113 Building the Empire State

Ben Franklin's World

Liz Covart

History, Society & Culture

4.4 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 20 December 2016

⏱️ 47 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

After seven, long years of occupation, Americans found New York City in shambles after the British evacuation on November 25, 1783. Ten to twenty-five percent of the city had burned in 1776. The British used just about every building that remained to billet officers, soldiers, refugees, and their horses. Plus more refugees and animals crammed into vacant lots, streets, and alleyways. New York City stood in need of a lot of repair. Which raises the question: How did New Yorkers rebuild New York City? Where did they get the money to rebuild, improve, and encourage the economic development that would transform the city into the thriving metropolis and economic hub that it would be come? Brian Murphy, an Associate Professor of History at Rutgers University-Newark, takes us through part of this amazing story with details from his book Building the Empire State: Political Economy in the Early Republic. Show Notes: http://www.benfranklinsworld.com/113 Episode Sponsor Cornell University Press Helpful Show Links Ben Franklin's World Facebook Page Join the Ben Franklin's World Community Sign-up for the Franklin Gazette Newsletter Ben Franklin's World iOS App Ben Franklin's World Android App Complementary Episodes Episode 028: Janice Fontanella, The Erie Canal Episode 088: Michael McDonnell, The History of History Writing (What is Historiography) Episode 111: Jonathan Eacott, India in the Making of Britain and America Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	This episode of Ben Franklin's world is brought to you by Cornell University Press.
0:05.0	If you're like me, then you have a lot of questions about history you'd like answers to.
0:09.0	For example, one question I used to think about was,
0:11.0	what did the Continental Congress do with all
0:13.7	the Continental armies prisoners of war because throughout the course of the war
0:17.4	you're talking about more than 13,000 British and German soldiers so where did
0:21.7	the government house them all?
0:23.0	Fortunately, Cornell University Press helped my brain stop asking this question, because it published a book with answers.
0:29.0	It's called Dangerous Guests, Enemy Captives and Revolutionary communities during the war for independence.
0:35.3	In dangerous guests, historian Ken Miller helps answer the POW question by offering an intimate
0:40.7	look at Lancaster, Pennsylvania, which over the course of the war hosted
0:44.2	over 3,000 British and German POWs.
0:47.4	Now, Congress thought that Lancaster was the perfect place to keep enemy POWs, because it's at about 80 miles inland from the coast, so that limits escape opportunities, and it boasted a diverse population of Britain's, Germans, African Americans, Scots and Scots Irish,
1:03.0	a population that could communicate
1:05.0	with all of its diverse captives.
1:07.0	But what Congress may not have known
1:09.0	was that this diverse community wasn't a coherent one.
1:12.0	Many populations within Lancaster had fairly strong
1:14.8	ethnic identities, plus the revolution added a lot of political tension to the mix.
1:18.8	Like a lot of American communities Lancaster was home to Patriots, loyalists, and many who tried not to choose a side.
1:25.8	But what may surprise you, and it certainly surprised me when I read this book,
1:29.8	is that the enemy captives actually helped bring the community's diverse population together.
	...

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