ABSTRACT
Just as the years that Thomas Jefferson spent in France accelerated his detachment from the British political tradition, spread by Montesquieu’s Anglophilia, so Benjamin Franklin’s stay led him to find in French economic thought, and Physiocracy in particular, the theoretical tools that marked a turning point in his own economic views and led to reject the English model. However, during their stays in Europe both men also forged decisive links with members of the English radical religious dissent and when, in the 1790s, many Dissenters helped to swell the tide of politically and religiously motivated emigration to America, thereby having a significant impact on the conflict between Federalists and Republicans by supporting Jefferson’s rise to the presidency, English radicalism and the American political struggle became intertwined.
