The terrified survivors of a murderous mutiny aboard the Cuban schooner Nuestra Señora sailed from the Bahamas under the command of a hired English pilot in mid-June 1734. They sought to return to Havana with no questions asked, but the crew’s curious behavior alerted the new captain to mortal danger ahead. A secret pact forged in desperation spawned a violent counter-mutiny that spilled more blood and further depleted the crew, forcing the weakened schooner to make an emergency detour to the British port of Charles Town (now Charleston), South Carolina.

Episode 293: Mutiny and Murder aboard Nuestra Señora de la Concepçion, Part 2

The young Cuban widow, Doña Petrona de Castro, suffered in the shadows during the first half of this story, but moved to center stage after the bloodied vessel Nuestra Señora docked in Charleston. When her disheveled treasure came ashore in late June 1734, the pregnant lady’s plight attracted the personal attention of South Carolina’s respected royal governor. Under his personal supervision, members of the provincial government secured the señora’s private property and initiated steps designed to render solace to their distressed Hispanic guest.

Episode 294: Mutiny and Murder aboard Nuestra Señora de la Concepçion, Part 3

The trial of Hispanic carpenter Joseph Lortia, accused of confederating with pirates aboard the Cuban schooner Nuestra Señora, unfolded through a series of episodes within South Carolina’s executive Council Chamber in July 1734. Conflicting testimony from the survivors recounted Lortia’s odd behavior at sea and challenged Anglo-American judges to determine the measure of his guilt. After settling the carpenter’s fate in court, Governor Robert Johnson restored the vessel’s remaining treasure to the widowed Doña Petrona de Castro, who sailed from Charleston with her newborn child.

Episode 295: Mutiny and Murder aboard Nuestra Señora de la Concepçion, Part 4

What can couscous, Soul Food and meat-free meals tell us about the everyday lives of people in the past? Prof. Kate Ferris is joined by Dr Sarah Frank and Dr Peggy Brunache to explore all things food history! Tune in as they discuss everyday food practices, agency and power among French Colonial POWs in WW2, citizens of Fascist Italy, and enslaved people in the Atlantic Slave Trade, and find out why Slave Cuisine is such an important concept and why we should all be thinking more about our meals.
More information about Dr Peggy Brunache can be found here: https://www.gla.ac.uk/schools/humanities/staff/peggybrunache/
And about Dr Sarah Frank, here: https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/hpdh/people/history-staff/sarah-frank
Miniatures is the podcast of the ERC-funded ‘Dictatorship as Experience’ project at the University of St Andrews. We show how the big picture in history is best seen through the assemblage of individual and local stories, what the German historian Alf Lüdtke called ‘miniatures’. At Miniatures, we forego a studio model and instead adopt a ‘guerrilla’ approach to podcasting, grabbing interviews on handheld recorders with busy researchers whenever and wherever we can find them: in their offices, at conferences, or at a distance via video chat. 
Please do excuse any sound-based issues that may occur as a result of this method. To learn more about the wider project, visit: https://arts.st-andrews.ac.uk/everyday-dictatorship/

Miniatures Episode 17: Everyday Food Histories with Dr Sarah Frank and Dr Peggy Brunache

The place-name “Charleston Common” applies to a large swath of land reserved for public use since 1735. Conscious that the provincial capital lacked a traditional English common, South Carolina’s colonial government designated approximately eighty-five acres abutting the Ashley River for the perpetual use of all inhabitants. Municipal leaders violated that trust through a series of questionable sales, however, leaving just fifteen acres of the forgotten common at three sites now identified as Colonial Lake, Moultrie Playground, and Horse Lot Park.

Episode 296: Charleston Common: A Brief History of A Fractured Landscape

Thanksgiving, an American holiday rooted in harvest celebrations, acknowledges the bounty of food so many of us take for granted. This tradition in South Carolina recalls the meals shared by English adventurers who landed at Albemarle Point in 1670. They arrived with modest supplies of perishable provisions and planned to sow fresh crops immediately, but a series of misfortunes quickly eroded their food security. The survival of the infant colony depended on contributions from hospitable Native Americans who sustained the hungry immigrants during a season of need.

Episode 297: Giving Thanks for Native American Food in 1670 Charleston

A dig from our radio archives!
1998
88.1 KWVA, Eugene OR, UofO Campus Radio
Guest appearance & interview 
ft. LOOTPACK (Madlib, Wildchild, DJ Romes) and Peanut Butter Wolf
Hosted by Karim aka. NightClubberLang, DJ set by DJ Ro

1998 - Lootpack/Peanut Butter Wolf - LIVE on KWVA with Karim Panni

Orange trees and their delicious fruit are not native to North America, but they form a curious and poorly-remembered chapter in South Carolina’s early history. During the second quarter of the eighteenth century, British settlers planted thousands of orange trees in the Charleston area to capitalize on the fruit’s high commercial value. Although cold temperatures ended dreams of an orange bonanza before the American Revolution, vestiges of Charleston’s colonial citrus experiment survive on the modern landscape.

Episode 299: The Orange Economy of Colonial Charleston

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) was a towering figure in the history of the United States, occupying the vanguard of the nation’s struggle for African-American civil rights during the nineteenth century. Near the end of his celebrated career, Douglass visited Charleston in the spring of 1888 as part of a lecture tour across several Southern states. His brief tenure in the Palmetto City inspired members of the local Black community, while their frank conversations challenged Douglass’ view of the state of American racial politics.

Episode 300: Frederick Douglass in 1888 Charleston

As part of Biodiversity Week 2025, Dr Carla Mateus delivered a lunchtime lecture in the Royal Irish Academy on the topic of historical meteorological records held in the Academy Library's archive collections. 

Historical meteorological observations are crucial to better assess past climate variability and trends and the frequency, intensity, duration, and distribution of extreme weather events, and to put the current climate change into historical context. The records preserved in the archives of the Royal Irish Academy date from the late eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth century and are of cultural and scientific importance. Many of the records were sent to the Academy by diligent observers interested in science and the arts, others were collated in response to an Academy initiative to organise a system of meteorological observations in Ireland in the period 1850-52.

This lecture highlights the role of the Royal Irish Academy as a curator of historical meteorological records across the Island of Ireland, as a publisher of diverse papers on instrumentation and meteorological observations, and as a learned body which encouraged a standardised approach for reliable weather recording.

The meteorological records include observations of air temperature, maximum and minimum air temperatures, wet bulb, sea temperature, rainfall, pressure, wind direction and force, cloud cover and weather remarks. Many well-known historical extreme weather events are covered by instrumental observations and documentary weather remarks, such as storms and air temperature extremes.

Historical early meteorological observations from Ireland in the archives of the RIA (1783-1854)

The Royal Irish Academy/Acadamh Ríoga na hEireann is an all-Ireland, independent, academic body that promotes study and excellence in the sciences, humanities and social sciences. It is the principal learned society in Ireland and has over 420 members who are elected in recognition of their academic achievements.

The Royal Irish Academy, the academy for the sciences and humanities for the whole of Ireland will vigorously promote excellence in scholarship, recognise achievements in learning, direct research programmes and undertake its own research projects, particularly in areas relating to Ireland and its heritage.

Dr. Nic Butler, historian at the Charleston County Public Library, explores the less familiar corners of local history with stories that invite audiences to reflect on the enduring presence of the past in the Lowcountry of South Carolina.

St Andrews is Scotland's first university and the third oldest in the English speaking world, founded in 1413.

New tracks tagged #archives,