Benjamin Franklin

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Benjamin Franklin, Diplomat - Rated
"Benjamin Franklin" by Edmund S. Morgan is a spell binding study of Franklin's career in the diplomatic service. There are sections about his youth, scientific experiments, his flirtations with women, service in the Constitutional Convention, as well as other staples of the Franklin Legend, but these are "filler" to complete the story of this most interesting character.

The focus of this book is on Franklin the diplomat. It is about Franklin, the longtime colonial agent in England and Franklin the representative of the Continental Congress who worked the Court of Versailles for the loans which kept America afloat and who later negotiated the treaty that brought peace and recognition to the new Republic.

I like books that change my way of viewing things, which this book certainly does. I think that we all tend to view Franklin as an American icon, which he truly was. Morgan reminds us that, for most of his life, Franklin was an Englishman and an enthusiastic supporter of the British Empire. This book points out that, for much of his diplomatic career, Franklin's goal was the furtherance of the British Empire in which, he believed, the weight of power would eventually shift to America. This book presents the concept that it was Britain, in truth, which broke the bonds of Empire by its treatment of the colonies, not the colonies which sought independence of their own choosing. It was only after the British Ministry had spurned all of Franklin's advice and had, thereby, squandered the goodwill of America toward Britain, that he turned to support the Independence movement which was arising throughout the colonies.

This book raises the speculation of "What if Franklin had been successful in cementing a Trans-Atlantic Empire in which the relationships between the member states would have evolved over time, as has the relationship between Britain and Canada?" Would we have seen the development of a great Anglo-American nation consisting of Great Britain, much of the current United States and Canada, supplemented by as assortment of Western Hemisphere islands? How would that have changed our world? We will never know, but a book that even raises such questions in our minds is well worth the read.