Though wars are most visibly and vividly contested on the field of battle, they are arguably won and lost by diplomats wielding nothing sharper than their pens and their wits. For while soldiers are trained to kill with frightening proficiency, they are merely the most obvious manifestation of the will of those who comprise the government. They make and break the treaties; they pay and provision the soldiers; they even give them their orders, telling when to fight and when to hold their fire. They hold the reins of power. And so it's little wonder that a diplomat has been credited with perhaps the second most influential contribution to American independence, behind only that of George Washington. Benjamin Franklin, and his years in France, secured the existence of the fledgling republic. Ms. Schiff explains in this her history of the great inventor's time there.
For the first nine years of the American republic (1776-1785), Benjamin Franklin, that most famed inventor and rebel, was the ambassador to a country without whose support America would have never won the war. France, the shining light of cultural Europe and a staunchly monarchical country with a centuries-long rivalry with England, had little in common with the breakaway colonies attempting to rid themselves of their British masters. Not only were most Americans emigrants from England, they had just recently participated in a war with England against France, culminating in a French defeat that saw them lose virtually all of their North American holdings. What's more, no matter how much enmity the French crown had for england, no matter the outstanding grudges yet to be settled, America was a pathetically weak power with virtually no international profile and, thus, no reputation as a nation capable of keeping its promises and punching above its own meager weight.
And yet, for three, long, frustrating years, Mr. Franklin toiled and schemed, negotiated and cajoled, manipulated and wheedled, until France finally agreed to financially and materielly support the Americans in their bid for independence. Grunts, gold and gunpowder were all dispatched to American shores where they were received by George Washington and his desperate army. With this fresh infusion of support, the Americans turned the tide of their rebellion and thrust the Tories from their shores, forever altering the course of history. And all of it made possible by the cunning, the charm and the cleverness of one man, 3,000 miles away, at the court of a French king...
Full of contentious rivalries and venomous disputes, selfish agents and pompous egos, A Great Improvisation is a vivid reconstruction of the heady years of the American war for independence. Entirely focused on Franklin's machinations at the French court, Ms. Schiff, an American historian who most recently penned a captivating biography of Cleopatra, animates Benjamin Franklin to a wonderful extent, revealing a man of breadth and power. For this most libertine of diplomats was intoxicated by both women and wine, reality and abstraction. A giant of his time, he possessed a powerful mind capable of manipulating kings into going against their own best interests all while fending off treasonous attacks, from his own delegation, which sought to undermine his authority, thus jeopardizing his most critical mission.
But as much as Ms. Schiff succeeds in bringing Mr. Franklin to life, her work's greatest virtue is the extent to which, with an archaeologist's care, she removes the shroud of legend that the American founders sought to wrap about themselves, revealing them to be mere mortals, driven by grudges and biases. She vividly details how the depth of their discomfort with licentious France, coupled the desire to believe in their founding mythology, lead them to commit the age-old sin of nation-builders the world over, to whitewash their own history, downplaying the contributions of their allies in order to make their own efforts, to repel and even defeat what was then the world's most powerful empire, seem all the more extraordinary. This whitewashing caused Franklin's reputation to suffer a double blow. For not only was he himself licentious, and thus worthy of the same suspicions directed at France, his efforts at the French court to secure aid for the American rebellion could hardly be significant if, indeed, the mythologizers were right and America sprang, fully formed, from the womb of liberty.
A Great Improvisation is compelling history lyrically told. Ms. Schiff does, at times, assume that the reader has more knowledge of events of this period than is perhaps reasonable or wise to expect, but then this is nothing a quick trip to Wikipedia can't cure. Fine work... (4/5 Stars)
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