March 9, 2021
The Yale History podcast is a new project at the History Department at Yale University that will present a series of interviews with historians from our department on a wide range of historical topics based on their research and expertise. You can find this and future episodes on the Yale History Podcast playlist on Yale’s Soundcloud or listen with the player below.
In this first episode, we explore Professor Mark Peterson’s 2019 book, The City-State of Boston: The Rise and Fall of an Atlantic Power, 1630 - 1865. Peterson explores the development of traditions of Bostonian autonomy and engagement with the Atlantic World, Boston’s place in the British Empire, and the transformation of its traditions in the political environment of the early American republic. While challenging narratives of Boston’s place in the Revolutionary era, he examines its distinct political economy, ideologies, and religious culture.
Mark Peterson is the Edmund S. Morgan Professor of History at Yale and a historian of early modern North America, New England, and the Atlantic World. He is also the author of The Price of Redemption: The Spiritual Economy of Puritan New England (Stanford, 1998).
Peterson discusses his work with Kevin Gledhill (Ph.D. Yale, 2020), a Graduate Alumni Fellow at Yale and historian of Iran, Russia, and the Caspian Sea in the 18th and 19th centuries.