:37.758
more accessible and it
00:22:37.798 --> 00:22:38.718
became possible to
00:22:38.758 --> 00:22:40.398
distribute history in different ways.
00:22:40.499 --> 00:22:42.339
So part of their goal was to
00:22:42.380 --> 00:22:44.080
figure out how do we democratize history?
00:22:44.682 --> 00:22:46.843
How do we not only digitize documents,
00:22:46.883 --> 00:22:47.903
but how do we take data
00:22:48.483 --> 00:22:49.884
package it in a presentable way,
00:22:50.525 --> 00:22:52.287
and make it accessible to
00:22:52.307 --> 00:22:53.406
the public free of charge.
00:22:53.827 --> 00:22:54.647
And that's kind of an
00:22:54.688 --> 00:22:56.348
important vocational thing, right?
00:22:57.349 --> 00:22:58.310
The state's paying us to do
00:22:58.351 --> 00:22:58.871
this good work.
00:22:59.070 --> 00:23:01.071
We have a public obligation
00:23:01.113 --> 00:23:01.712
to make sure it's
00:23:01.752 --> 00:23:02.973
accessible to everybody.
00:23:03.913 --> 00:23:04.634
So from there,
00:23:05.134 --> 00:23:06.336
the center grew in
00:23:06.435 --> 00:23:08.617
developing various digital projects,
00:23:09.097 --> 00:23:10.179
various digital tools,
00:23:10.298 --> 00:23:11.960
and in the last four or five years,
00:23:12.019 --> 00:23:12.720
podcasting.
00:23:12.759 --> 00:23:14.201
So it's kind of a natural
00:23:14.240 --> 00:23:15.422
progression of the legacy.
00:23:16.363 --> 00:23:16.742
Interesting.
00:23:17.461 --> 00:23:18.384
And do you have other things
00:23:18.484 --> 00:23:20.290
in store for the 250th or
00:23:20.371 --> 00:23:22.116
for early American history?
00:23:22.576 --> 00:23:23.196
Yeah, right now,
00:23:23.457 --> 00:23:25.198
in terms of the podcast space,
00:23:25.238 --> 00:23:27.239
we're working on the fourth
00:23:27.278 --> 00:23:28.400
season of our show called
00:23:28.420 --> 00:23:29.799
Your Most Obedient and Humble Servant.
00:23:30.500 --> 00:23:31.500
That series is hosted by
00:23:31.540 --> 00:23:32.221
Catherine Garrett.
00:23:32.261 --> 00:23:33.122
It's a women's history
00:23:33.142 --> 00:23:34.682
podcast show in which she
00:23:34.702 --> 00:23:35.823
and her guests break down a
00:23:35.923 --> 00:23:37.763
letter from an 18th and
00:23:37.784 --> 00:23:38.984
early 19th century woman
00:23:39.825 --> 00:23:41.465
and contextualize it for the audience.
00:23:41.665 --> 00:23:42.645
So a lot of the work that
00:23:43.027 --> 00:23:43.987
y'all are doing at Colonial
00:23:44.007 --> 00:23:46.448
Massachusetts and our
00:23:46.488 --> 00:23:47.568
colleagues at Mass
00:23:47.588 --> 00:23:48.689
Historical with the Adams
00:23:48.729 --> 00:23:50.109
Papers do to annotate
00:23:52.372 --> 00:23:53.993
in paper form, I guess.
00:23:54.413 --> 00:23:55.414
They're annotating a letter
00:23:55.434 --> 00:23:57.497
in audio form for the audience's benefit.
00:23:57.896 --> 00:23:58.837
So season four is going to
00:23:58.857 --> 00:24:00.298
be called a season of revolution.
00:24:01.279 --> 00:24:02.101
And the idea is we're going
00:24:02.121 --> 00:24:03.541
to focus on 15 women who
00:24:04.021 --> 00:24:05.442
lived through the revolutionary era,
00:24:06.144 --> 00:24:07.704
pick a letter or a poem or
00:24:07.744 --> 00:24:08.865
some other kind of document
00:24:09.426 --> 00:24:10.587
and unpack that for the
00:24:10.667 --> 00:24:12.669
audience and figure out how
00:24:13.549 --> 00:24:14.211
the revolutionary
00:24:14.671 --> 00:24:16.251
experience changed them in
00:24:16.291 --> 00:24:17.093
some profound way.
00:24:17.693 --> 00:24:18.074
Interesting.
00:24:18.557 --> 00:24:19.239
It's a great project.
00:24:19.278 --> 00:24:20.920
This has become actually the
00:24:20.980 --> 00:24:22.421
idea of doing a history of
00:24:22.501 --> 00:24:23.702
something in a series of
00:24:23.762 --> 00:24:25.044
documents or in a series of
00:24:25.104 --> 00:24:26.525
buildings or artifacts.
00:24:26.545 --> 00:24:28.487
It's been really a great way
00:24:28.527 --> 00:24:29.587
of reaching an audience,
00:24:29.627 --> 00:24:30.929
but also telling this story.
00:24:30.989 --> 00:24:31.829
And you're right,
00:24:32.130 --> 00:24:34.893
the audience can handle complexity,
00:24:35.053 --> 00:24:36.253
nuance, other things.
00:24:36.846 --> 00:24:37.146
Yeah, yeah.
00:24:37.207 --> 00:24:37.788
I mean,
00:24:37.807 --> 00:24:39.250
there was that history in 100 Objects,
00:24:39.349 --> 00:24:40.092
I think was the British
00:24:40.132 --> 00:24:41.554
Museum was so successful.
00:24:41.974 --> 00:24:43.156
You've seen that replicated.
00:24:44.117 --> 00:24:46.241
And Katie started this show
00:24:46.301 --> 00:24:47.683
as a pandemic project in 2020.
00:24:47.683 --> 00:24:47.884
And so-
00:24:49.440 --> 00:24:50.300
Very fortunately,
00:24:50.340 --> 00:24:51.803
when I moved over to George Mason,
00:24:51.883 --> 00:24:52.744
she reached out and said,
00:24:52.765 --> 00:24:53.506
can we work together?
00:24:53.546 --> 00:24:55.407
And we were like, well, probably,
00:24:55.448 --> 00:24:55.989
but let's see.
00:24:56.028 --> 00:24:57.391
And we figured out how to do it.
00:24:57.471 --> 00:25:00.114
And so it's been a really
00:25:00.153 --> 00:25:01.256
wonderful collaboration.
00:25:01.476 --> 00:25:03.739
And there's a couple of
00:25:03.778 --> 00:25:06.041
recent episodes I focused on, for example,
00:25:06.082 --> 00:25:06.863
the deposition of
00:25:07.344 --> 00:25:08.325
of a woman named Phyllis,
00:25:08.424 --> 00:25:09.785
who was formerly enslaved,
00:25:09.825 --> 00:25:11.826
but her husband, who became free,
00:25:11.946 --> 00:25:13.667
fought for the Continental Army.
00:25:13.728 --> 00:25:15.208
And so in 1830s,
00:25:15.749 --> 00:25:17.609
she's trying to get a share
00:25:17.650 --> 00:25:18.390
of his pension.
00:25:19.030 --> 00:25:20.592
And so that that episode
00:25:21.172 --> 00:25:23.153
really looks at her journey to do that.
00:25:24.493 --> 00:25:25.114
Fascinating.
00:25:27.998 --> 00:25:29.959
You also, while you were at Mount Vernon,
00:25:29.979 --> 00:25:31.199
you also were the editor of
00:25:31.219 --> 00:25:32.819
the Digital Encyclopedia of
00:25:32.859 --> 00:25:34.320
George Washington and also
00:25:34.681 --> 00:25:35.980
produced their League of
00:25:36.020 --> 00:25:36.821
Descendants of the Mount
00:25:36.862 --> 00:25:38.662
Vernon Enslaved Oral History Project.
00:25:38.682 --> 00:25:38.801
I mean,
00:25:38.821 --> 00:25:39.623
you've done a tremendous
00:25:39.682 --> 00:25:41.063
collaborations as well as
00:25:41.663 --> 00:25:43.324
work over the course of your career.
00:25:44.025 --> 00:25:44.825
It seems like you'd have to
00:25:44.845 --> 00:25:45.944
be a lot older to have done
00:25:45.984 --> 00:25:47.046
all the things you have done.
00:25:48.731 --> 00:25:50.032
Well, I'll take that compliment.
00:25:50.053 --> 00:25:50.773
Thank you very much.
00:25:53.976 --> 00:25:54.756
When I was hired to be the
00:25:54.796 --> 00:25:56.156
digital historian at Mount Vernon,
00:25:56.616 --> 00:25:57.837
one of the chief tasks was
00:25:57.877 --> 00:25:59.138
the digital encyclopedia.
00:25:59.679 --> 00:26:01.839
It was a pretty great project so far.
00:26:02.180 --> 00:26:02.921
One of the things that we
00:26:02.941 --> 00:26:05.301
did when we took over,
00:26:05.362 --> 00:26:06.262
I guess you might say,
00:26:06.343 --> 00:26:08.284
is we began reaching out
00:26:08.304 --> 00:26:09.744
with colleagues whom I
00:26:09.785 --> 00:26:11.445
worked with through my UVA days.
00:26:12.185 --> 00:26:13.887
And began working with classrooms,
00:26:14.268 --> 00:26:15.469
particularly Denver Brunsman,
00:26:16.289 --> 00:26:17.391
who's a terrific scholar of
00:26:17.411 --> 00:26:18.372
the revolutionary era,
00:26:18.751 --> 00:26:19.593
working with his students
00:26:19.633 --> 00:26:21.795
to develop the encyclopedia
00:26:21.875 --> 00:26:24.917
as an assignment for his
00:26:25.057 --> 00:26:26.479
students so that we could
00:26:26.558 --> 00:26:27.400
work for them over the
00:26:27.440 --> 00:26:28.401
course of the semester to
00:26:28.441 --> 00:26:29.701
produce a very polished
00:26:31.182 --> 00:26:32.304
encyclopedia entry.
00:26:32.565 --> 00:26:33.184
But also, you know,
00:26:33.224 --> 00:26:34.125
scholars such as yourself,
00:26:34.145 --> 00:26:35.166
we would reach out to for
00:26:35.207 --> 00:26:35.826
certain entries.
00:26:36.008 --> 00:26:36.327
Right.
00:26:37.298 --> 00:26:38.480
we're very grateful to see
00:26:38.500 --> 00:26:39.721
that it's been cited in
00:26:40.500 --> 00:26:41.622
professional publications.
00:26:41.842 --> 00:26:43.182
And so it's making a real difference.
00:26:44.324 --> 00:26:46.226
Now, with respect to the descendants,
00:26:47.646 --> 00:26:50.368
that was a real, one of the,
00:26:51.169 --> 00:26:51.630
probably the most
00:26:51.690 --> 00:26:52.711
meaningful things that I
00:26:52.830 --> 00:26:53.750
did at Mount Vernon.
00:26:54.251 --> 00:26:55.211
We had started an oral
00:26:55.251 --> 00:26:57.013
history project with the
00:26:57.074 --> 00:26:57.953
League of Descendants of
00:26:57.993 --> 00:26:59.255
the Enslaved at Mount Vernon,
00:26:59.776 --> 00:27:00.977
in which they essentially
00:27:01.737 --> 00:27:02.798
they ran the project.
00:27:02.917 --> 00:27:04.057
I was just helping to
00:27:04.238 --> 00:27:05.057
produce the back end
00:27:05.117 --> 00:27:06.038
actually on StreamYard,
00:27:06.098 --> 00:27:07.398
like we're talking on today.
00:27:08.539 --> 00:27:10.099
But I got to sit through all
00:27:10.119 --> 00:27:12.080
of those conversations, or most of them,
00:27:12.580 --> 00:27:13.961
and really listen to
00:27:14.122 --> 00:27:15.561
people's stories and to
00:27:15.582 --> 00:27:19.203
hear about their ancestors'
00:27:19.263 --> 00:27:20.844
connection to the plantation,
00:27:20.864 --> 00:27:22.625
Mount Vernon's plantation,
00:27:23.125 --> 00:27:26.006
and how that connection has
00:27:26.046 --> 00:27:27.227
shaped their lives since.
00:27:27.527 --> 00:27:28.227
And it's a really
00:27:29.208 --> 00:27:30.369
Uh, uh,
00:27:30.590 --> 00:27:32.374
it's really probably one of the
00:27:32.394 --> 00:27:33.875
best things that I was a part of,
00:27:34.057 --> 00:27:34.538
you know, I was,
00:27:34.657 --> 00:27:35.920
I was just very grateful to
00:27:35.960 --> 00:27:37.542
be associated with it.
00:27:39.145 --> 00:27:39.787
So you've had, um,
00:27:41.363 --> 00:27:42.564
well over a decade now of
00:27:42.624 --> 00:27:43.884
really being immersed in
00:27:43.944 --> 00:27:46.106
this world of the 18th
00:27:46.146 --> 00:27:47.127
century period of the
00:27:47.188 --> 00:27:49.230
revolution and I'm just
00:27:49.630 --> 00:27:52.192
wondering where you this
00:27:52.251 --> 00:27:53.452
long Legacy of it that
00:27:53.532 --> 00:27:54.794
comes to us in surprising
00:27:54.854 --> 00:27:56.476
ways I mean how do you see
00:27:56.516 --> 00:27:58.156
this as a as an historical
00:27:58.396 --> 00:27:59.917
art or as a narrative or as
00:28:00.858 --> 00:28:01.640
stories we can tell
00:28:03.038 --> 00:28:05.818
I think, you know, for my mind, I mean,
00:28:05.919 --> 00:28:06.898
I understand the American
00:28:06.939 --> 00:28:08.679
Revolution or this period,
00:28:09.338 --> 00:28:11.259
the way I come at it is how
00:28:11.299 --> 00:28:12.440
an empire fell apart.
00:28:12.579 --> 00:28:14.000
Like that's what excites me
00:28:14.019 --> 00:28:15.961
about this history.
00:28:16.201 --> 00:28:17.921
And within that framework
00:28:17.961 --> 00:28:20.102
that I see a kind of a big playground,
00:28:20.261 --> 00:28:21.041
all of these different
00:28:21.801 --> 00:28:22.842
stories that we can tell.
00:28:22.942 --> 00:28:23.961
And so that is really kind
00:28:23.981 --> 00:28:25.823
of shaped my approach to my
00:28:25.863 --> 00:28:27.103
different projects, both
00:28:27.663 --> 00:28:28.903
you know, the podcast projects,
00:28:28.943 --> 00:28:30.965
but also my work with the
00:28:31.125 --> 00:28:32.126
Scottish Court of Session
00:28:32.186 --> 00:28:34.308
and my Scottish immigrants in general.
00:28:34.848 --> 00:28:38.211
And that really, figuring out how they,
00:28:38.592 --> 00:28:39.853
these people confronted
00:28:39.913 --> 00:28:40.834
something that they didn't
00:28:40.854 --> 00:28:42.214
really see coming, although, you know,
00:28:42.255 --> 00:28:43.256
some kind of did.
00:28:44.797 --> 00:28:46.818
But then how they try to
00:28:48.398 --> 00:28:49.260
navigate through it and
00:28:49.320 --> 00:28:51.965
reconstruct their lives in the aftermath.
00:28:52.446 --> 00:28:54.009
There's just many marvelous
00:28:54.329 --> 00:28:54.971
stories to tell.
00:28:55.211 --> 00:28:56.272
Really is.
00:28:56.294 --> 00:28:57.816
What got you interested in the Scots?
00:28:59.967 --> 00:29:03.309
I, uh, it was, it was a funny question.
00:29:03.430 --> 00:29:07.232
So, um, my, who was going to be my wife,
00:29:07.653 --> 00:29:08.714
uh, uh,
00:29:08.795 --> 00:29:10.556
we went on a kind of pre-wedding
00:29:10.635 --> 00:29:12.857
trip to the UK in 2008.
00:29:12.857 --> 00:29:13.117
Um,
00:29:13.137 --> 00:29:16.300
and she's a historian of Tudor England.
00:29:17.122 --> 00:29:17.182
Uh,
00:29:17.301 --> 00:29:18.643
and so she was going over for her first
00:29:18.682 --> 00:29:19.663
big research trip.
00:29:19.683 --> 00:29:21.125
And so we decided to go to, um,
00:29:22.205 --> 00:29:23.166
Scotland since we,
00:29:23.386 --> 00:29:24.188
none of us had ever been
00:29:24.208 --> 00:29:27.009
there and in the castle in Edinburgh,
00:29:27.636 --> 00:29:29.238
If you go down into the dungeon,
00:29:29.837 --> 00:29:30.538
you will see that it's
00:29:30.598 --> 00:29:34.020
interpreted as it was when
00:29:34.080 --> 00:29:35.922
American POWs from the
00:29:35.961 --> 00:29:37.202
revolution were kept there.
00:29:38.144 --> 00:29:39.785
And even on the big dungeon door,
00:29:39.825 --> 00:29:40.965
they've drawn a ship or
00:29:41.006 --> 00:29:42.226
they carved a ship with the
00:29:42.287 --> 00:29:43.386
stars and stripes or the
00:29:43.426 --> 00:29:44.627
nascent stars and stripes.
00:29:45.167 --> 00:29:46.229
So I thought, great.
00:29:46.548 --> 00:29:47.849
All right.
00:29:48.089 --> 00:29:48.891
Yeah.
00:29:49.151 --> 00:29:49.810
And I thought, well,
00:29:49.851 --> 00:29:50.451
this is going to be my
00:29:50.511 --> 00:29:51.372
project because I knew I
00:29:51.412 --> 00:29:52.752
was going to go to UVA soon.
00:29:52.772 --> 00:29:53.314
Yeah.
00:29:54.213 --> 00:29:56.315
Well, as many of us know,
00:29:56.394 --> 00:29:57.575
if you can't find the sources,
00:29:57.695 --> 00:29:58.675
you can't tell the story.
00:29:58.895 --> 00:29:59.796
And so I couldn't find
00:29:59.875 --> 00:30:01.277
enough to sustain a dissertation.
00:30:01.317 --> 00:30:02.656
But in that process,
00:30:03.238 --> 00:30:04.698
I came across John Witherspoon,
00:30:05.739 --> 00:30:07.338
who became what is
00:30:07.378 --> 00:30:08.500
eventually would be called
00:30:08.559 --> 00:30:09.519
Princeton University,
00:30:09.720 --> 00:30:10.661
College of New Jersey in
00:30:10.681 --> 00:30:11.441
the 18th century.
00:30:11.961 --> 00:30:13.761
He was a Scots minister from Paisley.
00:30:13.801 --> 00:30:15.123
It studied with Thomas Hutchinson.
00:30:15.563 --> 00:30:18.845
And he was writing a
00:30:18.944 --> 00:30:21.227
response to someone who had
00:30:21.307 --> 00:30:22.406
criticized him for
00:30:22.527 --> 00:30:24.568
supporting Scots immigrants
00:30:24.868 --> 00:30:25.808
to leave Scotland.
00:30:26.509 --> 00:30:27.931
And I thought, well, what is this?
00:30:28.851 --> 00:30:29.191
Now,
00:30:31.172 --> 00:30:32.232
people have written about Scots
00:30:32.272 --> 00:30:33.074
immigrants before.
00:30:33.114 --> 00:30:34.734
David Dobson, J.M.
00:30:34.755 --> 00:30:36.295
Brumfield have done a lot of
00:30:36.336 --> 00:30:36.955
terrific work.
00:30:37.395 --> 00:30:38.396
But what really interested
00:30:38.457 --> 00:30:41.859
me was the political response,
00:30:42.059 --> 00:30:43.461
particularly in Scotland,
00:30:44.000 --> 00:30:47.003
to what they conceived of as a crisis.
00:30:48.003 --> 00:30:51.767
Because the land owners, the legal jurists,
00:30:51.807 --> 00:30:53.228
the politicians began to
00:30:53.347 --> 00:30:55.309
argue that if we allow
00:30:55.569 --> 00:30:56.431
these people to leave,
00:30:56.490 --> 00:30:58.711
it will drain Scotland of its resources.
00:30:59.732 --> 00:31:01.775
And especially as events
00:31:01.835 --> 00:31:03.935
took a difficult turn in North America,
00:31:04.336 --> 00:31:05.518
increasing fears that
00:31:06.508 --> 00:31:08.009
if we keep allowing people to go,
00:31:08.288 --> 00:31:10.250
they could be on the wrong side, you know,
00:31:10.329 --> 00:31:11.369
particularly Highlanders
00:31:11.430 --> 00:31:14.510
who they never really quite get over the,
00:31:15.010 --> 00:31:15.152
um,
00:31:15.511 --> 00:31:17.792
suspicions after the Jacobite rebellion.
00:31:17.873 --> 00:31:20.413
So, so I was off to the races after that.
00:31:20.854 --> 00:31:21.114
Wow.
00:31:21.134 --> 00:31:22.433
It's a great topic.
00:31:23.174 --> 00:31:23.615
And, uh,
00:31:24.161 --> 00:31:25.882
Yeah, I'm slowly working on a book.
00:31:25.961 --> 00:31:27.403
My editor is very patient,
00:31:27.903 --> 00:31:29.183
but I'm writing a podcast
00:31:29.223 --> 00:31:29.964
and a book right now.
00:31:30.065 --> 00:31:30.845
That's good.
00:31:30.904 --> 00:31:32.066
Yeah, yeah.
00:31:32.806 --> 00:31:33.707
We'll try to cut this short
00:31:33.727 --> 00:31:36.308
so you can get back to writing.
00:31:36.489 --> 00:31:37.690
Jonathan tells me that there
00:31:37.710 --> 00:31:38.849
were Scottish prisoners of
00:31:38.910 --> 00:31:40.411
war all over Massachusetts
00:31:40.471 --> 00:31:40.872
beginning in 1776.
00:31:40.872 --> 00:31:41.571
Yeah, that makes sense.
00:31:41.592 --> 00:31:42.492
Yeah, because in early 1776,
00:31:42.492 --> 00:31:42.932
members of the 71st
00:31:42.952 --> 00:31:43.593
Highland Regiment were
00:31:43.613 --> 00:31:44.733
captured by American privateers.
00:31:44.753 --> 00:31:44.834
Yeah.
00:31:53.358 --> 00:31:56.621
when they were sailing to
00:31:57.000 --> 00:31:59.083
reinforce General Gage in Boston.
00:31:59.803 --> 00:32:02.263
And there is some evidence
00:32:02.304 --> 00:32:04.645
to suggest that that leads
00:32:04.726 --> 00:32:06.226
to or inspires part of
00:32:06.286 --> 00:32:07.626
Jefferson's original draft
00:32:07.666 --> 00:32:08.827
of the Declaration when he
00:32:08.907 --> 00:32:10.969
equates Scotch soldiers
00:32:11.009 --> 00:32:12.309
with foreign mercenaries.
00:32:12.630 --> 00:32:13.150
Interesting.
00:32:13.450 --> 00:32:14.590
So that eventually gets
00:32:14.631 --> 00:32:16.432
deleted by Witherspoon.
00:32:16.912 --> 00:32:17.732
Yeah, interesting.
00:32:18.113 --> 00:32:18.232
Yeah.
00:32:18.452 --> 00:32:19.093
Yeah.
00:32:19.192 --> 00:32:20.094
As that's the episode where
00:32:20.114 --> 00:32:21.473
the ship comes into Boston,
00:32:21.513 --> 00:32:22.934
not realizing that the
00:32:22.994 --> 00:32:24.174
British have already evacuated.
00:32:24.755 --> 00:32:25.576
Yeah, exactly.
00:32:25.655 --> 00:32:25.895
Yeah.
00:32:26.056 --> 00:32:26.355
Whoops.
00:32:26.915 --> 00:32:27.855
Bad luck all around.
00:32:28.317 --> 00:32:29.257
Yeah.
00:32:30.057 --> 00:32:32.637
And there are other Scots, of course.
00:32:32.917 --> 00:32:34.278
I remember at the time of
00:32:34.298 --> 00:32:35.479
the ratification debates,
00:32:35.499 --> 00:32:35.939
there was a lot of
00:32:35.979 --> 00:32:36.740
discussion of a Lord
00:32:36.779 --> 00:32:38.019
Belhaven who had opposed
00:32:38.059 --> 00:32:39.121
the union of Britain and
00:32:39.240 --> 00:32:41.280
England and Scotland back in 1707.
00:32:41.280 --> 00:32:43.442
And the anti-federalists
00:32:43.541 --> 00:32:45.482
kept citing Lord Belhaven and
00:32:46.526 --> 00:32:48.107
The Federalists also said
00:32:48.208 --> 00:32:49.189
they were kind of wary, though,
00:32:49.209 --> 00:32:49.869
because he had been
00:32:50.009 --> 00:32:52.071
executed for his opposition to the Union.
00:32:53.208 --> 00:32:55.470
Yeah, that one I'm not quite aware of.
00:32:55.569 --> 00:32:56.390
But interestingly enough,
00:32:56.410 --> 00:32:57.711
there was a lot of debate
00:32:58.811 --> 00:33:01.913
in the late 1770s when they
00:33:01.933 --> 00:33:02.894
were drafting the Articles
00:33:02.934 --> 00:33:03.796
of Confederation.
00:33:03.816 --> 00:33:06.518
And there's interesting back
00:33:06.577 --> 00:33:07.798
and forth between Benjamin
00:33:07.838 --> 00:33:08.459
Franklin and John
00:33:08.479 --> 00:33:09.359
Witherspoon because they're
00:33:09.400 --> 00:33:10.420
asking Witherspoon,
00:33:11.020 --> 00:33:12.102
what kind of union is
00:33:12.162 --> 00:33:13.102
England and Scotland?
00:33:13.142 --> 00:33:14.563
What is Great Britain?
00:33:15.263 --> 00:33:16.404
Because they're trying to think about,
00:33:16.505 --> 00:33:17.905
is this going to be a republic,
00:33:17.965 --> 00:33:19.247
a federated republic, or...
00:33:19.906 --> 00:33:21.748
as it is within, in Britain at the time,
00:33:22.127 --> 00:33:22.528
essentially an
00:33:22.588 --> 00:33:23.729
incorporating union that
00:33:23.808 --> 00:33:24.890
creates a new state.
00:33:25.450 --> 00:33:25.891
Interesting.
00:33:25.931 --> 00:33:26.151
Yeah.
00:33:26.371 --> 00:33:27.111
That's why over the old
00:33:27.172 --> 00:33:27.991
state house in Boston,
00:33:28.011 --> 00:33:29.393
we have the lion and the unicorn,
00:33:29.432 --> 00:33:30.614
and that was built shortly
00:33:30.814 --> 00:33:31.834
after the union.
00:33:31.913 --> 00:33:33.855
So we're thinking about this new entity.
00:33:34.276 --> 00:33:34.715
Right, right.
00:33:34.736 --> 00:33:35.215
Yeah.
00:33:35.236 --> 00:33:35.375
Yeah.
00:33:36.683 --> 00:33:38.786
And then Franklin, sometime in the 1760s,
00:33:38.846 --> 00:33:41.627
said the fear was that the
00:33:41.667 --> 00:33:42.989
whale would swallow Jonah.
00:33:43.048 --> 00:33:44.170
But he said, in this case,
00:33:44.650 --> 00:33:45.990
Jonah has swallowed the whale.
00:33:46.172 --> 00:33:46.731
Exactly.
00:33:46.751 --> 00:33:47.813
Looking at Lord Booth and
00:33:47.833 --> 00:33:49.193
other Scots who had become
00:33:49.233 --> 00:33:52.115
such influential figures in the empire.
00:33:52.457 --> 00:33:52.957
Well, I mean,
00:33:53.156 --> 00:33:55.999
when the Scots joined the Union, I mean,
00:33:56.019 --> 00:33:57.000
that was one of the primary...
00:33:58.161 --> 00:33:59.261
main motivators for joining
00:33:59.281 --> 00:34:00.182
the Union is they could get
00:34:00.261 --> 00:34:01.303
access to the empire.
00:34:01.982 --> 00:34:04.364
It would be inside the
00:34:04.403 --> 00:34:05.404
Navigation Acts now.
00:34:05.444 --> 00:34:05.664
I mean,
00:34:05.684 --> 00:34:07.346
the Scots had tried empire at Darien.
00:34:07.846 --> 00:34:09.086
It failed miserably.
00:34:09.106 --> 00:34:10.748
They had tried at Nova Scotia,
00:34:10.768 --> 00:34:11.867
and the early 17th century
00:34:11.907 --> 00:34:12.568
had not worked.
00:34:13.728 --> 00:34:14.929
But when the Scots joined the Union,
00:34:14.989 --> 00:34:17.233
and particularly from the 1750s onwards,
00:34:18.012 --> 00:34:18.813
they essentially take
00:34:18.873 --> 00:34:20.255
control of the tobacco trade.
00:34:21.277 --> 00:34:24.199
A disproportionate number of
00:34:24.280 --> 00:34:25.880
Scots are colonial governors,
00:34:26.402 --> 00:34:27.302
army officers.
00:34:28.163 --> 00:34:28.884
Ned Lansman,
00:34:29.043 --> 00:34:31.606
great historian of Scotland and America,
00:34:31.746 --> 00:34:32.568
says that Scots are
00:34:32.608 --> 00:34:34.869
entrenched in the machinery of empire.
00:34:34.949 --> 00:34:35.331
And they...
00:34:36.070 --> 00:34:36.652
they made it work.
00:34:36.771 --> 00:34:37.273
And, you know,
00:34:37.554 --> 00:34:38.355
to your earlier question
00:34:38.375 --> 00:34:39.275
that it helps to explain
00:34:39.335 --> 00:34:41.278
why so many Scots are loyal
00:34:41.519 --> 00:34:42.380
in the 1760s and 1770s.
00:34:42.420 --> 00:34:44.443
Because as you said,
00:34:44.483 --> 00:34:45.465
the empire really was
00:34:45.545 --> 00:34:46.646
working for them and they
00:34:46.686 --> 00:34:47.748
were working in it.
00:34:47.889 --> 00:34:48.309
So yes.
00:34:48.570 --> 00:34:49.612
Right, right, right.
00:34:49.711 --> 00:34:49.931
Yeah.
00:34:49.952 --> 00:34:51.193
And they, but they, uh,
00:34:52.047 --> 00:34:53.367
They annoyed Virginia planters,
00:34:53.547 --> 00:34:55.369
particularly Anglo-Virginians,
00:34:55.429 --> 00:34:58.411
who are worried that, as they would say,
00:34:58.471 --> 00:35:00.992
quote, enslaving them to debt and whatnot,
00:35:01.112 --> 00:35:02.014
because they are very
00:35:02.074 --> 00:35:03.614
efficient at using the credit system.
00:35:04.655 --> 00:35:05.496
The Virginians just couldn't
00:35:05.516 --> 00:35:06.115
help themselves.
00:35:06.916 --> 00:35:07.817
They couldn't.
00:35:09.438 --> 00:35:10.619
We've been talking with Jim
00:35:10.639 --> 00:35:12.480
Emboski from the Roy
00:35:12.519 --> 00:35:14.021
Rosenzweig Center for
00:35:14.061 --> 00:35:15.041
History and New Media,
00:35:15.081 --> 00:35:16.523
producer of the World's
00:35:16.563 --> 00:35:18.304
Turned Upside Down podcast, and
00:35:18.829 --> 00:35:19.851
involved with other public
00:35:19.891 --> 00:35:21.773
history projects, podcast projects.
00:35:21.813 --> 00:35:23.056
Jim, it's been great talking to you.
00:35:23.097 --> 00:35:24.639
Is there anything else we
00:35:24.659 --> 00:35:26.101
should talk about before we let you go?
00:35:27.637 --> 00:35:30.059
I would just say to folks, thank you, Bob,
00:35:30.119 --> 00:35:31.599
for all the work, and you, Jonathan,
00:35:31.641 --> 00:35:32.501
behind the scenes there for
00:35:32.521 --> 00:35:33.302
all the work you're doing
00:35:33.342 --> 00:35:34.503
to promote the 250.
00:35:34.503 --> 00:35:37.626
This is a real moment where we can,
00:35:37.646 --> 00:35:38.407
I think,
00:35:38.447 --> 00:35:39.789
re-energize the public's interest
00:35:39.829 --> 00:35:40.429
in history.
00:35:41.130 --> 00:35:42.530
And also, as you know,
00:35:42.590 --> 00:35:43.853
and many of your audiences know,
00:35:43.873 --> 00:35:46.375
we're going to be excited
00:35:46.434 --> 00:35:47.295
in 2026 for the 250, the declaration.
00:35:47.315 --> 00:35:47.376
But
00:35:50.818 --> 00:35:51.860
that's just the declaration.
00:35:51.920 --> 00:35:53.621
The war doesn't end for another few years.
00:35:53.702 --> 00:35:55.282
And so there is a lot of
00:35:55.382 --> 00:35:56.905
ground that we can cover.
00:35:56.965 --> 00:35:58.186
There's a lot of creativity
00:35:58.206 --> 00:35:59.606
that we can tap into.
00:35:59.726 --> 00:36:02.949
And so hopefully the
00:36:03.010 --> 00:36:03.869
audience is out there that
00:36:03.889 --> 00:36:06.072
are excited to hear what we have to say.
00:36:06.913 --> 00:36:08.514
Hopefully, and we'll keep them excited.
00:36:08.574 --> 00:36:09.054
So thank you.
00:36:09.094 --> 00:36:09.815
Thank you for all you're
00:36:09.835 --> 00:36:10.635
doing with the world's
00:36:10.675 --> 00:36:11.936
turned upside down and other things.
00:36:11.996 --> 00:36:14.860
So speaking of our audience,
00:36:14.920 --> 00:36:16.460
I want to thank our friends in
00:36:17.742 --> 00:36:18.702
around the country and also
00:36:18.742 --> 00:36:20.943
around the world who tune in every week.
00:36:21.043 --> 00:36:22.304
And if you're in one of these places,
00:36:22.364 --> 00:36:23.804
send Jonathan Lane an email,
00:36:23.824 --> 00:36:26.244
jlane at revolution250.org,
00:36:26.264 --> 00:36:27.166
and he'll send you some of
00:36:27.246 --> 00:36:29.266
our Rev 250 swag.
00:36:29.326 --> 00:36:31.407
So this week, Lincoln, California,
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Irvington, New Jersey, and Spartanburg,
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South Carolina, Yokohama, Japan,
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and here in the Bay State, Boston,
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and Brighton.
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Thank you all for listening
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and all folks in places
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beyond and between.
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And now we will be piped out
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on the road to Boston.