New Thinking: The Mayflower and Native American History
Arts & Ideas
BBC
4.2 • 599 Ratings
🗓️ 16 September 2020
⏱️ 49 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
From fancy dress parties using native American head-dresses to the continuing significance of Wampum belts made of shells - how do particular objects help us tell the story of the colonisation of America and what is the legacy of the ideas brought by Puritan settlers who left English port cities like Plymouth and Southampton 400 years ago? Eleanor Barraclough talks to 3 academics whose research helps us answer these questions - Sarah Churchwell, Kathryn Gray and Lauren Working - and we hear contributions from the Wampanoag Advisory Committee who have worked with curators at The Box museum in Plymouth on a touring exhibition.
Professor Sarah Churchwell's books include Behold, America: A History of America First and the American Dream. She is Director of the Being Human Festival which puts on public events focusing on research taking place at universities across the UK. This year's festival (Nov 12th - 22nd) includes Mayflower related events. https://beinghumanfestival.org/us/
Dr Kathryn Gray from the University of Plymouth has consulted on exhibitions commissioned for https://www.mayflower400uk.org/ Wampum: Stories from the Shells of Native America is on tour to SeaCity Museum, Southampton (to 18 October 2020), Guildhall Art Gallery, London (8 January to 14 February 2021) and The Box Plymouth (15 May to 19 July 2021) . Mayflower 400: Legend and Legacy runs at The Box Plymouth 29 September 2020 to 18 September 2021
Lauren Working is the author of The Making of an Imperial Polity: Civility and America in the Jacobean Metropolis and works as a researcher on the TIDE project which explores Travel, Transculturality and Identity in England c1550 - 1700. http://www.tideproject.uk/
This episode of Free Thinking is put together in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council, part of UKRI as one of a series of discussions focusing on new academic research also available to download as New Thinking episodes on the BBC Arts & Ideas podcast feed. You can find the whole collection here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03zws90
You might also be interested in this conversation with Nandini Das and Claudia Rogers on their research into First Encounters: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000kpgp
Producer: Robyn Read
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome back to the home of the oxymoron. Evil genius. He asked the newspaper to print his obituary early so he'd enjoy it. That's like hiding at your own funeral. Yeah, a big, great gig. I'm Russell Kane. Join me to weigh in on whether the biggest players in history are more evil or genius. Becoming that rich, I'd say that is some level of genius. It also helps that it's a long time ago, right? |
| 0:23.3 | It's like the podcast version of telling your kids the ice cream van plays music when it's out of ice cream. |
| 0:28.8 | Listen to evil genius on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:32.2 | Hello, I'm Eleanor Rosamond Barraclough and the Mayflower is our topic for today's episode in the new thinking |
| 0:38.9 | strand of the Arts and Ideas podcast. September 2020 marks 400 years since the Mayflower |
| 0:46.7 | set sail from Plymouth on the south coast of England bound for North America. I'm joined by |
| 0:52.8 | three researchers who are going to help me explore the significance of this voyage |
| 0:57.0 | and its impact both at the time and down the generations. |
| 1:01.0 | They've all brought along a relevant object or document, virtually at least. |
| 1:06.0 | So let's start with introductions. |
| 1:09.0 | Dr. Lorenne Working is at the University of Oxford |
| 1:11.9 | and she researches on the Tide project run by new generation thinker Nandini Das |
| 1:17.8 | and this looks at the impact of travel on ideas about identity in England |
| 1:22.5 | in the period between 1550 and 1700. |
| 1:26.5 | So Lauren, what have you picked out for us? Well, the object that I've |
| 1:30.6 | chosen relates to intoxication. It comes from Native American societies, but you still retrieve |
| 1:38.1 | versions of this in some backyards and riverbanks in England. And as you may have guessed, the object is a tobacco pipe, |
| 1:46.5 | but the specific one I've chosen is highly unusual. It was made by an Englishman in Virginia in |
| 1:52.1 | 1608, using terracotta clay and modeled after those made by Native Americans in the region. But it's |
| 1:59.6 | stamped with tiny letters that spell out Walter |
| 2:02.4 | Raleigh's name. And there's lots of other, actually, similar pipes containing names such |
| 2:08.0 | as Henry Risley, third Earl of Southampton, who's perhaps best known as Shakespeare's patron. |
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