The Revolution Overseas

The Revolution Overseas

The Revolution Overseas

 

The newspaper above is dated April 3, 1781, and is a copy of the Edinburgh Advertiser. In the paper is an account of the Battle of Cowpens where American General Daniel Morgan defeated the British army. Well, at least it should, but you see the article is very non-committal to the actual facts and calls into question Morgan’s so-called “victory”. With Scotland being a part of British Empire that kind of reporting is not that huge of a surprise. As the events in America reached other nations in Europe their reactions were wide and varied.

In Poland, there was a single newspaper and it leaned heavily pro-American. They used the “American” version of events and called out the British for their “brutality”. They also took the time to publish all the rebels manifestos and introduced their radical ideas to their own people.

Russia had two newspapers at the time, one run by the University of Moscow, the other the Russian Academy of sciences.  They both took a more balanced approach to the war and didn’t take sides.

In Swede,n the Revolution was used to extract reforms from the regime of Gustav III.

Switzerland came out as very pro-British.

In the Italian province,s there was a strong pro-American bias but many of the newspapers leaned pro-British.

Spain favored the Americans out of self-interest. Their hope was an American victory in the war would allow them to take a greater share of the Atlantic that used to be their pond. This feeling eventually led them to join the war on the American side.

And most interesting was Portugal. A long time British ally that took the extraordinary step of suggesting to the Crown that the Americans should have their own parliament.

One thing was for sure, the world saw the struggle in America through many various lenses but they all awaited the results with bated breath.