Like Trump, Benjamin Franklin Sought to Annex Canada
After Madelaine Drohan left a long and distinguished career in journalism for graduate studies in history, she took on a largely forgotten aspect of the relationship between Canada and the United States. The result was her recently published book, “He Did Not Conquer: Benjamin Franklin’s Failure to Annex Canada.”
My conversation with Madelaine, who is now a senior fellow at the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa, has been edited for length and clarity. When did you first learn about Franklin’s efforts to annex Canada? I was on assignment in Montreal and I had some time to kill. The hotel was close to the Château Ramezay museum. I was so surprised to see a portrait of Franklin on the wall, I remember thinking, What has this got to do with Quebec history? And there is a little plaque beside it that explains that he was in that very building and that he was there in 1776 on a mission to persuade the French Canadians to join the American Revolution. And I was really taken aback. I had no idea Franklin had ever been in Montreal but also that there had been any request to the French Canadians to join the Revolution. Who were Canadians at that time? There were 65,000 to 100,000 French Canadians because this was Canada or New France prior to the British conquering it in 1760. There might have been about two thousand English speakers in the area called Canada or the Province of Quebec. Most of them were merchants who had trickled up from the American colonies, thinking that Canada was now going to be just like what they had left. Then, and this wouldn’t be just constrained to Canada, there were about a hundred thousand Indigenous peoples. It really struck me that Indigenous people had power at that time, particularly the Haudenosaunee or Iroquois Confederacy. When it came to power relations, they were seen as people that had to be reckoned with.
What was Franklin’s interest in Canada? He wasn’t the only American colonist who wanted Canada. Sometimes he was joined by a large number of people, and then at other times he just seemed to be pushing it on his own. In the beginning it was through his writings that he was promoting this. And then when he got more powerful positions, like as a diplomat in London or a diplomat in Paris, or a delegate to the second Continental Congress, that’s when he began pushing the idea harder. The American colonies at first wanted security, and so they wanted Canada to just become another British colony just like them. When the split came between Britain and the colonies, then they wanted Canada to be part of their polity, not part of the British one. Franklin had this idea that it was the destiny of the British American colonists to occupy the entire continent. They needed room to expand because the population was growing like crazy. There could be money involved — he was into land speculation. Why did he fail? There were two times it looked like it was going to be a possibility: first, the 1775 invasion of Canada, and then the second time was during the Paris peace negotiations after the Revolutionary War. The problem with both of those times is the American leaders, I’ll call them that, would have liked to have Canada, but they wanted other things more. So, yes, Washington sent forces up to invade Canada, but they weren’t terribly well equipped. They didn’t get the money they needed, the equipment, even enough men because the priority was the fighting close to Boston and New York. So during the talks in Paris, the idea of getting the rest of Canada would have been nice, but the Congress and even Franklin’s fellow negotiators had other priorities.
Did they also misread the mood in Canada before the failed invasion? I call it bad intelligence. Washington, the army and the leaders in the Continental Congress, they were all being informed by people who were basically American sympathizers. So they were really painting a bright picture of the reception that they were going to get. It wasn’t like all the French Canadians rose up against them. But certainly not everybody was welcoming them with open arms either. Why has Franklin’s crusade been largely forgotten? It was very odd that at a time when people like him would dash off five or six letters a day that there’s absolutely no surviving personal correspondence from him or his fellow commissioners from the time that they were in Montreal. That means that when historians go back to look at this, there’s nothing to work with. It also does not fit into the American founding myth of being victims of British tyranny, rising up as one and defeating the tyrants. Invading the neighboring colony does not fit with that story. Do you see any parallels with today, aside from President Trump’s calls for Canada’s annexation? I don’t want to overemphasize this, but during the Revolution the American colonies were divided into two warring camps. There was this minority group that was trying to pull everyone in a radically new direction. They’d weaponized trade to achieve economic and political goals. Immigrants were suspect. Some of the founding fathers were people who today we call white supremacists. And there was fake news — there were conspiracy theories. All of that could describe 1775 or 2025. Trans Canada
Ian Austen reports on Canada for The Times. A Windsor, Ontario, native now based in Ottawa, he has reported on the country for two decades. He can be reached at austen@nytimes.com. How are we doing? Like this email?
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