Episode
BFW Revisited: American Expansion & the Political Economy of Plunder
- Podcast
- Ben Franklin's World
- Published
- Aug 11, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 4694
- Processing state
not_requested- Canonical source
- https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/323
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Summary
The Declaration of Independence proclaimed that all men are endowed with the unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. But what did liberty and equality mean for the peoples the Declaration never named—the Ojibwe, Odawa, and Potawatomi nations who had governed the vast Great Lakes homeland they called Anishinaabewake for generations before a single European sailed its waters? In this revisited conversation, historian Michael Witgen, Professor of History at Columbia University and a citizen of the Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe, takes us inside the Anishinaabe world and reveals how the new United States set about transforming it. The answer, Witgen shows us, wasn't simple conquest. It was something more elaborate, more profitable, and in some ways more insidious: what he calls the political economy of plunder—a system engineered to strip Indigenous peoples of their homelands while funneling the wealth of that dispossession directly into the settler colonial economy. Michael's Website | Book Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/323 RECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODES 🎧 Episode 051: A History of Early Detroit 🎧 Episode 064: Native American Slavery in New France 🎧 Episode 163: The American Revolution in North America 🎧 Episode 223: A Native American History of the Ohio River Valley & Great Lakes Region 🎧 Episode 286: Native Sovereignty 🎧 Episode 310: History of the Blackfeet SUPPORT OUR WORK 🎁 Make a Donation to Ben Franklin’s World REQUEST A TOPIC 📨 Topic Request Form 📫 [email protected] WHEN YOU'RE READY 🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter 👩💻 Join the BFW Listener Community 🌍 Join the History Explorers Club TAKE THE QUIZ 🧭 Discover How You Explore History (under 2 minutes) 👉 https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/quiz LISTEN 🎧 🍎 Apple Podcas…