AHC/WI: Anglo-Russian Union?

So this one may be a stretch...

Your challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to have a Russian Tsar married to a member of the British (or English if it's earlier) line of succession and the unlikely event that that Briton should inherit the throne occurs, thrusting Russia and the UK into a personal union which their heir officially makes into a lasting political Union.

Also...

What are the effects if there's any possibility?

Unlimited dates on PODs.
 
Yeah, Russia was always seen as backwards and...well, "weird", what with orthodoxy and all. I doubt Britain would want anything to do with it.
 
Russia was on the periphery of the European cultural periphery - accuracy aside, Western Europeans thought it was Tartar land and ignored its Third Rome posturing.

Until Peter the Great did something about it.
 
Russia was on the periphery of the European cultural periphery - accuracy aside, Western Europeans thought it was Tartar land and ignored its Third Rome posturing.

Until Peter the Great did something about it.

He practically dragged Russia kicking and screaming into Europe.
 
England and later Britain was far to concerned with the French to worry about Russia until at least the end of the Napoleonic wars and given the Emporer of Russia needs to be Russian Orthadox and the King of Britain needs to be Anglican I can't see a union coming together under one crown.

Instead how about the Hanoverians marrying Russians and not Germans, so strenghening the link between Britain and Russia over several generations.

This would allow Russia access to the funds the British firms could pump into an economy as well as the technical help Britain could offer. In this case I could see Russia becoming much stronger, prehaps even a world power a century before it became a superpower in OTL.
 
Instead how about the Hanoverians marrying Russians and not Germans, so strenghening the link between Britain and Russia over several generations.
.

The Saxo Coburg and Gotha dynasty of Russia eh?

OTL Russians intermarried a lot with Germans. See Catherina the Great. In stead of a Russian/English union would a different one be possible, like a one that´d give Russia vested interests in Germany?
 
The thing about Anglo-British monarchy is that, from any period when we've heard of Russia and vice-versa (post-Muscovy Company), they can't just marry anyone. They're part pf a complex political system - the commanding part, often, but still a part.

Look at the enormous tensions over James succession: arranging a personal union with a country next door that spoke nearly the same language and belonged to broadly the same branch of Christianity, and whose coming into possession was obviously beneficial to English policy, took years of secret correspondence and a lot of money. Look at the storm the Stuarts raised whenever, for reasons of sober foreign policy, they tried to marry Catholics.

About Russian modernisation:

Peter the Great was undoubtedly a towering figure but in my opinion he proves, like the Meiji Restoration lads, that the way to be remembered as great modernisers is to be the people who start to dress like members of the English-speaking upper-classes. And like Japan, Russia has a decades-long process behind its 'sudden' emergence in the great-power game.

What did Peter actually do? The substantial reforms he made were establishing a new model army and the infrastructure to support it, building a navy which Russia probably didn't need, importing a lot of expertise to do these things, finishing the bludgeoning of the church into submission by the monarchy, creating the service-noble class - and consolidating serfdom, which we in the west like to see as an age-old symptom of the backwardness he supposedly worked against.

These are changes in organisation, not underlying potential. Russia remained what it had been: a poor peasant country, but one big enough to pool formidable resources.

His foreign policy achievements were certainly impressive, but they all reflect long-term trends. Russia had won the last round with Sweden on points (the really astonishing thing about the GNW is how long the Swedes lasted: last time they got the worst end of a draw against the Danes all by themselves); had long been outstripping Poland; was bound to consolidate its control over Ukraine sooner or later, since neither Poland nor the Ottomans were strong enough to be rivals in the area; and hadn't even been involved in the earlier capture of Azov by the Cossacks acting alone.

Peter created an efficient instrument for doing things Russia was equipped to do: when he did what it wasn't yet equipped to do and invaded the Balkans, reality intervened. That the Russian were equipped to intervene in Germany - which had been true since Poland ceased to count - caused Britain, France, and the Netherlands to start taking them seriously (one finds in the western responses to Peter a nice parallel to Japan later and perhaps China today: "They're becoming like us! Hurrah!"/"They're becoming like us! We're doomed!"), however. If we'd been terribly foresighted, we'd have started earlier. I think Russia could have played the 18th C power-game without Peter - perhaps not so well, since the system he established and his successors proved very well-adapted for the job that century, but played it, certainly. I mean, it's difficult to change the fact that Russia's neighbours are also poor peasant countries, but one's actually tiny, one's politically moribund, and one's overstretched and far away.

And then it could start the 19th C power-game on a not-dissimilar footing. hell, not having Poland proper is probably a plus. That won't change that fact that Russia ain't the place to start the industrial revolution. After all, railways weren't a state-secret with us. Calling them into existence by fiat is a huge ask and only works when they're immensely strategic and symbolic (Can-Pac, Transsiberian - the latter built only once Russia actually had railways west of the Urals, note): you need a civilisation that can support them. And was Russia so late? Germany and Japan, great modernisers, we are told, started the industrial boom a matter of decades before her - and remained countries with a very large peasant element.
 
Last edited:
That won't change that fact that Russia ain't the place to start the industrial revolution.

I agree with what you say about Peter the Great. Russia was a power in the making, and whether cutting of the beard was modernizing or not is quite debatable. But the Russians needed to be taken seriously by the Europeans. Probably eventually without a figure like Peter they´d start teaching their kids French, enjoy vacationing and studying in Europe anyway. Also, yeah, they didn´t really need Peter´s navy, Russia was expanding in Siberia not in India or America.

What you say about the English probably goes for the Russians as well. Are there in the 16th or 15th century any examples of Muscovites marrying much outside of their sphere or with people of different religion?
But in defence of the idea, the English protestants saw catholicism as a threat, the same doesn´t go for the orthodox church. Nobody´d really be worrying about forced orthodox conversions I´d think. But in the end an Anglo Russian union isn´t as practical as f.x. Anglo-scottish, Anglo-dutch, Anglo-German, Anglo-Danish and so on.
 
Top