WI: Russia "in" the American War For Independence?

[Wolfpaw]

Well, it may turn the Americans against the Russians earlier. We had very good relations in the early years of the Republic--John Q. Adams was Ambassador to Russia for 5 years, as was Buchanan for a brief stint in the '30s; Alexander I offered to mediated between the US and Britain via Count Dashkov; and of course, Russia backed the Union from the start of the Civil War, as opposed to the more aloof stances of Britain and France. It is worth wondering how much of this was genuine goodwill on the part of tsars (probable; a lot fancied themselves peacemakers abroad while wielding the knout at home), and how much was calculated to balance the Brits.

Americans never reciprocated these warm feelings, always feeling rather uncomfortable when they were on the same side as that was basically seen as a Papist Mongol Khanate.

 

[MerryPrankster]

This sounds familiar. Didnt we discuss this a few weeks ago? Or have a fallen into an ATL?

There've been Russian and British interventions into the American Civil War, but I've never seen this before.

 

[MerryPrankster]

Americans never reciprocated these warm feelings, always feeling rather uncomfortable when they were on the same side as that was basically seen as a Papist Mongol Khanate.

Citations? You're generalizing Americans as a whole in a way suggesting both religious prejudice and racism.

The only indication I have ever heard of this was the theory that it was only politically possible for the U.S. to enter WWI on the Allied side once the Czar had fallen, and this was attributed to Jews, Poles, and others who had fled Czarist tyranny to the U.S., not WASPs viewing Russians as Asiatic barbarians.

 

[Faeelin]

Here's something Catherine the Great did later in OTL.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_League_of_Armed_Neutrality

One of the things people often forget is that the Revolution saw basically every other nation in Europe hoping for an American success, even nations like Spain which didn't want the example of an independent American republic giving their colonial subjects ideas.

There was a perception in Europe that the British were aspiring to global hegemony through control of the world's oceans. It didn't help that British diplomats acted like bulls in a china shop, to the point where they ended up at war with the Dutch, who the United Kingdom prided itself on having a "special relationship with." It's like if the US ended up at war with the UK today over Hawaiian nationalists.

In EU3 terms, the Revolution can be cast as a bad boy war.

 

[Faeelin]

Americans never reciprocated these warm feelings, always feeling rather uncomfortable when they were on the same side as that was basically seen as a Papist Mongol Khanate.

I don't think this is true; Mark Twain, for instance, wrote about the warm reception he received from the Tsar, and there were quite a few people who saw Alexander II as the Russian Lincoln.

 

[MarshalBraginsky]

I'm not sure if the term Papist Mongol Khanate would be a good term for Russia, since Papist is a term used for the Pope of the Catholic Church, and the Mongol Khanate, well Jefferson or whoever was saying that may have had some thoughts on what Russia is like.