Rules by which a great empire may be reduced to a small one (1773)
183 comments
·August 6, 2025chrisco255
wpm
If anyone is ever in London and looking for a fun two-hour diversion, the Ben Franklin museum is an interesting look at this time in his life
m463
I loved the Franklin Institute, but (lol) it was in philadelphia.
amy_petrik
He founded the frankling institute in philly and declared it shall have a giant heart, he founded the university of pennsylvania state university, he invented electricity, the very pipes series that the internet interconnected, he invented glasses (that you wear, not drinking glasses those were Jefferson's invention), he invented karate, he invented the public library, he invented volunteer firefighters, he invented doggystyle position, he invented viral books and meme books, he invented french fries, he invented swimming fins, he invented swimming snorkel, he invented the wood stove (cooking AND heat), he invented urinary catheters, he invented the cotton gin, he invented an early type of musical synthesizer called the arm-monica, he invented the odometer, he invented oil pressure gauge, he invented the limbo dance, but most of all, he definitely founded the franklin institute and it definitely wasn't named after him after the fact
mplewis9z
They're talking about the Benjamin Franklin House, which is in fact in London.
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begueradj
He was a Freemason :)
SwtCyber
It's the voice of someone who's done asking politely and is now holding up a mirror with a smirk
UberFly
As much as he loved Britain, his returning to the colonies after 15 years says a ton about his well-deserved character.
pjc50
Everyone arguing below this about a flagged comment, but I'm slightly behind - what does it say about his character?
specproc
Had to get back to check in on his slaves.
thaumasiotes
> his well-deserved character
What would be an example of someone with a personality they didn't deserve?
hopelite
I will presume here, but in America “character” is not just a descriptive adjective, it is also an assumed qualitative adjective with a bias towards the positive. Having “character” is akin to a combination of that you are honorable, are principled, upstanding, and often implies a higher level learning or understanding and some refinement.
It is why it is believed to be “well-deserved” as it is a function of his behaviors, actions, and words.
mathgeek
This got me wondering if an actual answer would be folks with brain injuries.
inopinatus
Marvin.
01HNNWZ0MV43FF
Maybe they meant well-deserved reputation or something.
ang_cire
Anyone with a personality disorder.
anonym29
[flagged]
gadders
15 years? He didn't really try hard enough.
hopelite
> The substance behind the “Rules” was scarcely new…
It reminds me of something my grandfather would say “You can tell people a lot of things… you just can’t tell them the truth!”
The introduction also explores this theme with the explanation of how it was only the “biting” nature of the satire he was aware would not persuade, but would outrage in different ways… possibly intentional ways.
I tell people this a lot, because especially regarding historical events, the actual start dates of those events far precede the recorded date that is usually associated with martial actions.
The American Revolution had its origins starting in 1730. The American “Civil War” had its origins starting in 1820. The dates of the starts of most historical events don’t just happen on that day. It’s always bothered me immensely, because it’s so myopic and rather stupid in many ways. The lead up to and the planning of anything is always the far more important part than the execution, and if you don’t know that, you will fail under anything but the most advantageous circumstances.
throw0101a
> It reminds me of something my grandfather would say “You can tell people a lot of things… you just can’t tell them the truth!”
There are three ways to make a living:
1) Lie to people who want to be lied to, and you’ll get rich.
2) Tell the truth to those who want the truth, and you’ll make a living.
3) Tell the truth to those who want to be lied to, and you’ll go broke.
mikestew
Seems more like two ways, but the point stands, I suppose.
potato3732842
I greatly dislike this reductive sort of pop culture history. Where does it end? The Religion act of 1592? Henry VIII deciding that boats 'n' hoes are more important than being Catholic? Some field in East Sussex in 1066? A bridge outside Rome? Some uppity carpenter? A bunch of jews sick of building pyramids? Some apes that stood up? Some rat-like things that managed to not get eaten by dinosaurs just long enough for a space rock to hit our planet?
The first identifiable steps of the assembly of the myriad (and exponentially increasing the further back you go) of necessary key preconditions that come together to result in a thing that happened does not mean that that's when that thing started happening. We are all sitting at the tail end of an incomprehensibly long line of specific events that were in no way pre-ordained and ultimately depend upon a lot of chance and individual whims.
The american revolution could have been prevented in the 1770s and maybe we'd have turned out like Canada or Northern Ireland. The civil war could have been prevented as late as 1860 and we'd have probably got rid of slavery in the 1870s or 80s like Brazil.
brookst
Odd take on causality.
It’s perfectly reasonable to say that an event was caused by earlier events and also that different actions in the intervening years could have produced different outcomes.
The ceramic bits on the floor were caused when I dropped the bowl, even though they could have been prevented had I managed to catch it.
akhosravian
The comment you are replying to was replying to a comment that was more akin to “the ceramic bits on the floor were caused by your parents meeting” though
potato3732842
>Odd take on causality.
If you have something to say say it like a man. This is an internet comment section, not a bunch of mean girls pretending to run a parent teacher association.
>It’s perfectly reasonable to say that an event was caused by earlier events and also that different actions in the intervening years could have produced different outcomes.
The problem is that it's a meaningless statement. Everything "has its origins" or "was caused by" the prior situation which has its origins (or whatever comparable verbiage you prefer) in a nearly infinite set of things that created the immediate necessary preconditions. Like if the middle east didn't suck you might not have got Colombus when you did and the resultant effects. Or if the middle east sucked a little more you might not have gotten Marco Polo when you did having the resultant effects. But this all just devolves into a stupid "look how smart I am" exercise where we're all just basically listing things that came before and circle jerk about the ways they put their metaphorical thumbs on the scale of the future.
andrepd
Yes, we are conditioned by the long thread of history and each event followed from those that preceded it. It's a good observation even though many people think things happen in a vacuum :)
thadk
Sometimes the original typesetting is helpful to understand these kinds of artifacts: https://archive.org/details/bim_eighteenth-century_rules-for...
phi-go
This reads like the author has a lisp, with the letter s looking like an f.
kuschku
Fun fact: That long s accidentally lead to a new character being created.
In German, we've got words like "dass". Back in the day, every s that wasn't at the end of a word was written as long s, so "dass" would've been written like "daſs", which got turned into ß.
That's why until the recent orthographic reforms of 1996 and 2006 "dass" was written as "daß".
Aside: in some regions, "dass" would've been written like "dasz" / "daſz". That's why the letter is called Eszett (S-Z) even though it's capitalised as two consecutive "s".
BeFlatXIII
What was the impetus of the orthographic reforms? Is there still a sizable contingent of Germans who use the old orthography?
sebast_bake
Timeless rules… They can be applied generally to large organisations, and serve as an excellent summary of symptoms of elite blindness
SwtCyber
Makes you wonder if it's elite blindness or just the gravitational pull of power structures repeating themselves
burnt-resistor
Because most people will silently endure abuse for far too long that teach billionaires, politicians, and celebrities that there are no boundaries. They can be pedophiles and pederasts, shoot people in the street, and lawlessly disband food aid organizations (killing 13M+) without consequences. (And receive more investment because they've wired their lairs for video and audio recording to collect Kompromat.)
pstuart
It's all powered by hate, which itself is powered by ignorance and lack of critical reasoning skills.
TheOtherHobbes
Let's not forget the monarch at the time had serious mental health issues.
jjk166
King George III didn't start really start showing symptoms of mental illness until 1788, and it was only during temporary periods until 1810. There had been a brief episode in 1765, but it was poorly documented, and is described more like a depressive episode than the mania he suffered later in life. All the same, during the period leading up to and during the American Revolution, he was his regular self.
It's also worth noting that by this point in time the monarch was not really the decision maker for most affairs of state. While he was likely the most politically powerful monarch after the Glorious Revolution, Parliament was nevertheless still calling the shots.
doitLP
True but he wasn’t ruling like the kings of old. Parliament was the governing body and was very powerful even if the king still retain more power of redress and authority than he does today
lc9er
Seems to be common at the extreme levels of wealth
SwtCyber
Wild how he predicted that satire would do more to polarize than persuade
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croemer
Interesting that all nouns are capitalized, like in modern German and unlike in most other modern languages that use the Latin alphabet.
Telemakhos
Satire, Piece, and Virtues are the first Nouns that I find not capitalized. They occur within the first few Sentences, and I trust that my Observation and Diligence in this Matter might not go without Recognition.
alexchamberlain
Those are part of the modern day commentary, rather than the historic document that starts later in the article. The historic document itself seems to use capitalised nouns fairly consistently, though I haven't tried to find exceptions.
linguae
The Declaration of Independence and the original US Constitution (the main portion plus the Bill of Rights) are also written in this style, though not all nouns are consistently capitalized.
analog31
I was curious, so in case anybody else was, the first printed versions of these documents also retain this style. It wasn't just a habit of handwriting.
wging
It’s not uncommon for the time. E.g. “in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity…”
birn559
That's great to learn. A a German native speaker I have a tendency to write like that even though I know it's wrong. Good to know at least it would have been correct at some point in time :D.
xeonmc
If anything, the more capitalizations the more presidential the writing becomes, e.g.
> in Order to form a more PERFECT UNION, establish JUSTICE, insure domestic TRANQUILITY, provide for the common defence, promote the general WELFARE, and secure the BLESSINGS of LIBERTY to ourselves and our POSTERITY…
pjmlp
As non German native speaker, that lives and works across DACH space, speaks the language, what I hate is the AI learning from Android phones ortography correction, that after a while think that all words have to be capitalized when I am writing in other languages.
burnt-resistor
Now, we can't even get people to capitalize proper nouns to disambiguate soil from a planet.
shikon7
In a some sense that goes back to the roots, as you can't distinguish these in German either ("Erde" is always capitalized)
burnt-resistor
You're forgetting English is a far more confusing and ambiguous language.
"English" may mean a subset of British people, a language, or sometimes a restaurant MacGuffin, whereas "english" refers to only vertical spinning of a billard ball.
Jap2-0
Decreasingly so, but even in stuff written in the last hundred years or so you'll sometimes find words capitalized for emphasis or similar.
tempestn
Most communication from the highest office in the land is indeed now In this Exalted STYLE.
selimthegrim
Famously Custer used to capitalize mule and horse and write Indian in lowercase
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SwtCyber
Capitalizing nouns was more of a stylistic convention back then
xdennis
It's not all nouns. Capitalization was a form of emphasis back then.
hellojimbo
Is this like the prince or art of war where we are supposed to draw some lesson from very specific critiques and extrapolate it to every scenario.
somenameforme
Is it specific? What he describes is essentially the downfall of every single great Empire that has ever existed or even would exist long after his death. For that matter it even largely describes why a certain Empire without declared borders is in ongoing decline, first in soft power and now in hard.
It's essentially just describing hubris, which those who find themselves in power - particularly power that they themselves did not build, can never seem to escape.
philosophty
"What he describes is essentially the downfall of every single great Empire that has ever existed..."
Even accounting for hyperbole this is just not at all historically accurate.
Military conquest and failures, economic decay, succession problems, and weather are responsible for at least as many cases and probably more.
somenameforme
Cause vs effect. Empires grow exceptionally hubristic over time. For instance the Brits likely never even considered the possibility, in a million years, that they could lose in a military conflict with the colonies. The idea would have been preposterous. It wasn't because of a careful and objective military assessment, but because of hubristic belief in their own inherent superiority - the imperial disease.
At worst it would be a mild rebellion which would be shut down in due order with a bit of good old fashion drawing and quartering. Empires grow out of touch with reality, and base their decisions on this false reality that they create. The outcome is not hard to predict. So for instance the exact same followed the Brits all the way to their collapse. Enjoining WW1 was completely unnecessary and effectively bankrupted them. The Treaty of Versailles was painfully myopic - all but ensuring WW2, and that was essentially the end of their empire.
pydry
Hubris is a second order effect. It doesn't collapse the empire directly, it just hinders the ability to deal with military failures, economic decay, etc.
I think you could also argue that one of the reasons the Roman empire persisted so long was that their existential close calls (Hannibal being the most prominent one), became embedded into their cultural DNA.
shermantanktop
I dunno about every scenario. But it’s a pretty obvious lesson for Pax Americana, which has been based on both hard and soft power, both of which are in the hands of someone who doesn’t seem to share the premise that they should be used at all the way they have been in the past.
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tomlockwood
Also I reckon it reads as a good lesson for managers too!
chrisco255
Pax Americana isn't an empire, it's built on treaties with sovereign nations. The U.S. doesn't set arbitrary laws for Europe, like the British were doing to the American colonies.
It might be argued that the relative peace in Europe and Asia is already cracking up, given the ongoing war in Ukraine.
Either way the world is a completely different place than it was in 1949 or 1989, and as the global situation evolves it makes absolute sense to adapt with it.
Nicook
lmbo most of europe still has US military present within their borders.
staplers
The U.S. doesn't set arbitrary laws for Europe
somenameforme
I think Trump has made clear that Europe has no meaningful sovereignty. However, the only thing unique about Trump is that he doesn't play the typical games and makes no effort whatsoever to let them save face and pretend to be sovereign. We created a system where Europe is economically and militarily dependent upon the US, which means on issues we truly care about - they have no ability to say no. They're going to do what he says -- they know it, he knows it, and now everybody else also knows it because he loves to gloat about it and make it unambiguously clear that he's imposing his will on them.
The great empires of old, dating back to at least Alexander the Great and almost certainly before, all learned a simple truth. The way you create a stable empire is by giving those under your control so much as freedom as possible to maintain their own ways. We simply took this to the next logical step and created an empire no longer defined by borders.
analog31
This reads almost like a precursor to the Declaration of Independence, which lists many of the same offenses of King George.
macintux
That is, effectively, what it was.
skybrian
Yeah, historical analogies are good mostly for suggesting possibilities you hadn't thought of. They don't prove anything.
bigDinosaur
Empires having a rise and fall or increase/decrease in power/land is probably the most evidence supported grand narrative of history there is, although the specifics are always going to be different the general problems are perhaps universal (see also: The Collapse of Complex Societies by Joseph A. Tainter)
skybrian
Maybe I'm missing what you're saying, but I think that by itself, the bare statement that "sometimes empires get larger and sometimes they get smaller" is about as useless as saying that stock markets fluctuate? But the reasons why it happened in various cases are often worth reading about. That's why we read history.
majormajor
"Things change" is unconvincing to me as a "grand narrative." More an evidence-supported obvious fact.
SwtCyber
Sort of, but with a sharper edge of sarcasm
unit149
[dead]
nelox
[flagged]
somenameforme
Skillfully diplomatic? He's overtly mocking the behaviors of the British Empire. You're also off on your timeline. The 'shot heard round the world' would happen in 1775, not 1773, years after this letter was written. Even the Boston Tea Party hadn't yet happened. His overall complaint, and its solution are also rather plain. Britain was trying to impose their authority like a foreign occupation, rather than treating the colonies as an equal and integrated part of the Empire.
There's probably no timeline where Britain holds onto the colonies simply because of the distance involved - people don't like being ruled by those who don't represent themselves in any meaningful way. But they almost certainly accelerated the end through hubris. They were the Mighty and Civilized British Empire, and the colonies were just uncultured backwoods vagrants who's existence was only at the leisure of the Crown.
0xbadcafebee
> Britain was trying to impose their authority like a foreign occupation, rather than treating the colonies as an equal and integrated part of the Empire.
...to be fair, Brits back at home paid way, way more tax than Colonials did, and also had to pay market rate for tea, among other things. If Britain treated the Colonies like the rest of Britain, it wouldn't have taken until 1775 for them to revolt.
Didn't have to be that way, though. Treat the Colonies more like the Persian Empire treated its conquered states, and the USA today would just be "lower Canada".
0xbadcafebee
There were a bunch of MPs at the time who knew that trying to use force against the Colonies was going to be hell. The British Empire wasn't nearly as strong as it was before, and America was huge. Lord North was way too aggressive in trying to reign in the Colonies, and it was this constant blundering that eventually led the colonies to split. So Franklin wasn't alone in warning the Empire of the dangers of entangling themselves in a fight they might lose.
physicles
Indeed. As an American, I found The Rest Is History’s four part series on the American war for independence particularly enlightening.
hyperion2010
What you have written (copied from an llm?) is utter nonsense. The publication date for this is 1773, nearly two years before battles in Lexington and Concord start in 1775.
somenameforme
And yeah I think he's having himself a bit of an LLM experiment. [1] Didn't expect that in a history thread.
tonyhart7
except china, china for some reason always unite despite many civil war and unrest
like imagine at some point roman empire and china is co-exist together and 2000 years later only 1 survive
joeblubaugh
Chinese continuity is overstated for the purposes of modern nation-building. The Qing and Ming are as different from each other and modern CCP China as the kingdom of Prussia is from modern Germany.
actionfromafar
That past is always a different country, but actually I'm kind of disappointed that Qing and Ming are not more different than Prussia is from modern Germany.
tonyhart7
but they still chinnese???? "but sorry you are wrong, its is mongolian goverment" nerd noise
Yeah but the empire is still in fact china, like you cant change that
1. does they identified some sort of "chinnese" ???: Yeah
2. does they still speak some form of "chinnese language": Yeah
"buttt it iss different eeeerrr" before you talking about whats different, BRO ITS 2000 YEARS, what do you expect ???? like do you expecting people not changing anything for two millenia????? like cmon bruh, use your critical thinking
"china proper" as whole is always referring to "whole region" not just this empire or dynasty or anything
dpassens
Please do us all a favour and learn to communicate properly.
didibus
It's true, China went through a ton of unification -> division -> reunification phases in history. There's even a famous quote for this: "what is long divided must unite, what is long united must divide"
I think one possible reason is that the Qin Dynasty really managed to assimilate everyone into the same shared values, religion, language, writing, and so on. Other empires didn't succeed to that level, and the people in them always had strong differences, language, values, religion, beliefs, writing, philosophy, and so on.
thaumasiotes
> I think one possible reason is that the Qin Dynasty really managed to assimilate everyone into the same shared values, religion, language, writing, and so on. Other empires didn't succeed to that level
Qin conquered the other Chinese states and the ensuing dynasty flamed out immediately. The work of creating an empire was done by the following Han dynasty.
> There's even a famous quote for this: "what is long divided must unite, what is long united must divide"
分久必合，合久必分
https://ctext.org/sanguo-yanyi/ch1
Often given as "the empire, long divided, must unite; long united, must divide", but your translation is much closer to the text, which doesn't mention empires except in that it follows this statement ["They say that across the course of history, what has long been divided must unite, and what has long been united must divide"] with a discussion of Chinese governments schisming and unifying.
didibus
I'm not an historian or even did any extensive research on this. I thought that the Qin dynasty established a ton of standards super aggressively and also worked very fast to erase and assimilate. Even if it didn't last long, it kind of set the pattern.
jjmarr
In Western tradition, an "empire" is definitionally unassimilated in that there are multiple groups/territories ruled centrally from a metropole. A state would no longer be an empire once it assimilates disparate territories.
thaumasiotes
No, there is an alternative (and far, far more traditional) definition in which an emperor outranks a king, which is how China is termed an "empire".
ajross
China literally fought the bloodiest civil war of the 20th century! It's technically still going on, even. One of the sides makes a lot of good chips, maybe you've heard of them.
lern_too_spel
That's a bit of an oversimplification. The residents of Taiwan had been Japanese citizens since the end of the 19th century and did not participate in the Chinese Civil War. Chang Kai-Shek moved his supporters to the island in 1949 based on the Allies' promise of the return of Taiwan to the RoC and then quickly declared martial law, which lasted for four decades. The current ruling party in Taiwan does not consider itself a rightful ruler of mainland China and instead sees itself as the government of a sovereign Taiwan.
ajross
And that sounds more like apologia than elaboration. Needless to say the PRC itself does not agree with the DPP's assessment of itself as the government of a sovereign Taiwan.
The point was a glib response to an assertion that China is somehow especially unified as a matter of policy or politics. And, yeah, no; no it is not. At all.
andsoitis
in the grand scheme of humanity, do you consider a single civilization largely persisting in key aspects over 2000 years a feature? Or a bug?
msgodel
If it's my civilization it's a feature, if it's your civilization it's a bug.
It sounds like a joke but that is exactly how it works and many people have forgotten it.
For context, Franklin had already been in Britain for 13 years by this point trying to lobby Parliament and the King about various grievances with the Crown's governance over the colonies. He would spend another 2 years trying in vain to get them to listen, before finally sailing back to America in March 1775.