Worlds Turned Upside Down tells the story of the American Revolution as a transatlantic crisis and imperial civil war through the lives of people who experienced it. For many modern citizens of the United States, "the cause of America" that gave birth to a new nation in 1776 and the heroic stories we tell ourselves about its founding remains "in great measure the cause of all mankind." But for the people who lived through it, the revolutionary era upended their lives in ways they could have never imagined. The crisis that engulfed the Atlantic world in the late eighteenth century inspired British Americans, Indigenous nations, enslaved Africans and African Americans, Europeans, and other peoples to question their loyalties, challenge authority, seek freedom, and resist revolutionary change.
Worlds Turned Upside Down is narrated and written by Dr. Jim Ambuske.
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With a rebellion underway in New England, the Continental Congress orders an invasion of Quebec, confident that Catholic French Canadians will rally to the Patriot standard, a mere fifteen years after Protestant British Americans helped to conquer the old colony of New France for their king. Featuring: Rick Atkinson, Jeffers Lennox, and Alexandra Lund Montgomery. Voice Actors: Emmanuel Dubois, Evan McCormick, John Terry, and John Winters. Narrated by Dr. Jim Ambuske. Music by Artlist.io This epi...
Hours after the Battles of Lexington and Concord, rebel British Americans begin laying siege to Boston, trapping thousands of civilians and soldiers in town for months with dwindling supplies, compelling the British to make a costly assault on nearby Bunker Hill and Breed's Hill. Featuring: Rick Atkinson, Lindsay Chervinsky, Brad Jones, and Rosemarie Zagarri. Voice Actors: Adam Smith, Grace Mallon, John Turner, Annabelle Spencer, Evan McCormick, John Terry, Spencer McBride, and Peter Walker. Nar...
The long-simmering rivalry between Virginians and Pennsylvanians for control of the Ohio Country leads to the 1774 massacre of Soyechtowa James Logan's family at Yellow Creek along the banks of the Ohio River, igniting a war for revenge with tragic results. Featuring: Robert Parkinson and Christopher Pearl. Voice Actors: Adam Smith, John Terry, Anne Fertig, and Evan McCormick. Narrated by Dr. Jim Ambuske. Music by Artlist.io This episode was made possible with support from a 2024 grant from the ...
With tensions mounting in British America over Parliament's Coercive Acts, colonists begin losing faith in King George III, while British soldiers march out of Boston to seize arms and ammunition in Lexington and Concord. Featuring: Rick Atkinson, Fred Anderson, Wendy Bellion, Katherine Carté, Frank Cogliano, Brad Jones, and Andrew O'Shaughnessy. Voice Actors: Anne Fertig, Adam Smith, Evan McCormick, John Turner, John Winters, Grace Mallon, Peter Walker, Craig Gallager, Spencer McBride, and John...
With British authority collapsing in North America, Britons on both sides of the Atlantic including Benjamin Franklin, Caroline Howe, and Lord Dartmouth engage in desperate and secret negotiations to avoid all the horrors of civil war. Featuring: Julie Flavell, Mary Beth Norton, Michael Hattem, and Frank Cogliano. Voice Actors: Grace Mallon, Amber Pelham, Evan McCormick, Adam Smith, Craig Gallagher, and John Terry. Narrated by Dr. Jim Ambuske. Music by Artlist.io This episode was made possible w...
Fourteen years after British forces conquered New France during the Seven Years' War, Parliament's passage of the Quebec Act in 1774 resurrects old fears of French Catholic tyranny in Protestant British America. Featuring: Katherine Carté, Christian Ayne Crouch, Brad Jones, and Jeffers Lennox. Voice Actors: Jan Hoffmann, Craig Gallagher, Emmanuel Dubois, Grace Mallon, Bertrand van Ruymbeke, Adam Smith, Anne Fertig, Annabelle Spencer, and Patrick Long. Narrated by Dr. Jim Ambuske. Music by Artlis...
In the wake of the Boston Tea Party, Parliament passes a series of coercive and intolerable acts to punish the tea destroyers and bring order to British America.
British Americans' unquenchable thirst for tea and a looming financial disaster for the East India Company leads to a new crisis in North America when seven tea-laden ships are sent to the colonies in 1773, inspiring Bostonians to dump much of the cargo in Boston Harbor. Featuring: Benjamin Carp, James Fichter, Deepthi Murali, and Mary Beth Norton. Voice Actors: Craig Gallagher, Margaret Hughes, Grace Mallon, Norman Rodger, Annabelle Spencer, and John Turner. Narrated by Dr. Jim Ambuske. Music b...
The detainment of a West African-born enslaved Virginian named James Somerset in London leads to a court case decided by England's most powerful judge that challenges the foundations of slavery in the British Empire. Featuring: Christopher Brown, Trevor Burnard, Julie Flavell, and Chernoh Sesay, Jr. Voice Actors: Amber Pelham, Anne Fertig, Gillian MacDonald, Norman Roger, Craig Gallagher, and Adam McNeil. Narrated by Dr. Jim Ambuske. Music by Artlist.io This episode was made possible with suppor...
Months after the Boston Massacre, British Americans calling themselves "Regulators" launch a rebellion in western North Carolina that threatens to engulf the colony in revolution and civil war. Featuring: Abby Chandler, Marjoleine Kars, Cynthia Kierner, and Nathan Schultz. Voice Actors: Sarah Donelson, Evan McCormick, Norman Rodger, John Terry, and Peter Walker. Narrated by Dr. Jim Ambuske. Music by Artlist.io This episode was made possible with support from a 2024 grant from the National Endowm...
In response to rioting and protests over the Townshend Acts, the British deploy four regiments to Boston, leading to a deadly shooting on March 5, 1770, a massacre that wounds a family. Featuring: Serena Zabin and John McCurdy. Voice Actors: Anne Fertig, Grace Mallon, Evan McCormick, Adam McNeil, and Nate Sleeter. Narrated by Dr. Jim Ambuske. Music by Artlist.io This episode was made possible with support from Richard H. Brown and Mary Jo Otsea. Find the official transcript here . Help other lis...
In the wake of the Stamp Act Crisis, the British chart a new course for empire in North America by imposing taxes on paper, paint, lead, glass, and tea, pitting British Americans against Parliament…and each other. Featuring: Patrick Griffin, Zara Anishanslin, Rosemarie Zagarri, and Christopher Minty. Voice Actors: Adam Smith, Melissa Gismondi, Grace Mallon, Jeanette Patrick, Anne Fertig, Hayley Madl, Alexandra Miller, Beau Robbins, Norman Rodger, Kathryn Gehred, and Evan McCormick. Narrated by D...
With the Stamp Act defeated, the Sons of Liberty in New York City celebrate by raising a Liberty Pole in tribute to George III, William Pitt, and Liberty, provoking a violent confrontation with British soldiers quartered in the city's barracks, who see the wooden mast as a monument to mob rule and a symbol of sedition. Featuring: Wendy Bellion, Shira Lurie, Jon Kukla, Patrick Griffin, Brad Jones, Christopher Minty, and John McCurdy Voice Actors: Adam Smith, Melissa Gismondi, Mills Kelly, Nate Sl...
In the mid-1760s, British fears that a new war with France was only a matter of time leads King George III and his ministers to draw up plans for a permanent army in North America, and a Stamp Tax on the colonies to pay for it, sparking massive protests in British America and beyond. Featuring: Jon Kukla, Patrick Griffin, Brad Jones, Abby Chandler, Alexandra Montgomery, Wendy Bellion, and Cassandra Britt Farrell. Voice Actors: Adam Smith, Beau Robbins and Mills Kelly. Narrated by Dr. Jim Ambuske...
In the 1760s, Jamaica and the islands of the British Caribbean were the crown jewels of Britain's American Empire. And as King George III's ministers searched for solutions to a vexing imperial puzzle and moved to counter a pernicious threat in the aftermath of the Seven Years' War, they looked west from London, to the islands of sugar. Featuring: Trevor Burnard, Abby Chandler, Mary Draper, Jon Kukla, Andrew O'Shaughnessy, and Brooke Newman. Voice Actors: Anne Fertig, Norman Rodger, Dan Howlett,...
At the dawn of a new era after the Seven Years' War, British officials envision commerce and colonies as the key to British independence and its rising glory, but trade in commodities and manufactured goods comes at an awful price. Featuring: Emma Hart, Scott Miller, Ann Smart Martin, Hannah Knox Tucker, Hannah Farber, and Zara Anishanslin Voice Actors: Anne Fertig and Adam Smith Narrated by Dr. Jim Ambuske Find the official transcript here . Music by Artlist.io Help other listeners find the sho...
With a blueprint in place for transforming British America into an empire of order, George III's goverment begins sending an army of cartographers to map North America, while diplomats in the colonies open negogiations with native nations to draw a boundary line between British and Indigenous America. Featuring: Max Edelson, Maeve Kane, and Alexandra Montgomery Voice Actors: Amber Pelham, Nate Sleeter, James Craggs, Luke Jenson-Jones, and Beau Robbins Narrated by Dr. Jim Ambuske. Find the offici...
Against the backdrop of Pontiac's War in North America, George III's ministers in London draw on lessons learned in colonial Nova Scotia to begin drafting a blueprint for transforming British America into an empire of order. Featuring: Fred Anderson, Matthew Dziennik, Max Edelson, and Alexandra Montgomery Voice Actors: Grace Mallon and Beau Robbins. Narrated by Dr. Jim Ambuske. Find the official transcript here . This episode is made possible with support from the John Carter Brown Library , an ...
As the British began to assert control over North America in the wake of the Seven Years' War, the actions of British American settlers and the messages of a native prophet convinced some Indigenous peoples throughout the Ohio Country and beyond that resistance through force was the best way to preserve their sovereignty and usher in the revitalization of their communities. Featuring: Fred Anderson, George Ironstrack, Maeve Kane, and Hayley Madl. Voice Actors: Anne Fertig, Kathyrn Gehred, David ...
Great Britain's conquest of New France in North America and its victory in the Seven Years' War inspired British subjects on both sides of the Atlantic to look forward to a future they could see but through a glass darkly, as they struggled to make sense of the world that lay ahead, and the cost of the war they had won. Featuring: Fred Anderson, Christian Ayne Crouch, Max Edelson, Kathleen DuVal, Patrick Griffin, and Jon Kukla. Voice Actors: Norman Roger, Anne Fertig, Nicholas Cole, Spencer McBr...
Following three years of stinging defeats in the Seven Years' War, the British begin to turn the tide against the French in North America in no small measure because Indigenous peoples decided the war should end. Featuring: Fred Anderson, Christian Ayne Crouch, Matthew Dziennik, Julie Flavell, John McCurdy, and Serena Zabin. Voice Actors: Dan Howlett, Alexandre Rios-Bordes, Michael Newton, Brandon Tachco, and Emmanuel Dubois. Narrated by Dr. Jim Ambuske. Find the official transcript here . Music...
Following the outbreak of the Seven Years' War in North America, the British and French begin mobilizing for war and appoint commanders-in-chief to lead the war effort, only to clash with colonists over how power, authority, and honor should be used in the colonies. Meanwhile, Indigenous peoples like the Haudenosaunee and the Delaware weigh their options as the fighting engulfs eastern North America. Featuring: Fred Anderson, Katherine Carté, Christian Ayne Crouch, Patrick Griffin, Hayley Madl, ...
Beginning with the 1754 Jumonville Glen incident, this episode traces how tensions between British, French, and Indigenous peoples over the Ohio Country ignited a global conflict. It delves into the strategic importance of Native American neutrality, the complexities of indigenous diplomacy, and European misunderstandings of reciprocity. The narrative highlights the role of land speculation and trade disputes, leading to the pivotal attack on Pickawillany and setting the stage for the First World War.
Season One of Worlds Turned Upside Down, "The Crisis," follows the stories of American colonists, Indigenous peoples, and Europeans as they grappled with the revolutionary consequences of Great Britain's victory in the Seven Years' War (1756-1763). After celebrating Britain's triumph over the French in the war, Americans began questioning British new policies in its wake, while Indigenous and enslaved people struggled to make sense of their own place in Britain's enlarged American empire. Season...
Introducing Worlds Turned Upside Down , a podcast about the history of the American Revolution. Coming fall 2023 from R2 Studios. Learn more at www.r2studios.org . Worlds Turned Upside Down tells the story of the American Revolution as a transatlantic crisis and imperial civil war through the lives of people who experienced it. For many modern citizens of the United States, "the cause of America" that gave birth to a new nation in 1776 and the heroic stories we tell ourselves about its founding ...
