Robert J Allison
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Franklin loved science and ideas, but disliked controversy, a disposition that made him reluctant to enter politics. It is one of history's greatest ironies that this hesitant politician would become one of the most important political figures in the English-speaking world. Survey Franklin's entry into politics and consider his style as a politician.
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Begin your course with a look at Franklin's unfinished autobiography, a book in which he consciously created a persona for himself as a role model others may follow. Although there is more to Franklin than he showed on the page, surveying the Autobiography offers some foundational insights into his life, his worldview, and the times in which he lived.
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Franklin's attitudes toward race and slavery changed over the course of his long life. During his life, he owned four slaves, yet he came to despise the institution for the way it contradicted Enlightenment values. After surveying the institution of American slavery, Professor Allison walks you through Franklin's life as he wrestled with slavery.
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Unpack Franklin's greatest scientific contributions, which were in the field of electricity. As one of his biographers put it, Franklin found electricity as merely a curiosity but he left it a science. Review his most important discoveries, experiments, and contributions, and reflect on the lasting legacy of Franklin as a scientist.
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It might be strange to consider, but Franklin knew more about Native Americans than modern historians do. The Iroquois, Delaware, and other natives loomed large in his world and held the balance of power in North America. Witness his negotiations with these groups and reflect on his views toward American Indians.
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We may associate Franklin with Philadelphia, but his roots lie in Boston. As you will find out in this lecture, many of the virtues Franklin would cultivate throughout his life grew from the values of the Boston Puritans. Delve into the Boston of the time to meet some of the people and witness the events that Franklin experienced in his youth.
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As with slavery, Franklin's attitudes toward the British Empire also shifted as Parliament struggled to govern far-flung colonies. Here, you will review Franklin's role as an American agent to London while tensions rose between Britain and the colonies. A steady drumbeat of war began to be heard.
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Although Franklin enjoyed himself in France, his primary mission was one of complicated diplomacy - first, to bring France into a military alliance with the United States; second, to negotiate with other European powers to support the American cause; and finally, to negotiate a peace treaty with Great Britain. Witness his strategy for achieving these ends.
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The 18th century was also the golden age of satire, which provided an excellent way to question authority and challenge received wisdom. As you will learn in this lecture, Franklin was among peers with Swift, Defoe, and Voltaire, and he used personas like Silence Dogood to offer blistering critiques of society.
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Franklin lived an extraordinary life, but what's just as extraordinary is his legacy. Why has he been remembered so fondly when so many of his contemporaries have been forgotten? In this final lecture, consider why Franklin's legacy has endured, and examine the many ways he has been remembered by posterity.
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Franklin has been called everything from a "babe magnet" to a "high-flying ladies' man" to "the founding flirt." Although he was conventionally married and had a family, he also had a number of unconventional liaisons around the world. Here, you will consider the many women in Franklin's life, and his relationships with them.
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Shift your attention to the next stop on Franklin's life voyage, the City of Brotherly Love. Not only was 18th century Philadelphia one of the leading cities in British America, it was one of the leading cities in the British Empire. Find out what made this city so important, and discover how the city shaped Franklin - and how Franklin shaped the city.
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Franklin lived during a great age of rationality and questioning, but also through one of the greatest religious revivals in world history. Franklin himself was a close friend of both George Whitefield, a famous evangelist, and David Hume, a powerful skeptic. Find out what Franklin made of these divergent intellectual movements.
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The history of colonial America is a story of extraordinary scope, with Europeans, Africans, and the native peoples of North America interacting in a drama of settlement and conflict that lasted nearly three centuries. Go back in time and relive this epic story in 36 spellbinding lectures. While concentrating on British North America, Professor Allison also covers developments in the colonial outposts of Spain, France, the Netherlands, and the
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"The threat of foreign and domestic corruption; the balance of power between the federal government and the states and the controversial role of the Supreme Court; the danger of an unrestrained president and the potential remedy of impeachment. During the contest to ratify the Constitution America's founding generation wrestled with key questions and challenges that continue to test our nation today, and their original arguments still have much to...