Imperial Enterprise
The Franks Family Network, Commerce, and British Expansion
TONI PITOCK
On December 7, 1763, a group of Philadelphia merchants and traders drafted a memorial to the Board of Trade, which, they hoped, would “represent [their] Misfortunes to the Crown.”1 The memorialists appealed for reparations for the losses they had suffered in Indian predations on the frontier six months earlier. They believed they were entitled to compensation because they were British subjects, licensed traders, and had taken considerable risks in the service of British imperial interests. As traders, their enterprises in the Ohio River Valley contributed to “the late peace and Friendship established with [the Indians],” and helped “conciliate [them] to the British Interest.” In fact, they had resumed trade even before the end of the Seven Years’ War as a “Consequence of repeated Solicitations from the Natives,” and it had been “countenanced and encouraged by the several Generals and officers.” In other words, their commercial endeavors contributed to British expansion and dominion. They noted that their trading enterprises also promoted metropolitan interests. The sale of British manufactured goods in the colonies enriched English merchants and manufacturers, who had no way of getting goods to the frontier without their American colleagues.2 Their appeal was denied, and the group devised another strategy, one that likewise tied their personal economic interests to British imperial aspirations. They applied for royal approval on a land grant that they had negotiated with several Indian tribes. This scheme would enable them to recover the value of their losses—they planned to divide and sell to settlers—but it also purported to advance a solution to the problem of integrating the vast territory in the North American interior that had come under British dominion in the peace settlement following the Seven Years’ War.
Throughout the process, the syndicate solicited the support of powerful allies. They consulted Superintendent of Indian Affairs William Johnson, and they appealed to several personages who might champion their cause, including the Earl of Halifax, former president of the Board of Trade; the chief justice of Pennsylvania, William Allen; the proprietors of Pennsylvania, the Penns; and “as great a Number of merchants, trading to [Philadelphia] & New York, As possible.”3 To represent them before the Board of Trade, they appointed the London merchant Moses Franks. Franks was a scion of a prominent mercantile family, and he held a contract to supply the British troops in America, which made him an influential representative. But Franks also had a personal interest in the outcome of the appeal. He was supplier, creditor, partner, and brother of Philadelphia merchant David Franks, whose losses in the attacks represented more than one quarter of the total, which was estimated at approximately £80,000.4
Moses and David Franks are well known to historians of early Jewish America. Their father, Jacob Franks, settled in New York in the first decade of the eighteenth century and built up a successful mercantile business conducting trade between New York and London, the Caribbean, and other North American colonies. When his sons came of age they migrated to various Atlantic ports, expanding the family enterprise. Historians present the family as exemplars of the paradox American Jews faced as they strove to parse their lives into two domains, the secular and the religious. The family observed the Sabbath, holidays, and dietary laws, and Jacob Franks was a long-standing official of the governing body of New York’s Congregation Shearith Israel. But Franks’s business interests brought him into close contact with non-Jewish colleagues, and the family mingled with their families. Indeed, Jacob’s wife, Abigaill Levy Franks, derived great “pleasure to Observe the faire Character Our Familys has in the place by Jews and Christians.” Their conviction that they could maintain a separation between the religious and secular domains was shattered when two of their children married Christians in the 1730s.5 The family does exemplify the challenge that early American Jews faced. However, the economic enterprises of Jacob Franks and his sons place them within an Atlantic world framework and reveal the intricacies of their endeavors in the British imperial context.
For one thing, the Franks family brings to light the Ashkenazi presence in the Atlantic world. Sephardim and the crypto-Jews and New Christians associated with them had long been circulating in the Atlantic world, where they developed kinship and ethnic networks that enabled them to engage extensively in cross-cultural and interimperial trade.6 The scholarly emphasis on the Iberian-origin diaspora, however, has obscured Ashkenazi migration to the Dutch Republic and England and their colonies, which began toward the end of the seventeenth century. Like Sephardim, they formed networks that tied them to colleagues in far-flung locations even if, as newcomers, it took years. And while most Ashkenazim were shopkeepers and petty traders, some, like the Frankses, were prosperous merchants.7
The Franks brothers’ integral involvement in the appeals to the Crown also points to the ways in which private entrepreneurs’ enterprises were central to British imperial projects. In the middle of the eighteenth century, the colonies were seen as an essential component of empire. Colonial commerce heightened the economic prosperity of the mother country, and it also encouraged migration and facilitated the spread of British values. In other words, private enterprise promoted expansion. They were “closely linked and mutually dependent.”8 Thus, David and Moses Franks, prominent merchants in Philadelphia and London, participated in the process of integrating the mother country and the colonies by conveying American resources to the metropole and manufactured goods to the colonies. And when tensions leading to the Seven Years’ War and the war itself prompted the British government to reassess colonial policies and to assert tighter control, the Frankses’ interests became further entangled.9 David Franks’s trade ventures and land speculation tapped into evolving ideas about British dominion in the far reaches of the empire. In his capacity as contractor to the Crown, Moses’s entanglements were even more intimate, as he and his American agents—including his brother David—were integrally involved in supporting direct British interventions in the American interior. Jewishness was not an obstacle.
The Franks brothers’ prominence, however, their apparent identification with the empire, and their proximity to power still raise questions about their status as Jews. The family can be seen within the framework of the “Court Jew,” a category that historians use to denote the elite Jews who mobilized financial sources and family relationships to fulfill roles as provisioners and financiers in service of absolutist rulers in German principalities.10 Like Court Jews of a slightly earlier period, Moses Franks, a Jew with considerable financial resources, mobilized far-flung family relationships to supply British troops in America. Like Court Jews, Moses and his London-based uncles’ access to aristocracy and David’s inclusion in elite circles in Philadelphia led them to embrace a style of living that set them apart from most Jewish contemporaries. Like Court Jews, the Frankses were outsiders, at least to a certain extent. After all, the empire was widely conceived of as Protestant, commercial, maritime, and free, which meant that Jews were outsiders. Yet, by the middle of the eighteenth century, the British imperial setting was an increasingly tolerant environment, shaped by Enlightenment thinking and growing diversity, and notions of subjecthood were more expansive, especially after the Seven Years’ War when the empire incorporated more diverse populations that were not Protestant, British, or free, according to “British notions of freedom.” The idea of the “British subject” implied “allegiance and obedience” to a distant monarch and a belief in inherent protections and privileges. According to one scholar, “by claiming allegiance, subjects of the empire might all identify as British subjects regardless of religion, place of origin, or race.”11 Thus, Court Jews, unequivocally outsiders, rarely showed a strong sense of commitment to one particular government, while for the Frankses, ideas of British subjecthood fostered a sense of inclusion and acceptance. Their commercial enterprises contributed to the imperial project, which helped them demonstrate allegiance.12
In eighteenth-century Britain, private enterprise was considered an important component of Britain’s expansion. Merchants were seen as contributing to Britain’s power.13 The Franks family engaged in commerce from the time that David and Moses’s grandfather migrated to England. Abraham Franks was one of twelve “Jew brokers” on London’s Royal Exchange in 1697, one of only two Ashkenazim. His sons Aaron and Isaac were prominent gem merchants who made a fortune in trade in the East Indies. Isaac, winner of £20,000 in the notorious 1719 South Sea lottery, was a stockholder in the Hudson Bay Company and left an estate estimated at £300,000 when he died in 1736, the equivalent of approximately £49,840,000 today. Wealth and status gave the London Frankses access to the most prestigious circles, including members of the aristocracy. Aaron lent jewelry to the value of £40,000 to the Princess of Wales, King George I attended Isaac’s wedding, and Aaron, together with his father-in-law, appealed to George II to intercede with Empress Maria Theresa when she issued an edict expelling the Jews of Prague.14 While Aaron and Isaac Franks made their fortune in the east, not yet officially part of Britain’s empire but certainly within its informal domain, Jacob set his sights on the western edge of the empire. When he settled in New York at the beginning of the eighteenth century, settlers and metropolitan authorities alike recognized British America’s potential. The Board of Trade envisioned a vast empire where, according to one historian, “overseas territories could be secured . . . by settling British people on the land and giving them the means to develop it through transatlantic trade and . . . by using the imperial state’s control over the distribution of land to shape these territories into model colonial dependencies.”15 Jacob Franks’s sons continued to cultivate the family’s enterprises when they came of age. Naphtali and Moses went to London where they worked with their uncles Isaac and Aaron Franks and, at the same time, engaged in trade with colleagues in Atlantic ports, including their brother David who, like his father before him, sought out a developing market in America.16
Pennsylvania was on the brink of rapid growth when David Franks settled in Philadelphia in 1741. Abundant fertile land attracted a steady flow of immigrants who produced flour, pork, beef, and lumber, valuable export resources. Beyond the agricultural zone lay the frontier with its plentiful animal populations that could feed Europe’s appetite for fur and deerskins. Philadelphia, the gateway, was rapidly becoming the largest British port in the Western Hemisphere.17 Franks emerged as one of its leading merchants thanks to his family network. He imported manufactures from London to sell to urban and rural customers and exported local commodities, including furs and skins, which were in high demand in Europe.18
The same colonial conditions that facilitated Franks’s success as a transatlantic merchant—the surge of settlers in the Pennsylvania back-country and the European appetite for animal pelts, which drew frontier traders to the Ohio River Valley—exacerbated rivalry between the British and French and precipitated the Seven Years’ War. The French were determined to preserve their dominance in the region and especially their access to the Mississippi River, the conduit that connected Canada and Louisiana. In 1754, almost ten years before the attack mentioned in the 1763 memorial, together with Indian allies, the French launched a military campaign against Anglo traders. As a major supplier of merchandise to frontier traders, David Franks suffered enormous losses.19
Hostilities on the frontier brought trade to a standstill and compromised the Frankses’ commercial enterprises. But within a few years David and Moses Franks intertwined their interests even more intimately with those of the empire. The British dispatched troops to the colonies with the goal of ousting the French. In 1759, in partnership with James and George Colebrooke and Arnold Nesbitt, Moses Franks was awarded a contract to victual the British troops in North America. The Colebrookes were merchant bankers involved in the East India Company and members of Parliament. Their support for Prime Minister Thomas Pelham, the Duke of Newcastle, was rewarded with a baronetcy.20 Arnold Nesbitt was likewise a member of a mercantile banking family with a parliamentary seat and links to a series of prime ministers—Robert Walpole, Henry Pelham, and Thomas Pelham. The Colebrooke and Nesbitt families had long conducted trade in Europe, but they only expanded their interests to include North America early in the Seven Years’ War. They joined forces with one another and two other London houses in 1756. Their influence with Thomas Pelham earned them a contract to supply payment for the troops in Louisburg. At the time, Newcastle was first commissioner of the Treasury and had the authority to grant such contracts. Three years later, with Moses Franks as part of their consortium, they were awarded the contract to victual the troops further south.21 The Colebrookes’ and Nesbitt’s access to power was no doubt key to securing the coveted contract, begging the question why Moses Franks was part of their consortium. He had much to offer. In addition to the fact that his uncle and associate Aaron Franks was a leading diamond importer and a major investor in the East India Company, Moses Franks’s network in America was crucial. It included long-time colleagues Oliver DeLancey and John Watts, both members of prominent New York trading families, Franks’s New York-based father Jacob Franks, who was made principal agent to the contractors in the colonies, and his brother David in Philadelphia, who, together with merchant and former Philadelphia mayor William Plumsted, was appointed agent in Pennsylvania and the western territories.22 Moses Franks’s American colleagues could tap their own networks to procure provisions and coordinate distribution, which must have been an essential selling point for the Colebrooke, Nesbitt, and Franks consortium since Colebrooke and Nesbitt’s prior contracts did not include provisioning the army.
For David Franks, the enterprise was extremely complicated and involved significant sums. In the first year alone, Plumsted and Franks billed the Crown nearly £70,000 for carriage and £63,000 for provisions (in total, roughly the equivalent of £15,000,000 and £14,000,000 today). The contract to supply the troops promised profit, but the Frankses’ enterprises enabled them to demonstrate that their interests were not merely personal. Rather, they symbolized fealty to Britain. Indeed, others registered the significance of their endeavors. Commander-in-chief of the British army Jeffery Amherst indicated the import of Franks and Plumsted’s duties when he alerted Governor James Hamilton of Pennsylvania that their ventures were in service to the Crown. “I cannot in Duty to the King, and in Justice to His Troops,” he wrote, “Refrain from Requesting You to Grant them, upon every such Occasion, all the Aid and Assistance they may stand in need of, for the better, and more Effectual performance of the said Contract.”23 Indeed, fulfilling the terms of their contract required a high level of organization and coordination. Enormous quantities of flour, salt, meat, and other supplies had to be delivered to British forts in the Ohio River Valley and as far away as Quebec. Transporting the provisions across the immense landscape was a complex undertaking. Wagons carried the goods to Port Pitt. From there the goods had to be carried by packhorse or boats on the Ohio River. Scores of people were needed to cooperate at each point along the way, including suppliers, wagon drivers, agents to whom Franks and Plumstead subcontracted, and British army personnel.24
Franks was adept in two worlds. He mobilized an extensive web of both Jewish and non-Jewish partners and agents. On the one hand, he was at the center of a Jewish network that was developing in and around Philadelphia. A few Ashkenazi immigrants began arriving in Philadelphia each year after Franks settled, and he gave many of them their start by employing them as clerks or setting them up in backcountry stores. Some of them earned his trust through hard work, competence, and honesty. He earned their loyalty by launching their careers. By the time Franks was supplying the British troops, he had come to rely heavily on a few key Jewish colleagues.25 However, Franks’s network was not exclusively Jewish. His business ties challenge the notion that Jews prioritized business relationships with other Jews.26 Instead, Franks family collaborations show that by the second quarter of the eighteenth century, credit and reputation were the linchpin of all trade relationships. Their negotiations with Jews and non-Jews alike indicate that merchants and traders carefully considered whether colleagues—all colleagues—were trustworthy, that is, whether they had a record of honesty and accountability. Franks was one of only a handful of Jews in the region when he settled. Engaging in trade would have been impossible if he was limited to Jewish associates. A higher degree of toleration facilitated intercultural interactions in the British Empire and legal institutions that were at merchants’ disposal to protect their interests. Commercial interactions with non-Jews promoted his inclusion in the dominant culture and gave him access to Philadelphia’s elite circles, including to his partner in supplying the troops, William Plumsted, merchant and shipowner and former Philadelphia mayor.27
The war presented other opportunities for David Franks as well. As soon as the conflict began, British authorities recognized that Native American support would be critical in the contest with the French on the frontier. They appointed two superintendents to oversee Indian affairs.28 Sir William Johnson, the superintendent for the northern department, then appointed George Croghan to be the Crown’s primary representative to the Iroquois. He was a deft negotiator and trader familiar with the Delaware and Iroquois languages. When the Pennsylvania backcountry was brought under control and the Indian trade resumed, he was also responsible for monitoring the Indian trade in the Ohio River Valley, including setting prices and giving out licenses to traders.29 David Franks was already acquainted with Croghan, and he set up a strategic partnership with Croghan and his long-time associate William Trent, an Indian trader who had spent time on the frontier as factor for the Ohio Company in the 1740s. Franks imported manufactures from his London colleagues and exported the furs and skins that he and his partners procured from the frontier. Other partners in their consortium, Barnard Gratz, Joseph Simon, and Levy Andrew Levy, all Ashkenazi immigrants, coordinated conveyance of goods between Philadelphia and Fort Pitt and managed the Fort Pitt warehouse.30
The partnership enabled Franks to dominate the Indian trade to such an extent that competitors believed that Franks and his partners’ near-monopoly in the Indian trade was due to the fact that Croghan bent the rules to their benefit.31 James Kenny, clerk at the provincial trading store in Pittsburgh, complained that the group’s practice of offering Indians credit gave them an advantage.32 Another critic maintained that Croghan claimed to have been given “Liberty by ye Generals Orders to direct ye selling of Rum to Indians,” and there was now great demand “at Trent & Levys Store,” which was owned by the partnership. He complained to Colonel Henry Bouquet, commander of the Royal American Regiment, that the partners dominated the Indian trade by exchanging alcohol for “the Choicest of their skins & furs.”33 Franks’s partners Levy Andrew Levy and William Trent ventured well beyond Fort Pitt selling goods and liquor not only to Indians but to French settlers living in the region and British troops that were stationed in forts. The troops were an especially advantageous market because they paid traders in sterling, making it easier to pay British suppliers and build their reputation with distant creditors.34 The western trade represented a significant source of profit for Franks and his partners. Between April 1760 and mid-1763, they sent almost £26,000 worth of trade goods to Ohio Country and the Great Lakes region.35
It turned out that the peace and, consequently, a robust trade with the Indians were only temporary. Only a few months after the Peace of Paris was signed, the western reaches of the empire erupted in renewed conflict. Alarmed by the news that France had ceded its territory to the British and concerned about continued Anglo encroachment, a confederation of Indians from the Great Lakes Region, Ohio Country, and Illinois Country coordinated a series of attacks on British forts, Anglo-American settlements, and traders. These attacks marked the beginning of what became known as Pontiac’s War, named for the Ottawa leader who led the offensive.36
The new wave of violence simultaneously hurt and boosted David Franks’s interests. First, Franks and his trading partners were among those whose pack trains fell victim to ambushes. Goods were plundered and destroyed, and Levy Andrew Levy, one of Franks’s Jewish partners, was one of about forty traders taken prisoner at Detroit. Ten of his servants were killed.37 Franks and his colleagues valued their losses at £24,780, more than one quarter of the losses collectively claimed by Philadelphia merchants in their memorial to the Board of Trade discussed at the beginning of this essay.38 However, British troops arrived back in the Ohio River Valley, escalating the demand for supplies. In their capacity as agents to the contractors, Franks and his partner William Plumsted were called upon once again to supply the troops. Conditions were unpredictable and perilous. Colonel Henry Bouquet expressed concern that fears of Indian attacks “will put a Stop to all Carriages, as no Country men will be prevailed upon to go up for some time without an [armed] Escort.” Amherst recognized the need for haste and made extra funds available to Franks and Plumsted.39 Nevertheless, both Bouquet and Amherst were aware of Britain’s mounting debts and the need to cut costs, and ongoing mistrust and frequent disagreements came to define their relationship with Franks and Plumsted. Authorities accused Franks and Plumsted of extracting more money from the Crown by oversupplying the forts. But when Franks and Plumsted requested clarification regarding the “number of Eaters” they would have to feed and expressed concern about losses on the road because of “the weakness of Your horses &c.,” Bouquet was unaccommodating.40 He told them “it must depend on the Number of Troops that will be ke[pt] in the Department, and which I cannot yet ascertain.” On the other hand, he complained about a shortage of livestock and predicted that shortages would intensify because of “Excessive heat,” which “ruins Men Horses & Cattle.”41 Plumsted and Franks griped that Bouquet was vague and that untimely orders drove up their expenses. Bouquet countered that they had been given sufficient notice and should have prepared better.42
There were also disputes over remuneration. Plumsted and Franks claimed that in addition to the troops, they provided rations “to poor People in distress” who sought refuge from marauding Indians in the forts. Bouquet asserted that “Indulgence” of these settlers was only for the “first days of the Alarm,” and had subsequently been forbidden. He refused to authorize payment and suggested that Franks and Plumsted approach commanding officers at each post, who had their own budgets. Plumsted and Franks expressed concerns about costs when Bouquet ordered delivery of goods with little notice, such as when Bouquet ordered them to purchase fifty thousand live hogs and to deliver them to Fort Pitt. Using the trump card, Bouquet reminded them of their duty to the Crown. “I am convinced that your Principals as well as yourselves would never upon such an emergency consider their Interest alone Exclusive of the Public Service, but would be Satisfy’d not to be loosers.”43 As dutiful and humble subjects, Bouquet implied, Franks and Plumsted owed obedience and allegiance, the proof of which was their willingness to serve the Crown.44
Disputes and suspicions notwithstanding, the Franks family network appears to have been indispensable in keeping the supply chain moving. When the contract held by Colebrooke, Nesbitt, and Franks expired in November 1763, of the consortium, only Moses Franks was retained as a contractor. The government claimed to be seeking to lower costs but did not even attempt to renegotiate with the Colebrooke/Nesbitt/Franks consortium. Colebrooke and Nesbitt were likely shunned when political leadership shifted. George Colebrooke (James Colebrooke died in the interim) and Arnold Nesbitt had backed Thomas Pelham, the Duke of Newcastle, who was removed from his position by George III. John Watts, the contractors’ New York agent and Moses Franks’s long-time friend and colleague, noted antagonism between Colebrooke and the new prime minister.45 Together with Sir Samuel Fludyer, a merchant, director of the Bank of England, member of Parliament, and mayor of London, and Adam Drummond, a Scottish merchant, banker, and member of Parliament, Franks negotiated new terms when Grenville stepped into office.46 Since a Jew could not hold office, perhaps Moses Franks was spared having to align himself with a party, or perhaps he believed that it was safer to avoid siding with a party and simply to declare allegiance to the Crown.
A shake-up occurred in Philadelphia as well. When Thomas Gage replaced Jeffery Amherst as commander of the army, he scrutinized accounts for Bouquet’s area of command and questioned Franks and Plumsted’s charges.47 Then, when word of the new Fludyer, Drummond, and Franks contract reached Gage in February 1765, he confirmed the appointment of David Franks as the contractors’ agent, this time with John Inglis and Gilbert Barkley as his partners. Both were Scottish merchants who were members of Philadelphia’s elite. If the contractors and their agents in America were integral to securing and maintaining Britain’s new territories as more troops were stationed on the frontier, the Franks brothers seem to have been the critical component. The terms of the new contract were more clearly defined. Lower costs were to be paid for rations, and Franks and his partners were required to deliver them within three months without charging additional fees. The British were to pay transportation costs separately from the price of the rations and cover the cost of excess provisions still being stored after six months.48 But Henry Bouquet complained about the new contract. Troops were being stationed further west—in Illinois Country—and he expected transportation costs to rise.49 Antagonism between Franks and Bouquet and General Gage persisted, but Franks’s position was fortified in 1766 when the Crown renewed its contract with Nesbitt, Drummond, and Franks—Arnold Nesbitt, Franks’s former partner, replacing Fludyer.50
The British sought to integrate newly conquered territories in North America into the empire, but different groups of inhabitants posed different challenges. French settlers in the lands to the east of the Mississippi River were considered to be a potential threat, a corrupting influence. Left to their own devices, they would entice French traders back into the region. The British deemed it necessary to introduce a military presence in the Illinois Country. But the “Western Indians” resented the military presence and strongly opposed direct rule over them. The British sought other ways to conciliate the Indians. Some officials believed that trade would induce Indians to embrace Britain’s “civilizing influence.”51 Thus, in the spring of 1765 Superintendent of Indian Affairs Johnson dispatched George Croghan on a diplomatic mission to assure the Native inhabitants of Britain’s amity. Croghan left Fort Pitt with soldiers and representatives from neighboring Indian tribes. They brought boatloads of goods to distribute to the Indians as gifts, meant as a gesture of goodwill on behalf of the British. The firm of Baynton, Wharton, and Morgan, Franks’s competitors in the Indian trade, received the official order for £2,000 worth of goods.52
Even though Franks lost out on the consignment of goods, in contravention of Johnson’s orders, Croghan secretly took trade goods belonging to Franks and his partners valued at a similar amount.53 In addition, Franks’s ties to his brother Moses gave him an advantage over other Philadelphia merchants who hoped to profit from British expansion. Negotiations were still underway with the contractors when troops arrived in Fort Chartres in Illinois Country at the end of 1765. Local authorities therefore had to make temporary arrangements, which aroused the hopes of Franks’s competitors. Franks negotiated a short-term contract according to which he charged per ration delivered to Fort Pitt, and the British had to transport the supplies from there.54 But Gage also purchased supplies from Baynton, Wharton, and Morgan, the Philadelphia group who provided the goods for Croghan’s expedition. That group had already set up a store in Fort Chartres in hopes of cornering the local market, and then offered British authorities a more efficient and cheaper strategy for supplying the troops. By transporting supplies for the troops together with the trade goods they intended to convey to Illinois, they could defray some of the army’s cost. They also proposed that they could cut costs by supplying the fort with “Flour, Pork, etc.,” that they expected to acquire from French settlers who had been inhabiting the region since before the Seven Years’ War. The settlers, they anticipated, would barter their produce in exchange for manufactures at the Baynton, Wharton, and Morgan store.55 But the contractors in London and the government agreed to new terms for conveying supplies to Illinois commencing in January 1767 with Franks as their agent once again, this time under the auspices of his partnership with Levy, in cooperation with an uncle on his mother’s side.56 Franks’s rivals’ store survived until 1768, when Franks stationed an agent, William Murray, in Illinois to manage his affairs more closely. Baynton, Wharton, and Morgan sold the stock remaining in their store to Franks, enabling him and his partners to dominate trade in Illinois as well.57
Even while trying to woo Indians with goods, British authorities recognized that the Indian trade intensified other problems. Dependency on European goods had led to indebtedness and, consequently, forfeiture of land to settle debts. The merchants and traders who came into possession of land aimed to sell it to settlers—a focus of Indians’ resentment. Already throngs of settlers had pushed beyond the Proclamation Line, the boundary enacted by Parliament in 1763, right after Pontiac’s War erupted, prohibiting settlement west of the Appalachian Mountains.58 The policy that was being shaped focused on preventing new transfers of land, controlling settlement, and regulating trade. To that end, Sir William Johnson limited trade to those holding licenses. From the point of view of merchants and traders, however, licenses implied protections. This explains why David Franks and his colleagues and competitors who lost goods in the Indian attacks in 1763 appealed to the Crown for compensation. When they submitted their memorial, they tasked Assistant Superintendent of Indian Affairs George Croghan (who was also Franks’s trading partner) with assisting Moses Franks in London representing their appeal to the Board of Trade. Given the ongoing discussions taking place in London about managing the new territory, Franks and his colleagues recognized that they needed to be strategic.59 They thus sought to show that they had been, and continued to be, useful allies in promoting British imperial interests.
This was not Croghan’s primary mission in London. He was sent to present Superintendent Johnson’s proposal for overcoming the thorny overlapping problems of settlers, Indians, and land—a conundrum that was central to imperial policy. Johnson suggested that the British delineate a new, more effectively enforceable frontier boundary, in other words, a new colony. In addition, a new colony would also resolve the problem of the French settlers. A new colony would “induce the French to embrace Britishness.”60 In short, a new colony was a way to impose stricter control over new regions, a way of subordinating those regions to British authority.61
Talk of a new colony encouraged land speculation and inspired investors in Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New York, and Connecticut to form land companies. In fact, scores of investors already held land titles to tracts lying west of the Proclamation Line. As early as 1749, Croghan himself negotiated with “Chiefs of the Six Nations” for three tracts in the heart of the Ohio Valley in exchange for “a Large & valuable Quantity of Goods.”62 In 1763, David Franks and his partner William Plumsted acquired a sixty-thousand-acre tract from Croghan on the Youghiogheny River southeast of Fort Pitt. In addition to Croghan’s two other responsibilities in Parliament, he also addressed his own problem, the fact that the imposition of the Proclamation Line threatened the value of those assets. He requested that policy makers reimburse him for his tract at the forks of the Ohio. Instead of financial compensation, he indicated that he would accept two hundred thousand acres in the Mohawk Valley, another region that attracted settlers.63
Thus, when Franks and his comemorialists’ request for compensation for their losses in the 1763 Indian attacks was declined, the group changed their strategy, adopting an approach similar to Croghan’s, and once again tied their own fortunes to British plans for managing its empire. They decided to obtain a land grant directly from the Indians within the region earmarked for a colony and to apply to the Crown for approval. For this purpose, they formed the Indiana Company, issuing shares to claimants in proportion to their losses. The group’s leading advocate, William Trent—Franks and Croghan’s partner in the Indian trade—worked on garnering as much support for the plan as possible. He offered shares to powerbrokers whose influence might help their cause, including Governor William Franklin of New Jersey and Joseph Galloway, speaker of the Pennsylvania Assembly. At a conference held at Johnson’s New York estate in 1765, the Six Nations and Delaware Indians agreed to cede a tract of land on the Ohio—the land that would become a new colony if Parliament approved Johnson’s plan.64
Superintendent Johnson formalized peace with Pontiac and his allies at a formal meeting in 1766 where he emphasized Britain’s commitment to coexistence and free trade with the Indians, and the parties agreed to negotiate a new frontier boundary. Two years later, in 1768, British authorities gave Johnson the go-ahead to confer with the Indians about the boundary lines for a cession of land to the Crown. The Indiana Company’s land grant, if approved, would be situated within the designated territory. Johnson convened a conference with the chiefs of the Six Nations and their dependent tribes at Fort Stanwix, New York. The Indians at the conference granted the Indiana Company a large tract in what is now West Virginia. The grant was made in the form of a sale for £85,916 New York currency, the amount being the value of goods stolen and destroyed in 1763. Although the grant had not yet received royal approval, the Treaty of Fort Stanwix signaled to all concerned that the Crown would soon permit settlement west of the Proclamation Line.65
The Indiana Company dispatched William Trent, another one of David Franks and George Croghan’s partners in the Indian trade and the individual tasked with garnering support for the Indiana Company, to London to secure confirmation on their grant. Optimistic that approval was forthcoming, members of the group asked Trent to present another similar case on behalf of the “Sufferers of 1754” who had lost goods in attacks at the beginning of the Seven Years’ War. Once again David Franks was a member of the group, and once again they asked Moses Franks for assistance in the matter, offering him a share in a second land company as compensation.66 The latter addressed “the Kings Most Excellent Majesty in Council,” asserting that the sufferers had “made Application to the Administration at the Time setting forth their extreme Losses and praying for a Compensation.” They had been “favorably heard and Hopes given them of Relief. But the general War which soon followed occasioned every lesser Consideration to be postponed.”67 The response was encouraging, but once again opposition from some members of the Board of Trade stalled resolution.
Support for the Indiana grant waxed and waned in London. More pressing colonial business always took precedence. In hopes of expediting the process the group revised their strategy to make their proposal more attractive to the Crown. With the support of former prime minister Thomas Walpole, they sought to establish a new land company financed by American and English investors who would purchase from the Crown land ceded in the Fort Stanwix treaty. The new company became known as the Grand Ohio Company or the Walpole Company in England, and as Vandalia in the colonies. David Franks, his London-based brothers Moses and Naphtali, and his son Jacob (John) Franks, who had by then settled in London and was closely associated with his uncle Moses, were all shareholders. The group recruited influential investors in America, including Benjamin Franklin and his son William, governor of New Jersey, and in Britain, including Lord Gower, president of the Privy Council; Lord Rocheford, secretary of state for the Northern Department; Thomas Pownall, member of Parliament who had served as governor of New Jersey, Massachusetts, and South Carolina; John Pownall, secretary of the Lords of Trade and Plantations; Thomas Pitt; and George Grenville. Should they succeed, the Indiana Company shareholders hoped to profit via land sales.
The tract that the company representatives offered to purchase was much larger than the tract previously sought by the Indiana Company and included the Indiana grant and George Croghan’s own grant. The purchasers offered to pay the Crown £10,160 7s. 3d. sterling (approximately equivalent to £2,000,000 today)—effectively reimbursing the Crown for the cost of the entire Fort Stanwix cession—to be paid in five installments plus a quit rent on improved lands after twenty years. The shareholders were confident that the plan would be approved, but their goals were frustrated when other American speculators came forward with similar schemes. The Ohio Company of Virginia also claimed half a million acres on the Ohio River. Another group of Virginians, with George Washington among its members, claimed two hundred thousand acres near Pittsburgh, and the Mississippi Company claims overlapped as well.68 Caught in a knot of competing claims compounded by the objections of Indians who had no part in the negotiations and objected to being dispossessed of their land, the British deferred a resolution. The Revolutionary War halted negotiations.69
The onset of hostilities between Americans and British in 1775 put the Franks family, and David Franks in particular, in a difficult position. The Nesbitt, Drummond, and Franks partnership was awarded a new contract to supply British troops who, this time, were fighting to bring rebellious American subjects to heel and to preserve the empire. Given the complexities of finding suppliers willing to support what they saw as British tyranny, the contractors shipped most supplies from elsewhere. David Franks, still his brother’s agent, was tasked with victualing troops who had been taken prisoner by the Americans, having received permission from American authorities to fulfill his contract. Between November 1776 and February 1779, the cost amounted to £51,793.70
Like central European Court Jews, the Frankses exposed themselves to considerable risk in the process of fulfilling contracts, and they found themselves facing huge losses. The Treasury refused to remit payment on some of the invoices the contractors submitted for provisions that David Franks supplied to the English prisoners. And the contractors—Moses Franks being one of them—refused to honor the bills of exchange that David Franks had drawn on them for payment.71 Instead, Moses advised his brother to attempt to procure payment from British authorities in New York.72 In the meantime, Franks’s ties to the British aroused suspicion. He was accused of treason and banished. He lived out his last years in London, where he applied to the Treasury for support on the grounds that he was “thrown out of a lucrative Business . . . and also deprived of the Emoluments arising from his Agency to the Contractors.” It is unclear whether he received any relief.73 American independence disrupted the campaign for royal approval of land grants, which, of course, had emerged from efforts to recover losses in Indian attacks. Thus, the war, Franks’s banishment, and Britain’s subsequent refusal to engage in trade with the newly independent United States shattered his commercial enterprises. Britain’s contraction, then, diminished David Franks’s economic enterprises.
Moses Franks also suffered losses. The value of the land that the brothers owned in America and their shares in land companies had plummeted. Once the war was over, he assigned a lawyer the task of chasing his debtors and liquidating his holdings in America. His debtors, including his brother, were all insolvent. In 1789 Moses Franks “died very much involved.” His executors were “obliged to sell all his Estates” to pay his debts.74 From the heights of wealth and prominence both men lost everything.
Unlike central European Court Jews, the Frankses were willing to pledge allegiance to a single power. As it turned out, the brothers’ commercial enterprises collapsed precisely because they had tied themselves so closely to Britain. The Franks brothers’ business successes and failures offer insight into their entanglements with the British Empire. Through colonial trade, especially the Indian trade, army supply, and land speculation, the Frankses’ business interests were bound up with British imperial expansion. There is no evidence the British authorities regarded the Frankses as expendable because they were Jewish. Like many of their non-Jewish colleagues, they took advantage of opportunities that presented themselves, but those opportunities carried risk, as they did for their non-Jewish colleagues. The fact that David Franks was Jewish had once mattered to the Jewish newcomers whom he helped get started. However, when it came to collecting debts after the war, ethnoreligious ties and the fact that they were David Franks’s protégés and trusted partners did not cushion them. The Frankses offered no concessions, even though their debtors were barely solvent. For the Frankses themselves, the fact that they were Jewish mattered little. The tiny number of Jews in the colonies when they each began their careers forced them to cooperate with non-Jews.75 Their collaborations with white Christian trading partners enabled them to prosper and to participate in economic sectors that were accessible only to the wealthiest merchants. It was their participation in those sectors that facilitated their entanglements in British imperial projects.