Quaker history: everything you wanted to know

Welcome to the History Extra podcast, fascinating historical conversations from the makers of BBC History magazine. From radical rabble rousers to trusted bankers and businessmen to conscientious objectors. The Quakers have been viewed in many different ways down the centuries. Their nonconformist origins and religious principles have long seen them set apart from the rest of society. But the Quaker story touches on some central themes in British and American history.

In order to answer the key questions on Quaker history for today's Everything You Wanted to Know episode, I spoke to Ben Pink Dandelion. Programme leader for research at Woodbrook Quaker Studies Centre and Professor of Quaker Studies at the University of Birmingham. Thank you so much for joining me, Ben. It's lovely to have you on the History Extra podcast. And in today's Everything You Wanted to Know episode, we're going to be talking about the history of the Quakers.

So before we go any further, let's start with some absolute basics. Who were the Quakers? So the Quakers began as a religious schismatic group in the 1640s, 1650s in the northwest of England, with some distinctive ideas and distinctive practices, and they've since grown to become a global movement, and a third of all Quakers in the world today live in Kenya. Oh, I wasn't expecting that fact. I hope that we can come on to some of the later history later in this episode.

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