Abstract
This paper explores how Benjamin Franklin's historiography has changed over time. It argues that Franklin has been reinterpreted throughout American history and that these reinterpretations say just as much about America as they do about Franklin. Instead of taking a chronological approach to Franklin's life, this study explores how historians have thought about Franklin over time, starting with eighteenth-century writers and ending with historians writing in the twenty-first century. The life of Franklin has been used to exemplify upward mobility, middle-class virtues, and republican success stories, but has more recently been the subject of revisionist scholarship focused on slavery and race, diplomacy, the Enlightenment, and Franklin as a Self-made man. Franklin can ultimately tell us more about America than he can about himself.
Recommended Citation
Cunningham, Michael W.
(2026)
"The Many Lives of Benjamin Franklin: A Historiographical Examination of America’s First Self-Made Man,"
Bound Away: The Liberty Journal of History: Vol. 9:
Iss.
1, Article 2.
Available at:
https://digitalcommons.liberty.edu/ljh/vol9/iss1/2
Included in
Cultural History Commons, Diplomatic History Commons, Ethics and Political Philosophy Commons, Intellectual History Commons, Political History Commons, Social History Commons, United States History Commons