AH Challenge - A Radical American Revolution!

Gwendolyn Ingolfsson

I've just finished reading Victor Hugo's Quatrevingt-treize, and have now dived into Citizens, a history of the French Revolution. Both are.....breathtaking reading thus far, to say the least. It strikes me that by comparison to La Révolution, its American predecessor comes off as a rather stately affair. With this in mind, here is my challenge: using any means required short of going full-ASB, make the American Revolution as, shall we say, EXTREEEEEEEME as it's fabulous French counterpart! Loony-bin political factions, mass executions, Reign of Terror, La Convention Glorieuse, the works! I'm looking to have at least half of the Founding Fathers to have guillotined the other half by the time this mess is through. Whoo-hoo! :D

Maximum bonus points if you can somehow get an American Napoleon out of it all (oh but then what would he conquer? Proto-Canada? Spanish Florida?? LAME). Or is any of this even possible? Well, only one way to find out!

Have ye at it!
 

B_Munro

Minor point, but "Citizens" may be a somewhat slanted take on the revolution: Simon Schama is a conservative with a big hard-on against the French revolution (he spent one episode of the "Power of Art" series slamming David for his glorification of revolutionary figures)

Bruce
 

NKVD

I think Andrew Jackson would make a good "American Napoleon."

Perhaps if the Battles of Lexington and Concord never happen, and the British continue to piss off the colonists, you could see a lot more radicalization. Give Paine's Common Sense a bit more time to sink in, and maybe have him vilified less for his anti-Christian rhetoric.
 
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Jaded_Railman

Banned
Just worth noting that the American Revolution really was more violent and radical than is usually portrayed. The early Revolution was, in reality, a series of civil wars in each colony and some got pretty nasty, Rhode Island is, IIRC, the only colony which didn't see a major civil war.

To get things to take a turn for the bloodier, you need to make the civil wars last longer and not be such a turnover for the patriots. Something that will keep loyalist factions strong in heavily populated areas, like in New England or along the Delaware or Hudson rivers.
 

Gwendolyn Ingolfsson

B_Munro said:
Minor point, but "Citizens" may be a somewhat slanted take on the revolution: Simon Schama is a conservative with a big hard-on against the French revolution (he spent one episode of the "Power of Art" series slamming David for his glorification of revolutionary figures)

Bruce
Click to expand...

Oh dear, I didn't know that. Well it seems like a good read thus far, and it's always nice to get a different take on things...
 
Cook

Cook

Banned
During the Philadelphia Convention there were repeated incidences of members cautioning their fellows to base their proposals on past experiences.

The French chose to do the opposite, preferring Idealism and a radical experiment.

And the French Revolution was a very bloody affair, the business with the royal family and the aristocrats being only part of it.
 

Gwendolyn Ingolfsson

Jaded_Railman said:
Just worth noting that the American Revolution really was more violent and radical than is usually portrayed. The early Revolution was, in reality, a series of civil wars in each colony and some got pretty nasty, Rhode Island is, IIRC, the only colony which didn't see a major civil war.
Click to expand...

I guess I meant more politically radical than anything else. I had in mind things like the Committee of Public Safety, the Enragés; the whole daffy attempt to de-Christianize France, and so on. Violent as the colonial war was, it somehow never really spun out of control the way it did across the pond.
 
Cook

Cook

Banned
Bear in mind that the Colonies all had various experiences with democracy. Each having a house of the Burgesses or other Parliament.

For the French it was pretty much entirely new.
 

AmIndHistoryAuthor

Banned
The simplest way would be to bring race into the equation even more than IOTL. IOTL the British offered freedom to slaves who fought vs the independence mvmt.

Imagine two scenarios:
1. Britain or more likely local British officials, do what they'd done in Bacon's Rebellion. They offer slaves as rewards to whites who would fight on the their side, even offering slaves to rebels to become turncoats. I imagine southern support for the rebellion would drop to nothing.

2. The only recourse rebels would have would be the opposite: Offer freedom to slaves who join the rebellion. Assuming the rebels simply exhaust the British desire to hold onto the colonies, as they did IOTL, the newly independent nation would be under a lot of pressure to abolish slavery entirely.
 

othyrsyde

From what I gather of American colonial society, it was less of a 'throw off the tyrants and make up a new system' and more of a independence struggle. A lot of the republican institutions were largely in place; more of a fine tuning of these practices, during and in the aftermath of the war. While over in France, they were trying to completely reinvent their society from the monarchy/caste system they'd lived in for centuries. Not to say that the US was better, just their system was easier to absorb the social and cultural shocks much better then France was able. Then again, this is just my take, I could be wrong.
 

Gwendolyn Ingolfsson

AmIndHistoryAuthor said:
The simplest way would be to bring race into the equation even more than IOTL. IOTL the British offered freedom to slaves who fought vs the independence mvmt.

Imagine two scenarios:
1. Britain or more likely local British officials, do what they'd done in Bacon's Rebellion. They offer slaves as rewards to whites who would fight on the their side, even offering slaves to rebels to become turncoats. I imagine southern support for the rebellion would drop to nothing.

2. The only recourse rebels would have would be the opposite: Offer freedom to slaves who join the rebellion. Assuming the rebels simply exhaust the British desire to hold onto the colonies, as they did IOTL, the newly independent nation would be under a lot of pressure to abolish slavery entirely.
Click to expand...

Hmm. Not exactly what I was looking for, but interesting nonetheless! In fact, this could be very useful for a "US ends slavery early" TL. I like it! :D
 

AmIndHistoryAuthor

Banned
Gwendolyn Ingolfsson said:
Hmm. Not exactly what I was looking for, but interesting nonetheless! In fact, this could be very useful for a "US ends slavery early" TL. I like it! :D
Click to expand...

Not just that. A TL where slavery ends far earlier in the US means a nation that has to come to grips with the issue of rights for Free Blacks.

You could easily see all the same issues that came up in the Haitian Revolution happening in the US, slave vs free vs newly freed vs still enslaved vs white vs Black vs mixed, topped off with ambitious politicians and military leaders all jockeying for advantage, with imperial powers all seeking to profit from said chaos.

Much more complex and with a likelier messier and more violent outcome than the Amer Rev IOTL, which was much more American elites leading an indep struggle, with the class issues and race issues somewhat buried or set aside temporarily.
 
Cuāuhtemōc

Cuāuhtemōc

Banned
You could have the British begin going to plantations and arm thousands of black slaves with weapons and uniforms in exchange for helping them fight.
 
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