AHC: Bloody American Revolution

How can you make the American Revolution go the same as the French Revolution? Could the Americans have achieved the same amount of bloodshed and desperation as took place in France? What would happen to the Founding Fathers? What would happen to America?
 

Dorozhand

Banned
How can you make the American Revolution go the same as the French Revolution? Could the Americans have achieved the same amount of bloodshed and desperation as took place in France? What would happen to the Founding Fathers? What would happen to America?

George Washington is shot and dies during a battle with Shay's Rebellion. The state of Massachusetts is overthrown by a farmers' rebellion and the Articles of Confederation government in thrown into chaos. Pro-federalists try and fail to stage a coup in Philadelphia to restore order, and the union falls apart. The states becomes splinter independent nations, making war upon one another and conquering each other. Mexico rebels and establishes a stable monarchy (republicanism and liberals have become discredited), becoming a great power in north America. The aborted USA becomes a very unfriendly place.

Eventually, a great general comes to power and reunifies the splinter republics under a single "Empire of the Columbians"
 
I think you need a way to make it a revolution of the commoners under and ideology, rather than a fledgiling ruling class deciding to fight the old order out of simple concerns of realpolitik.
 
I think you need a way to make it a revolution of the commoners under and ideology, rather than a fledgiling ruling class deciding to fight the old order out of simple concerns of realpolitik.

The problem was, like in the French Revolution, it wasn't as easy as that. If anything, the "fledling ruling class" more often went to the Loyalist camp because the Loyalists generally were the sorts of people who benefited from continued British rule and predicted (quite rightly) that a Patriot victory would cost them everything.

Plenty of liberal French aristocrats supported the French Revolution before they realized it would cost all of them their heads to do so.
 
How can you make the American Revolution go the same as the French Revolution? Could the Americans have achieved the same amount of bloodshed and desperation as took place in France? What would happen to the Founding Fathers? What would happen to America?
There were plenty of moments just like the Reign of Terror in the American Revolution, just in microcosm.

Remember, Colonial America is a highly agrarian society, with very low population density and pretty weak state superstructure and systems of communication. This is out in the sticks, basically, and you really can't have the same kinds of centralized authoritarianism when your civilization is so sparse.

That didn't prevent the mass subjugation of Loyalists, and even outright massacres at times. There is a reason why around 80,000 Loyalists emigrated after independence was achieved.
 

Kaptin Kurk

Banned
I think you need a way to make it a revolution of the commoners under and ideology, rather than a fledgiling ruling class deciding to fight the old order out of simple concerns of realpolitik.

Bacon's Rebellion is a popular divergence point this. Have Bacon live longer and succeed, and make Virginia pass some law (in Bacon's appreciation for the role of slaves in securing him a governorship) that no child born in the colony is born a slave, even if their mother in in perpetual bondage. Then, you might have blacks being imported as life long slaves, but their descendents free..


Indeed, I think this would actually delay the American Revolution, but the American revolution might happen in the late 19th or early 20th century instead of the late 18tgh and be more egalitarian.

Frankly, I think as long as tobacco and wheat makes as much money as shipping, and whaling, or any proto-industries, and that tobacco and wheat is farmed by the American Upper-Class, the American revolution can never be as revolutionary as the French....

Indeed, you transport a couple hundred of thousand - a million black slaves into France magically or historically, and the French revolution is probably toned down. The king never killed, and a constitional monarchy is established. Especially the 18th century type black slaves which are mostly pagan and highly resistant to all things European.
 
I don't see how increasing the number of slaves in France, or the number of free black people in Virginia, will decrease the violence of a revolution. Could you clarify this?
 

Kaptin Kurk

Banned
I don't see how increasing the number of slaves in France, or the number of free black people in Virginia, will decrease the violence of a revolution. Could you clarify this?

Basically, any outsider group, whether it be blacks, Indians, or even Germans, in the country in large enough percentages will probably tamp down radicalism in any revolution....as any country which has a large foreign population is likely to have powerful intrestest on both sides that will not want things to spin that far out of control.

In the American Revolution, for instance, NC, SC, and Georgia were dead set against enlisting blacks in the army for any reason, and Georgia went as a far to declare that should the Continental Congress try to force it to raise black troops, it'd lay down its arms an surrender to the British immediately. (And SC made similar, if less explicit rumblings)

I don't think that type of mindset is unique to the American situation. I don't see a truly radical revolution transpiring anywhere that has a large body of "foreigners" in its midst.

Not say it's impossible. But anything as radical as the French Revolution in politics before Napoleon would likely meet a wall of economic and social implausibility with any colony below Virginia, with Virginia itself being a stretch although I don't recall any of its great statesmen at the time specifically stating or even implying that they'd surrender than see the local social order disrupted, and they were the southernmost state to offer freedom to slaves in return for fighting the British.
 

Kaptin Kurk

Banned
There were plenty of moments just like the Reign of Terror in the American Revolution, just in microcosm.

Remember, Colonial America is a highly agrarian society, with very low population density and pretty weak state superstructure and systems of communication. This is out in the sticks, basically, and you really can't have the same kinds of centralized authoritarianism when your civilization is so sparse.

That didn't prevent the mass subjugation of Loyalists, and even outright massacres at times. There is a reason why around 80,000 Loyalists emigrated after independence was achieved.

Americans actually invented the Committes of Public Saftey, which I found intriguing.....in the early days of the American Revolution, most villages and town had one, and they were quite effective in rooting out Loyalists in most places. However, I would say that the expansion of the Revolution from a Massachusetts affair, to a New England affair, to ultimately a Continental affair brought in the local elites which were...despite seeming radical to British eyes...were in large part moderating influences on the Revolution.

The (much of the) American elite led the Revolution after all, they were never decapitated by it. To get something like the French revolution, you'd have to get a scenario where Washington and Adams are hung from a tree along with the Royal governors, and the Thomas Paine's and Hamilton's (hah)of the continent are leading the armies and making decisions in Congress.
 
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