Benjamin
Franklin and the Ends of Empire (Oxford
University Press, 2015, 448 pages, $65.00/$34.45 is a literary
biography, which, unlike traditional biography, places its emphasis
on what a person thought and how those ideas were formed throughout a
life of reading, and writing and conversation. Thus the impact of an
individual is presented through his internal life rather than more
conventionally through what happened and how it was accomplished. As
such, the book that results is not usually filled with high drama.
Carla Mulford's thorough and challenging assessment of Benjamin
Franklin, as his ideas about being a Boston-born Briton developed
during his long and eventful life in the colonies, as a diplomat in
England and France during the eighteenth century, however, creates an
internal drama in the reader as Franklin grows and changes, emerging
as the intellectual center of the events surrounding the invention of
America.
Mulford thoroughly traces Franklin's
rich family background in England as they struggled to maintain their
conscience and religious liberty in a time of revolutionary unrest
that resulted in the beheading of a king and the long struggle
between Catholic and Protestant elements. His family were dissenters
enough to seek to move to Massachusetts and associate themselves with
the Puritans in the late seventeenth century. Franklin (born in
1706) was apprenticed to his brother James, a printer, when he was
twelve years old and soon emerged as a skilled writer, growing from
his voracious reading. His vocation merged with his internal views of
the world as he precociously began writing about the turmoil bubbling
up in Boston. He moved to Philadelphia when he was merely seventeen,
established his own print shop, which remained the base for
publishing his writings. Mulford follows the outcome of his reading
and thinking as he transits from a local political and social voice
to world fame as a scientist, diplomat, ideologist, and political
thinker.
Throughout his long life, he continued
to develop his ideas about conscience, the root of wealth in the
labor of the hands and fields, the importance of religious liberty,
and the responsibility of the state to function for the good of the
governed. The Ends of Empire
in the title of Mulford's book refers not to the revolutionary period
leading to the establishment of the United States, but to the
purposes that empire should fulfill as it spreads and broadens its
influences. Thus, as the British Empire became increasingly
hierarchical it tended to function to enrich itself and those at the
top of its lofty pyramid, viewing the inhabitants of its colonies in
America, India, the Caribbean, and Ireland as the source of its
income and wealth rather than as semi-independent entities which
should be equally represented in the emerging parliamentary system of
the home country. Rather than enriching the mother country through
their abundance, they were seen as the source of raw material to be
exploited as they subjugated themselves to the home country.
Throughout her detailed discussions of
Franklin's efforts to continue to stress freedom of conscience, the
primacy of agriculture over manufacturing, the importance of
maintaining governance growing from close attention to the governed,
and the rights of the governed to regulate their own governance
through taxing themselves, Mulford charts his increasing frustration
at trying to get people in England to understand and appreciate the
colonies while having little or no experience of how they actually
functioned. Without a clear and living experience of the threat of
Indian forces to the West, the difficulties posed by the French, and
the independent cast of ordinary Americans who had lived and thrived
in an independent fashion, the British governing upper classes and
royalty could not (or would not) respond with a world vision leading
toward a cooperative empire. Franklin's emerging awareness and
influence is presented through his voluminous writings (both public
and private) as well as his ability to read and connect to the major
thinkers of history and his own time to develop a comprehensive
view of the role of liberty and conscience in nation building.
Meanwhile, the events in Franklin's life form a framework for his
emerging ideas and his struggles to awaken Britain to its own
potential for greatness as well as to reconcile his original love of
his homeland with his emerging vision of the necessity of
independence, both personal and national.
Carla J. Mulford
Carla J. Mulford is Associate Professor
of English at Penn State University and founding President of the
Society of Early Americanists. She has served on the editorial boards
of numerous scholarly journals. She teaches and does research in
early modern, American, Native American, early African American, and
environmental studies. Across her career at Penn State, she has
published ten books and over sixty articles and chapters in books on
a variety of subjects. She has been a Franklin scholar since
completing her doctoral studies at the University of Delaware under
J. A. Leo LeMay. She has supervised the doctoral dissertations of a
number of scholars who have gone on to careers at other universities.
She is recognized as a top Franklin scholar. Carla is also my
sister-in-law.
Benjamin
Franklin and the Ends of Empire (Oxford
University Press, 2015, 448 pages, $65.00/$34.45) is a fine and
carefully focused consideration of the influences on Benjamin
Franklin's thinking as he became one of the most important political
and social theorists as well as a founder of the American idea. It is
not a beginner's book about Franklin. Readers seeking to delve deeply
into the life of his mind should become thoroughly familiar with his
life, first. Franklin biographies by H.V. Brands and Walter Isaacson
have been useful to me. Mulford's book, however, will lead you deeper
into the world of the mind inhabited by Benjamin Franklin. Her book
opened for me a vast and important understanding of some of the
factors brought together to create the nation we now have. Some
of Mulford's sections are, at least for me, more slow moving than others, as charting the development of thought takes greater time and
attention than the events those ideas move. While at times requiring
greater concentration and attention, the effort proves worthwhile, as
Franklin's complex mind emerges, demonstrating his passion for
freedom of conscience, personal liberty, and political
self-determination develop from his humble beginnings and flower in
his old age with the former being the parents of the latter. This is
a scholarly volume, but the eighty pages of notes, footnotes, and
bibliography do not intrude on an enjoyable and thorough reading of
the content in the text. I highly recommend this book for serious
readers seeking to extend their knowledge of Franklin specifically or
the important roots of the American experiment in self-government. I
own the book, which was a gift to me.
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