Many historians have overlooked the broader political occurrences at the time of Dana’s mission. Several believe Catherine II’s refusal to acknowledge the American diplomat was founded on Russia’s desire to avoid conflict with Great Britain. Catherine the Great attempted to act as a mediator between the United States and Britain by submitting a ceasefire plan.
Catherine the Great played a modest role in the American Revolutionary War through her politicking with other European heads of state. The tsarina took a keen interest in the American struggle initially because it affected English and European politics and believed that Britain was to blame for the conflict. The empress Catherine held a negative opinion of King George III and his diplomats often treating them with contempt. Nonetheless the British Crown formally requested twenty thousand troops in 1775 and sought an alliance but both pleas were ignored. Upon Spain’s entry into the war Britain once again turned to the Russian Empire this time with the English expecting naval support.
During attempts at mediation the empress of Russia appealed to the nation though the Battle of Yorktown thwarted any hope of a peaceful and diplomatic solution to the American Revolutionary War.
As Catherine II took an ambivalent approach to the international policy in the period of the American Revolution some scholars believe that history underestimated Catherine the Great during the war. The negative opinion of the tsarina holds that the ruler acted in the best interest of the Russian Empire and did not offer help for the cause of the Thirteen Colonies.
Inside a political intrigue in 1780 during the period of Catherine II’s mediation Britain tried to tempt the Russian Empire into an alliance when London offered to Saint Petersburg the island of Menorca in exchange for the Russian agreement to join the British in the war. Despite the bounty such an acquisition would signify Catherine the Great refused on the occasion to win over King George III by seizing an opportunity.
Francis Dana served as the American ambassador to Russia from the nineteenth of December in 1780 until September of 1783. As the original mission in Saint Petersburg was to sign the convention about the adherence of the United States to the armed neutrality Dana had expected to reach an agreement about a treaty concerning friendship and trade.
The Founding Father and statesman Dana served as a delegate to the Continental Congress in 1777 to 1778 and from 1784. A signatory of the Articles of Confederation Dana had been appointed secretary to the diplomatic mission that negotiated the end of the American Revolution before the diplomat was appointed Minister to Russia.
Firstly the Russian Empire had not recognized the United States as a nation and secondly the Russians formally could not accept a representative from a state which they yet had to acknowledge. The American diplomat fought against these presumptions and put forth in a long memorandum to the Russian imperial court that America’s nationhood stemmed from the Declaration of Independence and not from a peace treaty with Great Britain.
Due to these hindrances to the success of his mission the compatriot Robert Livingston moved that the Continental Congress recall Dana from Saint Petersburg the day after the signing of the peace treaty between the United States and Britain. The diplomat spent years in the Russian court only to see his mission uncompleted. Catherine II’s refusal to acknowledge the American diplomat although Russia and America shared a prosperous commercial aim to have merchants from both countries operating free trade after 1788 led the heads of state in Russia to use the denial of Dana as a leverage point in the annexation of Crimea.
Russia’s significant role in the American Revolutionary War was first and foremost Catherine the Great’s position as the sponsor of ongoing mediations between the European powers and America that transpired during the war years ultimately serving as a means of legitimizing and rallying support for the American cause amongst the other European powers. The political and military positions of both nations acted further to isolate the British within greater European politics and in the final analysis to help pave the way for the eventual victory of the young republic. The Revolution in America started a trend of positive relations between the two states.
Between Russia and America during the era the ideological conflict would have existed in either the monarchical empire or the democratic republic although the American victory weakened Britain and provoked a sharply negative reaction of the ruling classes in trading freely with each other after 1783.
By December of 1807 Russia first officially agreed to provide full diplomatic recognition of the new American republic. The American Revolution inspired some members of the Decembrist Revolt of 1820 in Saint Petersburg as America represented a motherland of freedom although revolution in Russia would not succeed until early in the next century.
Tsar Alexander I died on the first of December in 1825 and the efforts to swear in Alexander I’s brother Constantine ended on a revolt by a group of officers who refused to owe allegiance to the new tsar Nicholas proclaiming loyalty to the presumptive heir Constantine and the Decembrist Constitution. The rebellion led the new tsar Nicholas to turn away from the modernization of Russia by Peter the Great upholding the orthodoxy and nationality in the autocracy.
The Decembrists in the tradition of a long line of palace revolutionaries against the ruler on the throne wanted to implement classical liberalism in a revolt that was the beginning of a revolutionary movement. The uprising was the first breach between the government and reformist elements of the nobility which would open.
Decembrists at the Senate Square on the twenty sixth of December in 1825 when Russian army officers led about three thousand soldiers in a protest against tsar Nicholas I’s assumption of the throne after his elder brother Constantine removed himself from the line of succession.
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