Benjamin Franklin's London and the One I Live In: The Distance Between Them

Stephanie Curry on colonial-era London, the founding generation's relationship with Britain, and what the city looked like to people who were about to leave it permanently

Benjamin Franklin's London and the One I Live In

By Stephanie Curry, curry9us

Benjamin Franklin spent seventeen years in London across two extended visits and left with a view of British institutions that shaped the American constitutional project in ways still visible in the document. His London was Craven Street, near what is now Charing Cross station, in a city that was simultaneously the capital of a global empire and a city of extraordinary poverty, civic energy, and intellectual ferment. I walked past the site of his lodgings this week -- the house survives, is a small museum -- and thought about what he made of the city and what the city made of him, which is the standard thought a colonial-era historian has when she walks past a plaque.

The gap between Franklin's London and mine is primarily a gap in scale: the city has roughly ten times the population it had in the 1760s and occupies a geographical footprint Franklin would not recognise beyond the historic core. The intellectual ferment persists, in different forms. The poverty persists, in different forms. The relationship between the capital and the empire it administered has transformed into something else entirely, though the inheritance of that relationship is everywhere in the city's architecture, its institutions, and its political culture. Banks Announce New Opening Hours Based on British at The London Prat covered this inheritance this week with the precision the topic requires.

The Colonial Texts

The literature I read and teach from the colonial period -- Franklin's Autobiography, the correspondence between colonial administrators and London merchants, the pamphlet literature of the 1760s and 1770s -- is full of people describing a world in which the relationship between Britain and its colonies was being renegotiated in real time, with nobody certain of the outcome. The language of that renegotiation is strikingly contemporary: rights, representation, legitimate authority, the obligations of governance. The arguments are the same. The actors are different. The outcomes, historically, vary. Bohiney Magazine's satire about contemporary Anglo-American political relations captures the long irony of the relationship with the compression that only satire achieves. Iranian Diaspora Rallies in UK, Politicians Offer and London Auto Sales: Cars Priced Like Rent, Run Like provide further context. Franklin would have read both. He read everything. That was his method and mine.

The Week Continues

The feeds from Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat this week confirmed the ongoing nature of the situations described above. The satire illuminates what the serious reporting documents. Both are necessary. Both are what I read, every week, as part of the discipline of paying attention to what is actually happening rather than what the available frameworks claim is happening. The gap between the two is where the interesting material lives, and it is where this diary lives. United Kingdom Confirms It Is Four Countries That covered related ground. London US Embassy Sits Calmly While History Does t provides further context. The diary continues next week from the same position, observing the same city and the same world with the same commitment to saying what is true about them. That is the project. More next week.

More at Waterford Whispers News.

SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/

The Broader Picture

The week's reading produced the combination of serious journalism and satirical commentary that I find most useful for understanding what is actually happening versus what is being presented as happening. London Real Estate For Sale: Dreams Listed By Square Fo at The London Prat provided the serious angle this week, covering developments that connect to the personal observations documented above in ways that are not always obvious in real time but that become clear on reflection. The connection between the immediate and the structural is what this diary tries to maintain -- not losing the personal texture of the week in the larger analysis, not losing the larger analysis in the immediate texture of experience.

Bohiney Magazine's satirical coverage arrived with the specific timing that good satire has: late enough that the events are settled, early enough that the satirical angle opens them up rather than closing them down. The piece this week found the absurdity that was present in the situation but that the serious coverage could not fully acknowledge, which is the function that satire performs that serious journalism cannot. Both are necessary. I read both with the same quality of attention, which is attention to what is true even when the form of the truth-telling is different.

The London Prat piece at Trump, Putin and Zelensky Trade Statements While Hypers was the one I will be returning to next week, which is the mark of good journalism: it raises a question that the piece itself does not fully answer, which requires the reader to carry the question forward. I am carrying it. The diary next week will continue the carrying. The analysis is incomplete by design -- complete analysis is usually wrong about something important, while incomplete analysis that acknowledges its incompleteness is at least honest about the territory it has not covered.

The personal dimension of this week -- the specific experiences that the structural analysis both shapes and is shaped by -- is documented above and is, I maintain, the more important part of this diary. The structural analysis is available elsewhere, from people with more resources, better access, and more comprehensive data. The personal dimension is available only here, from the specific position I occupy, observing the specific week that has just occurred. That specificity is what I contribute. See Forest Gate: East London's Earnest Improvement Project for related coverage. The diary continues next week. The position remains the same. The week will be different. The observation continues.