He Did Not Conquer

Larry Ostola speaks with Madelaine Drohan about her book He Did Not Conquer. Throughout his long and illustrious career, Benjamin Franklin nursed a not-so-secret desire to annex Canada and make it American. When he was not busy conducting scientific experiments or representing American interests at home and abroad, Benjamin Franklin hatched one plan after another to join Canada to the American colonies and then later to the United States. These were not solely intellectual efforts. He went to Montreal in 1776 to try to turn around the faltering occupation by American forces. As lead American negotiator at the 1782 peace negotiations with Britain in Paris, he held the fate of Canada in his hands. Ill health and other American priorities then forced him to abandon his decades-long campaign to possess Canada.

Franklin’s elevation to the status of an American icon has pushed this signal failure into the far reaches of collective memory in both Canada and the United States. Yet it shaped the future of North America and relations between the two neighbours over the next two and a half centuries.

Madelaine Drohan spent most of her journalistic career as a foreign correspondent, reporting on Europe for the Toronto-based Globe and Mail and then on Canada for the London-based Economist. She is a senior fellow at the Graduate School for Public and International Affairs, University of Ottawa. She lives in Ottawa.

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