Hidden History: How Ben Franklin and Friends Created Britain’s Industrial Revolution by Dr. Stuart Bramhall
A Book Review of Who We Are: America’s Fight for Universal Progress, From Franklyn to Kennedy Volume I 1750s to 1850s By Anton Chaitkin (2020)
(Part 1)
The first and most fascinating section of this book recounts the hidden history of Western industrialization. Contrary to what we’re taught in school, it wasn’t capitalist entrepreneurs who introduced automated manufacturing processes to Britain in the late 19th century. Britain’s ruling elite initially opposed industrialization as a threat to their profitable colonial/slavery-based empire. Britain’s industrial revolution came about largely due to the commitment of American-born patriot Benjamin Franklin and a personal network of British inventors and merchants. Their goal was to increase Britain’s standard of living by harnessing the energy of water and steam-powered machines.
I’ve divided this review into three parts: Part 1 recounts the history of Western industrialization, Part 2 recounts American history from the ratification of the US Constitution to the 1850s and Part 3 recounts the bloody role of British intelligence in the French revolution.
In 1757 when Franklin returned to England (for the second time) as the official representative of the Pennsylvania colony, the former had no roads, canals or railroads and the only way to ship iron or coal was cross by horseback in saddle bags over muddy road. A year later, Franklin and his friends* had set up the first workshops in Birmingham to do experiments in electricity and metallurgy. The first major public project they undertook was to build a network of canals to enable a faster and more reliable method of transporting coal to homes and new manufacturing plants with steam powered machines.
Franklin’s friends Joseph Priestly and Matthew Bolton, James Watt and their sons the first steam powered loom in 1784. In 1790, they began building the first steam powered textile mills. In 1795, they built England’s first manufacturing plant Soho Works (which ultimately built the country’s first steam engines) in Birmingham.
Under close surveillance by the British government, Priestly accompanied Franklyn when he returned to Pennsylvania following the outbreak of war between Britain and the American colonies. That was the same year British intelligence chief (who later served as prime minister) Lord Shelborne commissioned Adam Smith to write the Wealth of Nations. His goal was to attack the nationalist economic model (favored by Franklin and his friends), originally pioneered by Louis XIV’s first minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert. The latter strongly promoted protective tariffs and government promotion (via credit creation and bonuses for new manufacturers). It was via the Wealth of Nations, the British coined the term “free trade,” referring to a system in which they maintained protective tariffs while demanding all their trading partners abolish them.
The moment British general Charles Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown in 1781, the British launched a trade war with the US, flooding the country with cheap goods. This led to a US currency collapse that prevented the Continental Congress from paying their war debts (including arrears owed to revolutionary war veterans).
After Shay’s Rebellion (see Hidden History: Shay’s Rebellion the First Civil War) led to insurrection in Massachusetts, General Washington’s second-in-command Alexander Hamilton and his supporters organized a constitutional convention. Hamilton saw the absolute necessity of enacting tariffs to protect the struggling republic against cheap British imports. However free trade supporters claimed the existing Continental Congress had no power to do so.**
Despite efforts by British intelligence (organized by Albert Gallatin a Geneva ex-pat who reported directly to Shelborne) to mobilize grassroots opposition to ratification, the US Constitution was ratified (by the required 9 out of 13 states) in 1788, and the new republic elected its first national government in January 1799.
Appointed by Washington as the first treasury secretary, Alexander Hamilton stabilized US currency by having the federal government assume all the states war debts and restoring the face value of federal war bonds by paying the outstanding interest owed. This enabled them to be traded as currency. His next moves were to enact tariffs and excise taxes to 1) protect the US against cheap British imports 2) raise revenue finance essential government services and to establish a US national bank to provide government credit to fledgling US industries.***
Thomas Jefferson returned from France (where he served as ambassador) in 1789 and joined with James Madison (who represented Virginia in the House of Representatives) to organize Southern plantation owners to oppose Hamilton’s first finance bill as “debt slavery.” Washington and Hamilton eventually won Madison’s support in Congress by agreeing to move the US capitol from Philadelphia to slave territory.
*Matthew Bolton (manufacturer of buckles, buttons and toys), Josiah Wedgewood (potter), Erasmus Darin (scientist and grandfather of Charles), John Wilkinson (iron monger), Joseph Priestly (scientist who first identified oxygen) and James Watt (inventor of steam engine).
**It wasn’t rich New York and Boston bankers who convened the constitutional convention as is commonly claimed.
***The main aim of the first US central bank was to combat speculation by private banks that was destroying the US economy and to establish a source of low-cost credit for fledgling industries. The First Bank of the United State was privately owned to avoid political manipulation but subject to presidential and congressional oversight. Foreign stockholders of the bank couldn’t vote their stock or sit on the board. The federal government initially owned a fifth of the $10 million of stock issued but later sold it.
History of the Long US Battle to Industrialize
(Part 2)
Although President Washington, like his friend Alexander Hamilton, strongly supported US industrialization, the presidents who followed him tended to support the interests of southern slave owners and New York bankers who profited more from a pre-industrial economy. In addition, British spies Aaron Burr and Albert Gallatin actively campaign to turn New York and Pennsylvania against the US government.
2. Washington served two terms (1789-1797). Under his term
1791 – Hamilton starts model industrial city in Patterson New Jersey.
1792 – Hamilton and his family begin building the Erie Canal.
1793 – Jefferson (a close associate of British intelligence chief Lord Shelbourne – see Hidden History: How Ben Franklin and Friends Create Britain’s Industrial Revolution) resigns as Washington’s Secretary of State and started the Democratic-Republican Party. Its main platform was free trade (opposing Hamilton’s tariffs) and states rights.2John Adams (1797-1801) generally opposed the pro-industrial policies favored by Hamilton and Washington
2. Thomas Jefferson (1801-1809) anti-industrialist
1802 – Previously opposing the establishment of a military academy at West Point (which provided essential engineering skills for US industrial revolution), Jefferson eventually signs off on it.
1804 – Aaron Burr kills Hamilton in a duel. Later charged with treason for organizing a conspiracy for New York to secede from US. Follow acquittal, he flees to the UK owing to outstanding murder charge.
1807 – British launch unprovoked attack on US naval vessel off the coast of Virginia. In response, US passes Embargo Act, which bans all overseas cargo. Big boon for US manufacturers who no longer have to compete with cheap British imports (Jefferson ha revoked Hamilton’s protective tariffs).
3. James Madison (1809-1817) anti-industrialist who tries, unsuccessfully, to shut down West Point
1812 – 1815 – Exasperated by ongoing attacks on northern states by British trained and funded native Americans, US declares war on Britain. Defeats and excludes British Navy from Great Lakes and ends Indian attacks from Canada. Following the truce, Britain immediately launches new trade war.
1815-18 West Point becomes unique source of American engineers, who perform all tkey surveys for railroad development and hold all the chief railroad positions between 1823-29. The academy develops the first steam engine in the US and establishes a foundry that casts all the fittings for American water powered mills and steam engines, as well as all the army’s cannon and ammunition.
4. James Monroe (1817-1825) pro-industrialist
Enacts 1824 Tariff Act and General Survey Act, which authorizes the president to use Army Corps of Engineers (from West Point) to undertake survey of all potential canals and roads of national significance.
1824-25 – Enacts federal subsidies to build a US canal system (to facilitate coal transport) as far south as Mississippi. Also begins railroad building and supports modern iron production. Monroe pro-industrialization efforts helped by pro-industry governors in North and South Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia and Virginia.
5. John Quincy Adams (1825-1829) pro industrialist
1826 Tariff conference organized in Philadelphia by Pennsylvania Society for Promotion of Mechanics and Mechanical Arts. Would lead to tariff increases in 1828 to encourage investment in new forges.
6. Andrew Jackson (1829-1837). During first term, Jackson, who initially claimed to be pro-industry, continued federal support of railroad development.
1830-32 first electric motor and first long distance telegraph
1832 South Carolina Ordination of Nullification – South Carolina refuses to honor US tariff laws and threatens to secede if forced to do so.
1837 US experiences it first serious depression after Jackson vetoes bill to recharter National Bank of US (ending federal credit for fledgling industries and new infrastructure) and country returns to monetary system run by multiple private banks and speculators.
7. Martin Van Buren (1837-41) anti-industrialist
1837 Van Buren orders West Point to discontinue all involvement in railroad building
8. William Henry Harrison (1841) strong supporter of tariffs and American system, dies unexpectedly one month after taking office.
9. John Tyler (1841-1845) anti-industrialist slave owner from Virginia
1842 – pro-industrialists successfully push new tariff law through Congres and gain Tyler’s reluctant approval
10. James Polk (1845-1849) anti-industrialist
1847 production of iron had quadrupled when Polk triggers a depression by discontinuing tariffs
1848 Henry C Carey, son of pro-industrialist Irish-American Matthew Carey helps to found Republican Party (which elects Lincoln in 1860)
The British Intelligence Role in the French Revolution
(Part 3)
For me the most fascinating chapter of Who We Are concerns the takeover of the French Revolution by British Intelligence, leading to the mass guillotining of hundreds of revolutionary leaders (known as The Terror), and the eventual installation of the brutal dictator Napoleon. .
The role of British intelligence in the execution of Louis XVI, a strong supporter of American republicanism was well-known in US patriot circles at the time. In 1814, Thomas Jefferson, who associated closely with Lord Sheborne (see Hidden History: How Ben Franklin and his Friends Created Britain’s Industrial Revolution) and Franςois d’Iverson (who directly supervised Shelborne’s Swiss agents) from 1785-1790 (while serving as US ambassador to France, wrote about British efforts to “anarchize” the French Revolution.
André Abbé Morellet, who Shelborne paid to manage his French agents, was Jefferson’s main editor, translator and publisher, during his stay in France.
Other important paid British agents included Geneva-born Pierre Étienne Louis Dumont, Samuel Romilly, Étienne Clavière, Jacques-Antoines Du Roveray, Jean Paul Marat, Jacques Necker, Camille Desmoulins and the Comte de Mirabeau (elected head of the Paris Jacobin Club in 1790).
The primary British motive was to destroy the powerful alliance of French, American and Irish republicans who helped the US win the Revolutionary War and hoped to make similar revolution in France and Ireland.
Britain deliberately set the stage for the French revolution through the brutal trade war they launched against France in 1783, via the Eden free trade treaty at the end of the 1778-1783 Bourbon War. The latter was an undeclared war on France owing to strong French military support for George Washington’s Army. The treaty forced France to suspend all tariffs on British imports, while allowing the British to continue to charge protective tariffs on France exports. By undercutting the price of France’s domestic manufactured products, the treaty totally destroyed France’s industries and economy. Unemployment and food prices soared, leading to major bread riots.
For further articles from Dr. Bramhall: The Most Revolutionary Act
