If all this is correct, then it means that at some point the United States will have its first post-imperial president. So it’s worth asking: What would such a presidency look like? And by what criteria would we know that a future president was really post-imperial?

The foundation stone of the U.S. empire is a belief in American exceptionalism. This nation, it is argued, is not like other imperial powers that have acted selfishly and amorally—or even immorally—abroad in pursuit of the national interest. Since it took lands from European, Latin American, and Indian nations, the United States has portrayed itself as a “force for good” that is driven by different motives in its foreign interventions than those of other great powers. Thus, U.S. presidents since World War II have always preferred to talk of America as a “leader” or as “indispensable” rather than refer to it as an empire.

A post-imperial president would therefore have to accept that the United States is no longer exceptional, that its actions in other parts of the world have not been significantly different from those of other imperial powers in the past, and that its motives have been venal on many occasions. These views resonate with a majority of millennials today, and with a large number of older voters as well, but no president so far has been willing to articulate them.

And this political challenge would be only the first of the problems facing a post-imperial president. It’s true that the territories of the American empire have shrunk significantly—either by absorbing them into the United States as states, or by granting them independence, leaving Puerto Rico as the largest of those that remain. In spite of this, the semi-global empire constructed after World War II still remains in place. And the basis for this empire, now increasingly questioned inside and outside the United States, has been the control of global and regional institutions, coupled with strong support from non-state actors such as multinational companies, think-tanks, philanthropic foundations, the media, and religious organizations.

Most of these global and regional institutions are still in existence—including the United Nations Security Council, where the United States has a de jure veto; the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, in both of which the United States has a de facto veto by virtue of the size of its shareholding; the World Trade Organization, the agenda of which the United States controlled until recently; and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, of which the United States remains overwhelmingly the dominant member. There are also regional bodies such as the Organization of American States and the Inter-American Development Bank, in which the United States maintains a predominant role with a de facto veto.

Yet other countries increasingly resent the in-built advantages enjoyed by the United States. In some cases, nations, notably China, are taking steps to build alternative organizations. A post-imperial America would have to accept a loss of privilege and therefore a reduced status. At the very least this would require the dilution of its veto in the Security Council by all five permanent members—if not its abolition—as well as acceptance of the loss of a veto in other global institutions.

The United States’ role in NATO would also have to be reconsidered—if not ended. This organization, designed for security in the North Atlantic region during the Cold War, has become an instrument to project power globally. Complemented by nearly 800 U.S. military bases, NATO in its present form is wholly inconsistent with a post-imperial role for the United States. Furthermore, its members have become skilled at dragging the United States into their own conflicts, knowing that only the United States has the military power to make threats credible.

By contrast, a post-imperial president would not necessarily need to abandon nuclear weapons, since the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) “only” requires nuclear weapons states to phase them out without a deadline being imposed. If and when other nuclear-armed states move towards ending their current monopoly, however, a post-imperial president would need to move in the same direction.

Finally, a post-imperial president would need to ensure that the United States participate in those global organizations and treaties of which it is not currently a member on an equal basis to other states. This would include all environmental organizations concerned with tackling climate change as well as bodies concerned with international human rights and international justice. Congress would also be required finally to ratify those treaties that have remained “unperfected” for many years, such as the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) signed by President Carter (1977-81) in 1980 and still not ratified after nearly 40 years because of its strong defence of reproductive rights.

No administration since World War II has come anywhere close to meeting these criteria for the first post-imperial presidency. And it would have been completely unrealistic to expect them to do so while the U.S. empire was in its ascendancy. Indeed, President Bill Clinton was quite explicit that the “unipolar” moment provided by the end of the Cold War created an opportunity for the United States to rewrite the rules of international politics so that it would be comfortable living in a world in which it was no longer hegemonic. President George W. Bush was equally forthright if less articulate about this.

Barack Obama is the first who could seriously be considered for the role of a post-imperial president. He pushed the United States to participate fully in a number of organizations and treaties in which it did not have special privileges (notably the Treaty of Paris on climate change). He was also clearly preparing the ground for a time when the United States would have much less leverage in the world and wished to use his influence, as in the case of the nuclear agreement with Iran, to maximize its fading imperial power.

But Obama—despite some ambiguous statements at the beginning—ultimately proved to be a true believer in American exceptionalism, fiercely resisted a dilution of American institutional control, and remained firmly committed to expanding NATO under U.S. tutelage.

So far, Donald Trump may have come the closest to being the first post-imperial president when, during the campaign, he questioned the use of the word “exceptional” to describe the United States and subsequently put in doubt American commitment to NATO. Furthermore, his slogan “America First” has been interpreted by many as a sign that the nation is no longer willing to provide the global public goods in return for which it received broad support from its imperial vassals. However, his message of “Make America Great Again” has such a strong imperialist undercurrent that he could never be described as post-imperial.

The runners-up in all recent presidential contests have also been very much in the imperialist mode. John McCain (2008) was a traditional imperialist. Mitt Romney (2012) was more nuanced, but still undoubtedly an imperialist, while Hillary Clinton (2016) was quite explicit in support of American empire. Only in the primary contests have candidates emerged with the potential for the label “post-imperial.” The strongest such candidate has been Bernie Sanders, whose questioning of American exceptionalism in the Democratic primary contest in 2016 suggested that a post-imperial message is starting to resonate inside the United States.

Does this make a post-imperial president possible anytime soon? Much will depend on the performance of the world economy and America’s place within it. That China will overtake the United States as the world’s largest economy is not in doubt (China is already the largest in purchasing power parity). But the speed of U.S. decline, relative to China and other powers, will be important in determining how Americans themselves transition to post-imperialism. And if the U.S. economy becomes better at distributing income and wealth more equally to its citizens, there may be less reason for voters to question the current imperial status.

But with the empire so clearly in decline abroad, and the social fabric tearing at home, I would be very surprised if the United States reached the middle of this century without having elected its first post-imperial president. This president will need to manage imperial retreat while maintaining the optimism and confidence of the voters. This was the role played by Harold MacMillan in the United Kingdom, Charles de Gaulle in France, and—much less successfully—Mikhail Gorbachev in the Soviet Union. Who will step forward in the United States?

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One answer lies in our nation’s founding document. Treason is the only crime defined in the U.S. Constitution, which states: “Treason against the United States shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.”

The Founders borrowed this language from the law of King Edward III of England. Enacted in A.D. 1350, Edward III’s statute had also criminalized “compassing or imagining” the death of the king, sexually violating certain women in the royal household, counterfeiting the great seal or coinage of the realm, and murdering certain royal officials—offenses that would not make sense to consider treasonous in a republic.

The U.S. Constitution also requires “the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act” or “Confession in open Court” in order to obtain a conviction. The requirement of an “overt Act” was intended to preclude judges or politicians from using treason trials to go after political opponents, as had been common in early modern England. Indeed, for centuries British monarchs had coerced judges into condemning political opponents to death based on spurious evidence or flimsy allegations, often rooted in the claim that the “traitor” had compassed or imagined the death of the king.

In America, the Founders wished to hold government authorities to a higher evidentiary standard.

But defining treason in the Constitution was one thing. It took actual experience to give life and practical legal meaning to the American idea of treason.

Within a decade of the Constitution’s ratification, several groups of protestors in Pennsylvania were convicted of treason for violently resisting the enforcement of federal tax laws. Fortunately, Presidents Washington and Adams pardoned these “traitors” before any of them stepped foot upon the gallows. Their convictions had rested on an old English concept that “levying war” included violent resistance to a law. But the courts would soon begin to move away from this broad definition of treason. The first case to do so was the 1807 trial of Aaron Burr.

Burr had been Thomas Jefferson’s vice president from 1801 to 1805. A political chameleon, Burr would change party or office whenever he believed it to be most politically or financially advantageous. In 1800, Jefferson selected Burr as his running mate, hoping that Burr’s presence on the ticket would help carry northern states, like New York. In those days—prior to the ratification of the Twelfth Amendment in 1804—members of the Electoral College did not specify whether they were voting for president or vice president when they cast their ballots. So Jefferson and Burr tied in the Electoral College. Seeing this as an opportunity to slip his way into the presidency, Burr allowed the election to be thrown into the House of Representatives, where it took 37 ballots to decide that Jefferson was actually president-elect. This episode scarred Jefferson, teaching him that he could not trust his vice president.

Aaron Burr, who served as Thomas Jefferson’s vice president, is shown in an illustration on Oct. 4, 1956. Burr was indicted for murder in the duel slaying of Alexander Hamilton and later for treason in a plot to seize the new Louisiana Territory. Image courtesy of Associated Press.

In July 1804, Burr famously shot and killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel. Later that year Jefferson ran for reelection with a different running mate, and by March 1805 Burr was out of office. Now a political exile and accused murderer, Burr turned his gaze toward the western frontier.

Although the details of his plans remain murky, Burr made visits to the frontier—perhaps to provoke war with Spain and liberate Mexico; perhaps to separate the trans-Allegheny region from the United States and to set up his own empire; or perhaps simply to see how he might strike it rich. Unfortunately for Burr, one of his accomplices in New Orleans began to have second thoughts and sent copies of some of Burr’s correspondence to Washington, D.C., revealing Burr’s plans to federal authorities.

When word of Burr’s alleged plots reached Jefferson on November 25, 1806, the president decided to stop him. Without mentioning Burr by name, Jefferson issued a proclamation two days later stating that a traitorous conspiracy had been uncovered and he called on “all persons whatsoever engaged or concerned in the same to cease all further proceedings therein as they will answer the contrary at their peril.”

The House of Representatives requested Jefferson to present evidence in support of his claims. Although he saw this request as an affront to his administration, Jefferson nevertheless complied on January 22, 1807, this time identifying Burr by name and stating that he was an “archconspirator” and traitor whose “guilt is placed beyond all question.”

Jefferson’s public declaration of Burr’s guilt—before Burr had even been arrested or indicted—was controversial. Writing from his home in Quincy, Massachusetts, ex-president John Adams declared that even if Burr’s “guilt is as clear as the Noon day Sun, the first Magistrate ought not to have pronounced it so before a Jury had tryed [sic] him.”

Several of Burr’s associates were arrested and transported to Washington, D.C., for trial. In Washington, President Jefferson and Secretary of State James Madison personally interrogated one of them, disingenuously telling him that anything he said would not be used against him in court (it later was).

Fortunately for the prisoners, their case came before U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall.

Marshall loathed Jefferson. Although the two men were both Virginians—and cousins—they had polar opposite views of what was best for the American republic. Throughout his tenure on the bench Marshall used his position as chief justice to articulate a nationalist view of the U.S. Constitution. Jefferson, an agrarian, generally opposed a strong central government. To make matters worse, Marshall had been appointed by lame duck president John Adams and confirmed by a lame duck Federalist Senate in early 1801, just weeks before Jefferson took office. Marshall, in effect, occupied a stolen seat on the Supreme Court that Jefferson believed he should have had the chance to fill.

In February 1807, Marshall ruled that Burr’s associates could not be tried in the nation’s capital since they had not committed any crime there. Much to Jefferson’s chagrin, they were released.

But that ruling wouldn’t spare Burr.

Burr was traveling down the Mississippi River on nine longboats with about 60 men when he learned that he might be assassinated in New Orleans. He tried to escape, making his way deep into the Mississippi Territory. But the U.S. military soon caught up with him and arrested him on February 19, 1807.

Burr was sent to Richmond for trial because his alleged “overt act” of treason had taken place on Blennerhassett Island, a small sliver of what was then Virginia, in the Ohio River, where, in December 1806, there had been an uneventful but armed standoff between some of Burr’s men and the Virginia state militia. (Of great significance to the eventual outcome of the case, Burr was not present at this standoff.)

Jefferson took an unhealthy interest in the prosecution of Burr’s case. The president sought to have a jury made up entirely of Jeffersonian Republicans. He also wanted the Treasury Department to pay the expenses of government witnesses. In an extraordinary delegation of executive authority, he sent his prosecutor “blank pardons … to be filled up at your discretion” should any of the other “offenders” be willing to testify against Burr. Finally, the president also supported a declaration of martial law in New Orleans, enabling military authorities to arrest civilians without warrants—including journalists—and to rifle through private mail at the post office in search of evidence.

Jefferson’s view of the evidence against Burr was highly problematic. “As to the overt acts,” he wrote, “were not the bundle of letters of information in Mr. [Attorney General Caesar] Rodney’s hands, the letters and facts published in local newspapers, Burr’s flight, and the universal belief or rumor of his guilt, probable ground for presuming … overt acts to have taken place?”

There was great irony in Jefferson’s attitude here, for when newspapers were unkind to his administration, he blasted them for their unreliability. “Nothing can now be believed which is in a newspaper,” he wrote in April 1807. “I will add, that the man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them; inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer to truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors.”

Despite the weakness of the evidence, the trial began on August 3, 1807. The prosecution lined up more than 140 witnesses, but after several testified to Burr’s “evil intention,” Burr’s lawyers objected that the witnesses were not offering any evidence regarding any actual overt act of treason. Chief Justice Marshall, who was presiding over the trial as a circuit judge, ruled in favor of the defense, arguing that only witnesses who could testify about an “overt act” of “levying war” could take the stand. Since Burr had not been present at the standoff on Blennerhassett Island in December 1806, no further testimony would be admitted. The jury found him “not guilty by the evidence presented.”

President Jefferson was disgusted with the outcome of the trial, and he expressed his contempt for the courts as a result. In fact, Jefferson even advocated for an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would enable the president to remove federal judges from office should both houses of Congress request it, claiming that the judicial branch was acting “independent of the nation” and that the courts were extending “immunity to that class of offenders which endeavors to overturn the Constitution, and are themselves protected in it by the Constitution.”

From Jefferson’s perspective, if judges were going to allow traitors to undermine the nation, then they should not receive the constitutional protection of life tenure. Fortunately, such a brazen assault on the federal judiciary by Jefferson and his followers in Congress did not become law.

Jefferson’s behavior in United States v. Aaron Burr reveals a president willing to allow his politics and personal vendettas to cloud his judgment. Hating both the defendant and the judge in this case, Jefferson personally inserted himself into a criminal prosecution in an unseemly way.

A controversial presidential election. A stolen Supreme Court seat. Allegations of treason. A president with open disdain for the courts and the press. The contest that defined treason in early America had elements familiar to Americans in 2017. And, as frustrated we now may be over today’s politics, perhaps we can take comfort in knowing that our Founding Fathers faced similar conflict—and yet the nation survived.

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The allegations that the Russian government has been plotting to interfere with America’s elections has been baffling, as we’re far more used to hearing Putin, his propaganda machine, and almost every public official beneath him, accuse the Americans of meddling in our affairs. Putin himself accused Hillary Clinton, when she was Secretary of the State, of fomenting the massive protests against his re-election. And accusing the American government of being the culprit behind every Russia’s shortcoming—from anti-government demonstrations to fiscal woes to potholes—has become such a pervasive propaganda trope that there’s now countless online memes and jokes lampooning it. There’s even a fake Obama Twitter account that portrays, among other made-up hijinks, the American president ordering the State Department to raise the price for a Moscow metro ticket by 70 rubles (slightly more than $1) and to freeze the construction of a controversial soccer stadium mired in corruption and mismanagement. To see this same accusatory rhetoric turned on its head and used against Russia is as comical as it is stunning.

On the other hand, frankly, we’re a little flattered. Russian State TV hosts relish every accusation hurled against our country with a mixture of indignation and pride: Hooray, we’re relevant again! Russians in general have a conflicted relationship with the West. Those old enough to remember the Soviet days resent whatever role they imagine the U.S. played in the downfall of the U.S.S.R., and the unseemly gloating the “winners” of the Cold War engaged in. But there’s more to it than that. As it’s been since the days of Peter the Great, we’re anxious to know how we measure up to the West. What do you think of us? Are you treating us fairly? Is Western media coverage of Russia outrageously biased? Call us sensitive.

In my years as a journalist, I’ve attended countless press conferences held by visiting Western pop stars, and invariably the first question Russian journalists ask is what the outsider thinks of our country. This holds true even when it is painfully obvious that the two hours the star has spent between the airport VIP lounge, the limo in from the airport, and the hotel were not enough to form an educated opinion about the state of our nation.

Media outlets, advertisers, and meme makers are also known to make up sensational fake quotes said by foreign celebrities about Russia (be they from dead statesman Otto von Bismarck or the current leader of China), and sometimes respected news agencies fall for the crude fabrications. The Interfax news agency, for instance, recently published a completely made-up quote by Donald Trump in which he supposedly called Olympic officials “morons” for barring the Russian Paralympic team from the Rio Games. The fake quotes not only are used to issue praise, but also to support anti-Russian conspiracy theories (one of the most popular nowadays is the co-called “Dulles Plan,” which alleges that the U.S. is injecting false values into Russian society, actively undermining the Russian sense of morality from within). In both extremes, the urge to fabricate panders to our collective sense of injured pride and grand ambition.

Russians’ attitude toward the outside world and its media is full of paradoxes. We Russians may come off as self-absorbed in our own informational vacuum and susceptible to our government’s propaganda. Yet foreign media have never been more popular in Russia. Articles from abroad that make even passing mention of Russia or Putin are translated by both mainstream media and specialized websites that attract many readers and commentators. No foreign article about Russia, no matter how insignificant the outlet or author, goes unnoticed.

I know this, in part because I was involved in it. Between 2012 and 2014, I edited InoSMI.ru, a website dedicated to translating and disseminating foreign media to Russian audiences. The website had been founded a decade earlier by a patriotic journalist with the explicit goal of “showing what kind of blatant lies the biased Western media spreads about Russia.” Over the years, it built a small but fiercely loyal following. Today it’s the most popular—but certainly not the only—news translation website on the Russian Internet with over a million daily hits.

If you look at InoSMI, you’ll see that its readers are hugely interested in the U.S. election. As I write this, the website’s home page features no less than a dozen translations from publications like The Washington Post, The Guardian, The Nation, and The National Interest. The attention given to the American presidential campaign is also reflected in the robust comments sections, which repeat the questions you already hear on the streets here. If Russia is the declining power in economic disarray so often portrayed in Western media, how can it have a decisive influence on what is alleged to be the world’s strongest democracy? Or, how is it Putin’s fault that American democracy is so flawed it can succumb to a populist charlatan like Trump?

Russians also keep a careful eye out for moral relativism in America’s shortcomings. If the U.S. does it, whatever “it” is, than it should be okay for us to do as well (or, at least, should immunize us from American criticism for the same misdeeds). Hillary Clinton accusing Russia of fomenting party disunity instead of confronting an email leak that made her party look less than democratic? We’re familiar with that blame game. The Kremlin, too, likes to accuse protestors of being pawns of Washington in order to dismiss their grievances. Superpowers make great scapegoats.

Plenty of Russians may roll their eyes at their own government’s portrayal of America and its intentions, but we’re also aghast at the simplistic and alarmist image your media and politicians have been projecting of us too. So you’d better be careful. We might just do something about it.

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In saying this, I mean no offense to the patriotic pageantry of Petaluma or Paso Robles. Personally, it is hard for me to acknowledge San Diego’s supremacy in anything. In general, we Angelenos consider it bad form to ever give our baby sister to the south its due as a great city (especially since her international airport is actually in Tijuana). And with regard to the Fourth, I have long been convinced that the perfect Fourth of July is a barbecue in my hometown of Pasadena followed by the big fireworks display above the Rose Bowl—which calls itself, officially, “America’s Stadium.”

What place could possibly top such a Fourth?

San Diego could.

Last year on the Fourth, my wife and kids and I went down to San Diego to visit cousins, and by the end of the holiday the revelation had hit with the force of a cruise missile: San Diego has America’s Finest Fourth of July.

What makes it so special?

It’s not just the fireworks show right there in the harbor, even though it’s the biggest show on the West Coast, televised live not only in San Diego but also in Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, Palm Springs, and even northern Mexico.

And it’s not just the cool breezes that make San Diego one of the most pleasant places in California to spend a hot July day. It’s not just the assets San Diego offers visitors, from the zoo to the Gaslamp District to the museum treasures of Balboa Park. It’s not just that the San Diego County Fair is up and running every Fourth along the glorious coastline in Del Mar. And it’s not just that San Diego offers baseball and tasty hot dogs in the state’s most comfortable sports venue, Petco Park, (or that this weekend the Padres are at home to play the Yankees).

San Diego’s Independence Day advantage runs deeper. It is the most American of California cities.

It also may be our most patriotic pueblo. If you attempted a census of American flags, San Diego would win hands-down; look in any direction in the city and you’re all but certain to see the stars and stripes in some form or fashion.

Before you quibble with my claims about San Diego’s Americanness, consider its competitors: the Bay Area and Los Angeles are technological and cultural oddballs, proudly out of step with reality, not to mention the rest of the country. And our inland cities swing too far country and right of the mainstream. San Diego County, with fairly equal numbers of Democrats and Republicans (and lots of independents), represents our middle, and the closest approximation to the American norm that California can offer.

In other ways, San Diego is abnormally American. While the military is no longer the engine that drives the city, the visibility of the armed forces, via ships and military installations and veterans, offers constant reminders of America and its history that you don’t get at the same pace in the rest of the state. Being on an international border plays a role too. San Diegans, particularly the hundreds of thousands who cross the border at Otay Mesa or San Ysidro (or use the Tijuana airport), must pony up proof of their U.S. citizenship more often than most Californians.

Beyond the fertile patriotic environment, there’s San Diego’s theatrical geography, perfect for a show.

Sandy Purdon, a marina owner, Marine veteran, and longtime San Diego mover-and-shaker, was building a home out on Point Loma more than 16 years ago when it hit him: San Diego’s downtown waterfront sits at center stage of a massive natural amphitheater created by Mission Hills to the north, the hills east of downtown, the hills of Point Loma to the west, and the hills to the south on the Mexican side of the border. So why not fill it with a fireworks show that would draw big crowds over the July 4 holiday?

The Port of San Diego and port-affiliated businesses agreed to sponsor it, with proceeds going to the Armed Services YMCA, a charity supporting military families. The show started small in 2001, and there was a famous mishap in 2012, when all 18 minutes worth of pyrotechnics fired off in about 30 seconds. But the show has grown into a reliable giant, with four barges in the harbor now serving as staging ground.

The effect is powerful, like four simultaneous Rose Bowl-sized fireworks displays with an impressive water feature thrown in. And it’s possible more spectacle and more barges could be added in the years ahead.

Last year, my cousins took us out to the old Point Loma Lighthouse, which is part of the national monument named after the Portuguese explorer Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo, the first European to navigate the California coast. The site, at the end of a peninsula, offered a stunning vista encompassing ocean, Mexico, downtown, harbor, and North County. From that vantage point, we could see smaller fireworks shows from different local communities around San Diego, as well as the shows at Sea World and the fair to the north.

Then the main show, called Big Bay Boom, exploded, bigger and more beautiful than any fireworks I’ve ever seen. The majesty of the lights and the setting, at the southwestern edge of our country, left me with nothing to say except three words, uttered without irony: God Bless America.

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This image of Franklin—working in London to secure Britain’s hold on America—is at odds with the usual picture of a great American patriot and Founding Father. Yet, for the better part of two decades, Franklin called London home. Furthermore, during a full four-fifths of his very long life, Franklin was a loyal British royalist. He was not alone in this. Until the Stamp Act, most Americans had no conception that they would ever be separated from Britain. Indeed, many of our Founding Fathers initially set out to assert their rights as Englishmen. Even as late as 1774, Thomas Jefferson, the chief framer of the Declaration of Independence, used a collection of English Civil War pamphlets when he “cooked up a resolution … to avert us from the evils of civil war.” Franklin himself stayed in London right up to March 1775, in an increasingly desperate search for a peaceful settlement.

Born in Boston in 1706, to an English father, Franklin first lived in London between 1724 and 1726 and worked as a printer. Young Ben’s intellectual framework was formed by the British written word. He perfected his writing style and focus by reading and re-reading Joseph Addison’s and Richard Steele’s articles in The Spectator and rewriting them in his own words. They provided him with a brilliant introduction to London’s intellectual coffeehouse society, enabling the young American to deploy the necessary “polite conversation” that won him rapid acceptance. Franklin recognized his debt, later describing Addison as a man “whose writings have contributed more to the improvement of the minds of the British nation, and polishing their manners, than those of any other English pen whatever.”

The Franklin who returned to America at the age of 20 had the self-confidence bred from talking on equal terms with men such as Sir Isaac Newton’s co-author, Dr. Henry Pemberton, and Bernard Mandeville, whose Deist book The Fable of the Bees was the publishing sensation of the time. In the decades that followed, as he built his own profitable printing and publishing business in Philadelphia, Franklin founded or co-founded some of America’s greatest surviving cultural institutions, including the Library Company, the American Philosophical Society, and what was to become the University of Pennsylvania. He gave them intellectual foundations built on what he had learned and discussed in London and centered on the philosophy of men such as Bacon, Locke, and Newton.

By 1757, Franklin had become a leading member of the Pennsylvania Assembly and was chosen to return to London. His ostensible mission was to open negotiations with Thomas Penn and persuade Pennsylvania’s absentee proprietor to pay at least some local taxes. However, Franklin in London was much more than a Pennsylvanian representative. During the late 1740s and early 1750s he had thrown himself into groundbreaking scientific research, which he published as Experiments and Observations on Electricity, Made at Philadelphia in America. This won him the 1753 Copley Medal (the 18th-century equivalent of the Nobel Prize) and a fellowship of the Royal Society. It also transformed his social standing. He was famous. This son of a poor tallow chandler was embraced by a British aristocracy enthralled by science and particularly keen on the sizzle of electricity. Celebrated in London, he was also renowned across Europe, with the great philosopher Immanuel Kant describing him as “the Prometheus of modern times.” Franklin dined with kings, had access to prime ministers, and was friends with philosophers and great men of science such as David Hume and Joseph Priestley—as well as with the rascally James Boswell and infamous Francis Dashwood of the Hellfire Club.

Franklin appreciated his British life from his home in London’s Craven Street, just south of the Strand. This house is the only one of all those in which Franklin lived that still stands today and has just celebrated its 10th anniversary as the Benjamin Franklin House museum and education center. Franklin enjoyed a strong platonic relationship with its owner, Mrs. Stevenson, who was not so much a landlady as the manager of his London household. But he also missed the comforts of home, upbraiding his wife Deborah for failing to send his favourite Newtown Pippin apples and thanking her for dispatching such American delights as buckwheat cakes, cranberries, and “Indian meal.” Deborah was of more use to Franklin back in Philadelphia, managing his affairs there as well as sending him treats. It was an arrangement that suited him far more than her.

Franklin briefly returned to Philadelphia for 18 months between 1762 and 1764, but was soon back in London and increasingly drawn into wider British politics. The Stamp Act repeal proved a false dawn. By 1768, Franklin was acting for four colonial assemblies: Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Georgia, as well as Pennsylvania. His role for the first—the most vehemently opposed to further taxation—brought him into sharp conflict with ministers in Lord North’s government. By the early 1770s, Franklin’s relationship with them was one of mutual loathing. Crucially, it was further inflamed because of Franklin’s close links with a British parliamentary opposition that was seeking power itself. On March 20, 1775, Franklin was forced to flee in order to escape arrest by the men he called “mangling ministers.”

It was only then, at the age of nearly 70, that he discarded his loyalty to the British state and became a fierce advocate of American independence.

Yet even as an American patriot, Franklin once again returned to Philadelphia with British enlightenment values that influenced his fellow Founding Fathers. Having arrived in London with two slaves, Franklin now supported calls for abolition. Though he did not convince Thomas Jefferson on that matter, he did on others. Jefferson’s choice of portraits for his entrance hall at Monticello is instructive. In the most prominent position are three of Franklin’s own British influences: Bacon, Newton, and Locke. There is also a fourth. It is of Benjamin Franklin.

As for Franklin himself, he never quite gave up his Atlanticist dream, even after independence was secured. But now it was to be on a different basis. In 1784, he half-jokingly, if in strictest confidence, wrote to his long-time British friend William Strahan with this suggestion: “You still have one resource left and not a bad one since it may re-unite the Empire … if you have not Sense and Virtue enough left to govern yourselves, even dissolve your present old crazy Constitution, and send Members to Congress.”

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