WI Benjamin Franklin Died as a Child

Just like it says on the tin, folks. What if Ben Franklin died as a kid? What is the effect on the development of America? On Enlightenment thought?
 

Anaxagoras

Banned
This would be an enormous POD, because it's hard to overstate Benjamin Franklin's impact on the creation of America, not just as a nation but as a society. His scientific achievements are actually underrated by historians; his early death would significantly set back understanding of electricity, which in turn sets backs the discovery of electromagnetism and much of 20th Century science.
 
Maybe the Thirteen Colonies would become failed states? The British would dominate the 19th century even more so than they already did, both politically and scientifically?
 
This would be an enormous POD, because it's hard to overstate Benjamin Franklin's impact on the creation of America, not just as a nation but as a society. His scientific achievements are actually underrated by historians; his early death would significantly set back understanding of electricity, which in turn sets backs the discovery of electromagnetism and much of 20th Century science.
I agree. Without his statesmanship, the American colonies might evolve into another part of Canada. For whatever industrialization happens, it will be very much centered on the OTL Great Lakes States plus Ontario and Quebec. Scientifically, much might be delayed. What might Faraday do without Franklin's groundwork?
 
Washington was undoubtedly the paramount man keeping the United States together, and Franklin was the one who kept the colonies together a generation earlier. Had he not been around, it would have been a lot easier for Britain to play divide-and-rule. He isn't called the First American for nothing. Without Franklin I cannot imagine the United States (or whatever it is called ITTL.) That doesn't mean it wouldn't come into existence, but I wouldn't bet on a stable democracy forming out of a violent rebellion of a collection of northern and southern colonies without Franklin there.
 
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