Benjamin Franklin and the Invention of Microfinance

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Bruce H Yenawine
Editor: Michele R Costello

Financial History

In life, Benjamin Franklin sought to manage debt, organize credit, build capital and promote virtue. After death, he continued this work by leaving a codicil to his last will and testament, bequeathing £2,000 to Boston and Philadelphia and to the commonwealths of Massachusetts and Pennsylvania with explicit instructions on how they should utilize the money over the course of the following two hundred years. Franklin intended that the money be used to provide loans to young married artisans to enable them to start small businesses and thereby promote a higher standard of living and a strong moral community. Although the managers put in charge of the endowment did not lend as effectively as Franklin had hoped, the loans did aid numerous small businessmen.

Without fully realizing it, Franklin invented an idea that would come to fruition some two centuries later in the global microfinance movement. This study traces the development of that idea and simultaneously enlightens a neglected aspect of American financial history. Advocates of microfinance today will find much of interest in this study, including pitfalls to avoid and old ideas that may bear resuscitation.

Sample pages

• Benjamin Franklin: Introduction
• Benjamin Franklin: Index

Readership

American History, Eighteenth-Century Studies and Economic and Financial History

Contents

Introduction
1 Franklin's Intent: The Autobiographical Origins of the Codicil
2 Franklin's Intent: The Sources of Political and Economic Concepts
3 Boston: The First Century
4 Philadelphia: The First Century
5 The Centennial in Boston and Philadelphia
6 Boston: The Second Century
7 Philadelphia: The Second Century
8 Bicentennial: Boston and Philadelphia
Conclusion
Appendices

Reviews

'This is a fascinating book that is highly recommended for the general reader.'
– Ronnie J Phillips, EH.net (read the full review here)

Related titles

• The Political Economy of Sentiment: Paper Credit and the Scottish Enlightenment in Early Republic Boston, 1780–1820
• The Revenue Imperative: The Union's Financial Policies during the American Civil War
• The Rise and Fall of the American System: Nationalism and the Development of the American Economy, 1790–1837
• The Emergence of a National Economy: The United States from Independence to the Civil War
• The US National Debt, 1787–1900

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