RPTM Podcast Episode Nine: Heresy, Pirates, and Beavers

Rule number seven right out the gates: Historiography is important and is never stagnant. What does this word, which sounds like many other words and yet is still challenging to say, mean? By Wikipedia standards, historiography is the study of historians' methods in developing history as an academic discipline, and by extension, it is any body of historical work on a subject. The Historiography of a specific topic covers how historians have studied that topic using sources, techniques, and theoretical approaches.

This is a fancy way of saying that history lenses are all different as we value things differently over time. An ancient Greek historian like Herodotus will interpret data and culture much other than someone more contemporary like Howard Zinn. All voices are important, but we need to remember who and why these voices are talking. Think of all the people over time that could have contributed to historical thought that just never learned to read or write? That is a substantial missing demographic we take for granted. Things like the internet have revolutionized how we collect data and record history, a far cry from the archaic days of parchments and scrolls. 

Currently, history's battle lines are drawn in the sand with "traditional" and "revisionist" history. As we have seen in the other rules, history can easily be manipulated for political gains. But the term "revisionist" seems silly when you investigate our historiography. We aren't changing history; we are merely reshaping how we view history. I'll bore you later with the tedious speech of confederate statues, which I assume you already have a preconceived notion about. 

HIGHLIGHTS

• By late 1609, the Powhatan Indians and the Jamestown settlers had soured as the English were demanding too much food during a drought. That winter of 1609-10 is known as the "Starving Time."
• The men of the Massachusetts Colony didn't stop trying to harm Anne Hutchinson's reputation. After her pregnancy ended in June with a severely deformed baby's stillbirth, rumors were spread that Anne had given birth to a demon.
• The classic era of piracy in the Caribbean lasted from 1650 until the mid-1720s. By 1650, France, England, and the United Provinces began to develop their colonial empires. This involved considerable seaborne trade and a general economic improvement: money to be made—or stolen—and much of it traveled by ship. 
• Historians consider John Punch the "first official slave in the English colonies," and his case as the "first legal sanctioning of lifelong slavery in the Chesapeake." Historians also consider this to be one of the first legal distinctions between Europeans and Africans made in the colony and a key milestone in developing the institution of slavery in the United States.
• John Casor, a black man who claimed to have completed his indenture term, became one of the first legally recognized slave-for-life in a civil case in the Virginia colony. 
• On July 21, 1656, Elizabeth Key became the first woman of African descent in the North American colonies to sue for her freedom and win. 
• The Beaver Wars were prompted in no small measure by the growing scarcity of the beaver in the lands controlled by the Iroquois in the mid-17th century. 

CHAPTERS
0:00 Start
0:38 Introduction
2:53 Jamestown
10:43 Anne Hutchinson
17:49 Piracy Part One
24:11 Documented Slavery
35:43 Beaver Wars
43:59 Outro

RESOURCES
A Short History of Jamestown
Anne Hutchinson
Pirates in the Caribbean
Golden Age of Piracy
John Punch (slave)
The Horrible Fate of John Casor, The First Black Man to be Declared Slave for Life in America
July 21, 1656: Elizabeth Key Wins Her Freedom
Beaver Wars (1642-1698)

Episode 8

RPTM Podcast

Episode 10