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This might be true legally but you can go back and see (as I've pointed out several times on here) that excluding "tawny" foreigners such as the French and Spanish from the definition of "white" was a real thing:
So yeah, unless Ben Franklin was a very weird outlier, I would say there's been an "expansion" of "whiteness" over time.
He's claiming Swedes aren't white. Swedes are obviously completely maxed out on whiteness genetically like all other Northern Europeans. We know Swedes, Germans and Russians are pale as can be and Franklin is an outlier and just plain wrong here.
I believe Sweden at the time included parts of Finland, the native inhabitants of which I am given to understand actually aren't all that white. (Regardless I don't think the Swedes are maxed out on whiteness genetically, I believe that is the Irish.)
Similar deal in Russia, too, which has groups that don't exactly code as "white."
I don't think his is entirely a minority view, at least as regards Italians, Spanish, etc.
Sweden had lost Finland to Russia relatively recently, and both Sami and Finns are extremely northern euro looking. Russia had also not expanded as much into Central Asia and Siberia as it later would.
Just from Wikipedia, the older photographs of Sami people often look a bit like the Inuit to me (of course, they are black-and-white photographs!).
I found one article that says it used to be common to suspect the Sami were of Mongol extraction, and some of them do appear similar, but (at least according to one theory) this is because the Sami were not an agricultural people and so they retained facial features that largely disappeared in other Europeans.
That seems sufficient to me to explain why, despite the Sami often having pale skin, Race Enthusiasts tended to classify the Sami as non-white.
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Well, the fact that is the one quote always cited to make that argument certainly makes it seem like an outlier. And even it only says that they are not "purely white" since they are supposedly darker in complexion. That doesn't seem like a quote from a society where "French people aren't members of the white race" was a mainstream view, and indeed that wouldn't make sense with how people interpreted laws and rules explicitly referring to "White" people. It seems like him drawing a novel distinction between the different white races based on skin-tone to argue some of them are more white.
I think something like this is probably correct. I think that Franklin would probably have lumped French or Spanish people in with "whites" if he was talking about, say, "red" men (Native Americans), but here he seems pretty happy to split them since he has a specific preference for English people.
I'm working up a bit more of an effort-full reply to GeneralElephant, so keep an eye out if you're interested.
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Why do people think this is the definitive view in the 1700s and not the equivalent of 4chan troll post given Irish Catholics signed both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution?
Surely someone somewhere would have remarked on the incongruity of non-Whites signing the Declaration of Independence and Constitution had Franklin’s views been the prevailing opinions of the time?
Since you seem super confident on this point can you guide me to contemporary sources besides this one work by Franklin that demonstrates this belief that French and Irish people were non-white especially given French and Irish people were integral to the American revolution in a governing capacity and were in Congress when the Naturalization Act of 1790 was passed limiting naturalization to “free, White men”? Surely the fact that Congress had non-White members at the time would have provoked some comment?
Well, the Irish aren't mentioned here, for one thing, either by me or by Franklin, so neither of us are making that argument. Also, note that I specifically disavowed the argument that e.g. French people didn't count as "white" legally, so I am disinclined to attempt to prove a view I've already set aside as regards the Naturalization Act of 1790. However, although I'm not sure I was as confident as you think, given my hedging, I think I can find some stuff that suggest Franklin's rhetoric was not unique.
(As an aside, I am a little surprised that you didn't mention that Ben Franklin was ambassador to France.)
First, here's some excerpts from John Adams to his wife, which I think suggest something of a private sentiment:
(One week later)
Source here
Now, Adams doesn't say "oh and by the way Mr. Gardoqui isn't white" but the way he speaks seems, I think, to suggest that he's viewing a Spanish person differently than he might an English one specifically because of his complexion. (Note of course that the individual in question perhaps might have had e.g. a lot of Moorish blood). Adams elsewhere refers to the Spanish as having "dark" complexions, which I think makes a pretty natural contrast a "white" or "fair" complexion.
Setting aside Founding Fathers' private sentiments for a moment, let's get to public sentiment and an English book I found printed in the late 1700s which has a helpful essay "On the Causes of the Difference of Complexion" (see pages 327 - 335) that has a taxonomy that might suit our purpose. You'll note that he diverges from Franklin on the question of the Swedes and Germans but not the Spaniards. Here's the taxonomy:
(Note that I believe the Samoiedes are a Uralic people, or, in other words, a Russian ethnic minority. The Laplanders: an ethnic group in Sweden, Finland, Russia. Perhaps Franklin was thinking of these sorts of groups when he specified Swedes and Russians.)
The essay goes on to make a fairly predictable argument that skin color derives from climate, although it's a more subtle argument than "hot = dark." Notably for our purposes, he says
In other words, we're again driving a distinction between different European people groups. I suppose if you want you can complain the taxonomy above doesn't specify where the French fall and doesn't entirely line up with Ben Franklin's. But I think it demonstrates my point, which is that "whiteness" has expanded over time, or at a minimum the idea that the inhabitants of the European Mediterranean were perhaps "swarthy" in a way distinguishable from white a real one. Possibly one confined just Ben Franklin and our complexion essayist - but I kinda doubt it.
If you aren't happy with my digging, I'd be very interested to see what you can find!
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