Posted on 09/02/2013 12:04:41 AM PDT by cunning_fish
What if Russia had got to California first? What if Spain’s feeble, arthritic hold on the province had been prised away, not by mutinous Mexicans or land-hungry Americans, but by sea-borne Cossacks? How different might the twentieth century have been if, in the nineteenth, the Russian Bear had sunk her claws deep into American soil, drawing the entire North Pacific into her embrace?
Glorious Misadventures by Owen Matthews is the story of how it almost happened, and a splendidly ursine, shambling, alcoholic, opéra bouffe story it is. As British, French and Spanish settlers pushed westward into the American interior, looking for land or gold or religious freedom, Russians came from the other direction, looking for fur. Sea otters’ hides were especially valuable: a single pelt could fetch the equivalent of two years’ salary for a working man in the licensed entrepôts of northern China.
Avarice for this ‘soft gold’ pulled the Russians in a remarkably short time across the vastness of Siberia and on, over the Bering Straits, into Alaska. From the other end of the country – the other end of the world, really – Tsars marked maps and poets wrote of the civilising mission of the ‘Russian Columbuses’, as Mikhail Lomonosov called them.
‘In Europe we are hangers-on and slaves’, wrote Dostoevsky, ‘but in Asia we are masters. In Europe we were Tatars but in Asia we, too, are Europeans’.
(Excerpt) Read more at blogs.telegraph.co.uk ...
U.S. Civil War: The US-Russian Alliance that Saved the Union
http://www.voltairenet.org/U-S-Civil-War-The-US-Russian
That was a very different Russia back then. But I think America would still have evolved in a similar fashion. A governing Monarchy far away and out of touch, looking to fill royal coffers would probably resulted in the same frustration and anger.
I think Hannan should stay from the hard stuff.
Let’s put up the real scenario....the French kept everything west of the Mississippi, and the Russians kept Alaska, western Canada, and Washington state. The US would only amount to twenty-two states today, and would never have been a world power.
Let’s put up the real scenario....the French kept everything west of the Mississippi, and the Russians kept Alaska, western Canada, and Washington state. The US would only amount to twenty-two states today, and would never have been a world power.
That’s supposed to be a real scenario? A scenario, maybe, but real? Not by a long shot.
The French were in no condition to “keep” anything in what is now the Western United States. they did not populate it, they did not control it, and they sure as hades would not have kept it. Same for the Russians; neither country had the wherewithal to populate, control or protect any territories in North America.
How about this scenario: a Republic of Texas stretching from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific Northwest? That’s a scenario at least as realistic as yours.
The Russians colonised as far south as Fort Ross in northern California. Ross = Russian. Get it?
The English were not in the same league of brutality as the Tsarists were. There would have been no USA. The KGB, Cheka etc. learnt from the Tsarist secret police...
There is no way Britain would have declared war on the Union. The political elite may have been pro-south, but the working classes, even those in Lancashire suffering most from the cotton famine viewed Lincoln as a hero (there is a statue of him in Manchester to this day) there would have been riots and maybe a civil insurrection in Britain itself if HM government had intervened on behalf of the slave owning South.
That is a real scenario and for sure the dang wets would not be swimmin’ the Rio right now and there would be no Mexico City.
It would be called Austin South.....
Remember Goliad and Remember the Alamo....SECEDE....
Imagine if Mexico colonized America. .... Wait, we can watch it in real time.
“The Russians colonised as far south as Fort Ross in northern California. Ross = Russian. Get it?”
Ross - from `Rossiya’.....never knew that.
Neat! I mean, “prekrasnaya”!
I like your scenario better!
They did land in the US,but in Washington DC not California,read Diana Wests book,American Betrayal,it will open your eyes about the communist infiltration that goes back to the 30s
Public schools are loaded with communists...
The father of the Russian navy is
John Paul Jones
bttt
Hollywood/media, the government, and most churches are under the thumb of communism, as well...sure glad college football season has started, so we don’t have to dwell on such matters.
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