{"id":368,"date":"2014-09-24T18:36:29","date_gmt":"2014-09-24T18:36:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-117pinsker\/?p=368"},"modified":"2016-09-13T16:11:52","modified_gmt":"2016-09-13T16:11:52","slug":"british-empire-in-north-america","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-117pinsker\/2014\/09\/24\/british-empire-in-north-america\/","title":{"rendered":"British Empire in North America"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Franklin's<\/a>

Franklin’s “retirement” portrait (Feke, c. 1746)<\/p><\/div>\n

In his short book on The American Revolution, <\/em>historian Gordon Wood offers a series of powerful insights about the nature of the British Empire in the eighteenth century. \u00a0First, it\u00a0was about much more than the so-called thirteen colonies along the Atlantic coast of North America. \u00a0To begin, Wood points out that there were 22 British colonies in the Western Hemisphere by 1760, and the eighteenth-century empire, which he terms “the greatest and richest empire since the fall of Rome,” quite literally “straddled the world” (4). \u00a0 Yet by the middle of the eighteenth century, it was also a wildly troubled empire. \u00a0If there was one colonist in British North America who seemed to embody both the perils and promises of the British imperial system, it might have been\u00a0Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790). \u00a0Today, we consider Ben Franklin\u00a0as the ultimate symbol for the American spirit and yet during his own lifetime, Franklin was often regarded as more British\u00a0than American, and even after the\u00a0War for Independence\u00a0began, the diplomat and renowned scientist Franklin was a uniquely cosmopolitan figure.<\/p>\n

\"Colonial<\/a>Students should consider how Wood describes the state of the British Empire in North America by the mid-eighteenth century. \u00a0Then they might consult Franklin’s famous\u00a0Autobiography<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>which was written in several stages between the early 1770s and late 1780s. \u00a0How does Franklin’s story, from his boyhood in Boston to his rise to prominence in Philadelphia and London, help illustrate key aspects of the sprawling British imperial system? \u00a0Franklin’s autobiography was ostensibly written for his adult son (then royal governor of New Jersey) but was not completed and published until after father and son had a irreparable break over their differing views on the American Revolution. \u00a0Franklin’s autobiography was first published as a book in French, rather than English, after his death in 1790. \u00a0Only later, during the nineteenth century, did Franklin’s memorable life story\u00a0come to be considered an American\u00a0treasure. \u00a0You can read more about the complicated history of the\u00a0Autobiography\u00a0<\/em>from a helpful\u00a0online\u00a0exhibit at the Library of Congress<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"Colonial<\/a>Maps like\u00a0the representation to the left, or the one above right, offer shorthand ways to contextualize Franklin’s life in that eighteenth imperial system. \u00a0He was a by-product of the forces outlined here, even as he worked at first to reform, and then ultimately to revolutionize them. \u00a0Gordon Wood explains how to visualize Franklin at the center of this story in the one-hour lecture embedded below.<\/p>\n