ABSTRACT
Benjamin Franklin was born in Boston on January 17, 1706, to immigrant parents from southern England. When economic opportunity dried up in England, Benjamin's father, Josiah Franklin, had travelled across the Atlantic ocean in 1683 to start anew. Franklin was born not just in a city or a colony, but in an expanding Atlantic empire. At the time of Franklin's birth, Britain was embroiled in a war with both Spain and France that spilled over into North America in a series of conflicts known as Queen Anne's War. The war ended in 1713 with the Treaty of Utrecht, which saw Britain's territory expand into Newfoundland and Nova Scotia, as well as Rupert's Land ringing the southern shores of Hudson Bay. No one could have predicted in 1706 that Franklin would spend much of his life trying to protect and strengthen that British empire.
