Jane Franklin (author)
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Jane Morgan Franklin | |
|---|---|
 Jane Franklin speaking at Pastors For Peace Cuba Caravan event at Berkeley Fellowship Hall, Berkeley, CA. June 18, 2019. | |
| Born | April 13, 1934 |
| Died | February 23, 2023 (aged 88) |
| Occupation | Historian and Author |
| Language | English |
| Citizenship | United States |
| Education | Duke University, B.A., 1955 |
| Spouse | H. Bruce Franklin |
Jane Morgan Franklin was an American historian and scholar with a particular focus on Cuba–United States relations.[1][2][3][4][5] Her 1992 book The Cuban Revolution and the United States: A Chronological History is regarded as encyclopedic,[6] systematic,[7] and based on "extremely wide-ranging research".[8][9][10][11][12] She was a proponent of normalized relations between the two nations.[13][14] In addition to Cuba, she wrote about Vietnam, Nicaragua, El Salvador and Panama.[15] Her book Vietnam and America: A Documented History, which she co-edited, was described by The New York Times as a "valuable anthology of crucial texts and records [that] replays the bitter conflict that cost more than 58,000 American lives."[16] During the 1960s, she and her husband H. Bruce Franklin became radicalized because of the Vietnam War and were regarded as leaders in the anti-war movement.[17][18]
Franklin's scholarship on Cuba-U.S. relations emerged from her affiliation with the Center for Cuban Studies in New York. From 1984 to 2000, she served as a researcher and journal editor there, also leading educational tours to Cuba.[19] She ultimately published an evolving series of five books on the history of international relations between Cuba and the United States in the period after the Cuban revolution of 1959. Her sources included primary historical material from previously classified government documents and contemporaneous journalistic accounts. Events and topics were arranged chronologically and were meticulously sourced and indexed so as to maximize their utility as a tool for journalists and other scholars and researchers.
Her first published chronology of U.S.-Cuban relations, Cuban Foreign Relations 1959-1982, was published in 1984 by the Center for Cuban Studies. It included primary historical materials from the U.S. State Department and the Cuban Ministry of Foreign Information. According to William M. LeoGrande, former dean of the American University School of Public Affairs and a specialist in U.S. foreign policy toward Latin America, this was the first comprehensive listing of the seminal Cuba-U.S. interactions that impacted U.S. foreign policy during the cold war. In his introduction to the volume, LeoGrande called it "both an invaluable resource and an absorbing narrative" of utility for scholars, journalists and ordinary citizens interested in international affairs. [20]
Eight years later, in 1992, Franklin produced a significantly expanded historical overview, The Cuban Revolution and the United States: A Chronological History. In an introductory chapter, Louis A. Perez Jr., a scholar on Cuba at the University of North Carolina, heralded this book as "an essential and long overdue research tool" for scholars.[21]
Subsequent books in 1997 and 2016 further extended Franklin's primary research into the history of relations between Cuba and the United States. Introducing her final book, in 2016, the linguist Noam Chomsky called it "the most accessible, useful and insightful" historical account of Cuba-U.S. relations, offering "a sophisticated analysis" of the evolution of Cuba-U.S. relations over time. That book, Cuba and the U.S. Empire, explores the context and impact of the historic 2014 agreement between U.S. President Barack Obama and Cuban President Fidel Castro to reestablish diplomatic relations and engage in a precedent-setting prisoner swap. "Overnight," Franklin wrote, "the template shifted. U.S.-Cuba relations moved into terrain never traversed before."[22]
Franklin has also published international relations books and articles on Vietnam, Nicaragua, El Salvador and Panama. Her chronology of the history of Panama was excerpted in a report by the Independent Commission of Inquiry on the U.S. Invasion of Panama published by South End Press in 1991.[23] Through first-hand accounts of Panamanian civilians and legal commentary by former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, this in-depth investigation challenged official portrayals of the Pentagon's "Operation Just Cause" as a battle to restore democracy and combat drug smuggling.
In 1995, she and her husband and two other scholars co-edited a comprehensive volume of primary resources on the history of relations between the United States and Vietnam. The book documents each major stage of the Vietnam War through original source materials and essays by leading experts. The New York Times described the tome as a "valuable anthology of crucial texts and records"[19] of utility for anyone seeking a deeper understanding of the historical conflict.
Franklin also served for many years as a contributing editor of the journal Cuba Update. She was a frequent radio and television commentator and published numerous magazine articles primarily on topics related to Cuba. She traveled to Cuba, Panama and Vietnam, and was well known among politicians and educators in Cuba due to her advocacy of normalized economic relations with the United States. Her work has been translated into French, Italian, German and Spanish.
