Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind, Peopling of Countries, etc.
Author | Benjamin Franklin |
---|---|
Country | Thirteen Colonies |
Language | English |
Publication date | 1755 (originally written in 1751) |
Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind, Peopling of Countries, etc. is a short essay written in 1751 by American polymath Benjamin Franklin.[1] It was circulated by Franklin in manuscript to his circle of friends, but in 1755 it was published as an addendum in a Boston pamphlet on another subject.[2] It was reissued ten times during the next 15 years.[3]
The essay examines population growth and its limits. Writing as, at the time, a loyal subject of the British Crown, Franklin argues that the British should increase their population and power by expanding across the Americas, taking the view that Europe is too crowded.
Content
Franklin projected an exponential growth (doubling every 25 years)[4] in the population of the Thirteen Colonies, so that in a century "the greatest Number of Englishmen will be on this Side of the Water", thereby increasing the power of England. As Englishmen they would share language, manners, and religion with their countrymen in England, thus extending English civilization and English rule substantially".[5]
Franklin viewed the land in America as underutilized and available for the expansion of farming. This enabled the population to establish households at an earlier age and support larger families than was possible in Europe. The limit to expansion, reached in Europe but not America, is reached when the "crowding and interfering with each other's means of subsistence", an idea that would inspire Malthus.[6]
Historian
Franklin argued that slavery diminished the nation, undermined the virtue of industry, and diminished the health and vitality of the nation. He argued that slavery was not as cost effective or productive as free labor.[6][9]
Influence
The work was cited by
Controversial paragraphs
While the essay was an important contribution to economics and population growth, recent attention has focused on the final two paragraphs.
Franklin was alarmed by the influx of German immigrants to Pennsylvania. The German immigrants were lacking in a liberal political tradition, the English language, and Anglo-American culture. In Paragraph 23 of the essay, Franklin wrote "why should the Palatine boors be suffered to swarm into our settlements, and by herding together establish their languages and manners to the exclusion of ours? Why should Pennsylvania, founded by the English, become a colony of Aliens, who will shortly be so numerous as to Germanize us instead of our Anglifying them, and will never adopt our language or customs, any more than they can acquire our complexion?"[9]
Trimbur finds that Franklin's main concern over the growth of unassimilated Germans is the threat to Anglo-American culture and the English language.[12] This becomes racial when Franklin concocts "categories of his own invention".[12] Franklin favored immigration of Anglo-Saxons", who, according to Ormond Seavey, he identifies as the only "White people" among the various peoples of the world— although such an idea would have been highly unusual at the time, and Franklin never mentions race at all, but "complexion", nor does he deny that Germans belong to the white race. Nonetheless, his views have been condemned as racist in more recent literature, or more precisely, xenophobic.[2] Gordon S. Wood and others note that Franklin viewed this kind of bias as universal: Franklin ends the section with "But perhaps I am partial to the complexion of my Country, for such kind of partiality is natural to Mankind."[5][9]
Recognizing the potential offense that these comments might give, Franklin deleted the final paragraph from later editions of the essay, but his derogatory remarks about the Germans were picked up and used against him by his political enemies in Philadelphia, leading to a decline in support among the
References
- ^ Houston, Alan (March 30, 2009). "Tracing evolution to a founding grandfather". The Philadelphia Inquirer.
- ^ a b c Franklin, Benjamin (edited by Ormond Seavey), Autobiography and other writings, Oxford University Press, 1999, p.251-252.
- ^ JSTOR 1973600.
- ^ a b von Valtier, William F. (June 2011). ""An Extravagant Assumption": The Demographic Numbers behind Benjamin Franklin's Twenty-Five-Year Doubling Period" (PDF). Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society. 155 (2): 158–188. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2016-03-05. Retrieved 2013-11-24.
- ^ ISBN 978-1594200199.
- ^ ISBN 978-0385493284.
- ISBN 978-0-684-80761-4.
- ^ https://www.census.gov/history/pdf/colonialbostonpops.pdf | Data on page 16.
- ^ ISBN 978-0140152609.
- ISBN 978-0-8264-7969-3.
- JSTOR 984852.
- ^ JSTOR 25472176.
External links
- Full text of the essay with commentary via the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC), part of the National Archives
- Full text of the essay on archive.org
- Full text of the essay on gutenberg.org