PEAES Upcoming Events
Event Details
Fireside Chat with Sean Griffin Slavery, Free Labor, and the Nation’s First Labor Movement: Philadelphia’s Workingmen Wednesday, November 13, 2024 7:00 PM ET Virtual Event |
Event Details
Fireside Chat with Sean Griffin
Slavery, Free Labor, and the Nation’s First Labor Movement: Philadelphia’s Workingmen
Wednesday, November 13, 2024
7:00 PM ET
Virtual Event | Free
Philadelphia in the Early Republic was notable for its large numbers of politically-conscious artisans and workingmen, in addition to being the site of some of the first trades unions and strikes in American history. At the same time, its status as a border-state city with slaveholding states to the south and the largest free Black population in the country meant that it sat uncomfortably at the forefront of the nation’s uneven transition from unfree to free labor. This Fireside Chat will discuss how Philadelphia’s early labor leaders considered a range of issues surrounding slavery and abolition between the American Revolution and the Civil War, and explain they ways in which they viewed the cause of antislavery as alternately intersecting with, or detracting from, the goals and aspirations of the nation’s first labor movement. While issues of racial identity and whiteness were preeminent for some, this talk will also describe how economic issues often undergirded the anti- and pro-slavery positions of Philadelphia’s labor leaders and workers, and conclude by explaining how the ideology of Philadelphia’s early labor movement ultimately contributed to the development of antislavery politics in Pennsylvania and beyond.
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Time
November 13, 2024 7:00 pm - 8:00 pm(GMT-05:00)
07feb(feb 7)2:00 pm08(feb 8)6:00 pmPEAES @ 2025: Retrospect and ProspectConference
Event Details
PEAES @ 2025: Retrospect and Prospect February 7-8th, 2025 American Philosophical Society, Benjamin Franklin Hall Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Event Details
PEAES @ 2025: Retrospect and Prospect
February 7-8th, 2025
American Philosophical Society, Benjamin Franklin Hall
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
The Program in Early American Economy and Society (PEAES) was founded in 1999 to support advanced research in the history of American economy, including commerce, technological innovation, finance, business, and other fields. In its first twenty-five years PEAES has supported post-doctoral, dissertation, and short-term fellowships, sponsored conferences, and published scholarly monographs through a book series.
PEAES @ 25: Retrospect and Prospect takes the opportunity to reflect on the program’s accomplishments in the first twenty-five years under the leadership of Dr. Cathy Matson and to think forward to the challenges and opportunities of the next twenty-five years. What are the questions, methods, and approaches that will guide the next generation of scholarship? How can PEAES best support scholars of early American economy and political economy going forward?
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Time
February 7, 2025 2:00 pm - February 8, 2025 6:00 pm(GMT-05:00)
11dec5:30 pm7:30 pmPlantation Goods: A Material History of American SlaveryBook Talk
Event Details
Plantation Goods: A Material History of American Slavery Wednesday, December 11th, 5:30pm In-Person Event Plantation Goods: A Material History of American
Event Details
Plantation Goods: A Material History of American Slavery
Wednesday, December 11th, 5:30pm
In-Person Event
Plantation Goods: A Material History of American Slavery reveals the biggest stories of early American history through the most mundane artifacts: shoes manufactured in Massachusetts for the use of enslaved people in Mississippi, for example, or woolen dresses stitched in Rhode Island for enslaved women in South Carolina to wear. In following these everyday goods from the communities in which they were made to the communities in which they were used, we can rethink the geography of slavery and freedom in the decades between American independence and the Civil War. And in doing so, we can confront questions that continue to preoccupy us in the age of the iPhone and fair-trade coffee: what are the moral, ecological, and political relationships linking consumers and producers across long distances? What does it mean to be “complicit?”
Seth Rockman is an associate professor of history at Brown University. He is the author of Scraping By: Wage Labor, Slavery, and Survival in Early Baltimore and coeditor of Slavery’s Capitalism: A New History of American Economic Development. Rockman serves on the faculty advisory board of Brown University’s Ruth J. Simmons Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice. Rockman is a Library Company shareholder, having been one of the first PEAES long-term fellows in 2001–2002.
Hosted by the Program in Early American Economy and Society.
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Time
December 11, 2024 5:30 pm - 7:30 pm(GMT-05:00)