Declaring independence from Great Britain required the formation of new governments.
But why did Americans want and need new governments? And how did their interactions and experiences with their old, colonial governments inform their decisions to create new governments?
Barbara Clark Smith, a curator in the division of political history at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History and the author of The Freedoms We Lost: Consent and Resistance in Revolutionary America, leads us on an exploration of how Americans interacted with their government before the American Revolution and how the Revolution changed their interaction and ideas about government.
Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/154
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Complementary Episodes
Episode 036: Abigail Swingen, Competing Visions of Empire
Episode 049: Malcolm Gaskill, How the English Became American
Episode 141: A Declaration in Draft
Episode 150: Abigail Adams, Revolutionary Speculator
Episode 152: Origins of the American Revolution
Episode 153: Governments of the American Revolution
Bonus: J.L. Bell, The Boston Stamp Act Riots
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