Benjamin Franklin And The Ends Of Empire: An Analysis

1776, the dawn of the American Revolution saw merchant sailors being authorized to walk a fine line between Privateer and Pirate. Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), famous American founding father used British politics and laws in an effort to break America from British rule. In 1779, Franklin, an elderly man of seventy-three traveled across the Atlantic from America to France to seek aid and assistance from France in an effort to break from the British empirical rule over America. Franklin’s original goal of money and aid to America changed during his time in France upon receiving letters from American prisoners of war, ill-treated and dying in British prisons. The American prisoner’s outlook on life become dire after Parliament voted in 1777 to deny them legal rights traditionally granted to prisoners of war. Upon the …show more content…
The country was simply ill-prepared to face a stronger enemy.” Susan Ronald author of The Pirate Queen wrangles with the idea of Queen Elizabeth I being the first person in western history to modernize legal piracy in the form of privateers. Ronald’s view is expanded upon by historian Carla Mulford in her work Ben Franklin and the Ends of Empire. In which Mulford acknowledges Franklin’s experience in England as Franklin spent a good portion of the years 1757-1769 in England. Franklin used the knowledge of British empirical history along with his own observations to contend with privateers. Franklin’s view of how to act towards the enemy differed from the privateers sent to sea. March 3, 1780 United States Congresses defined the action of all privateers sailing with American commissions, with the act Congress