Long before Modi and Trump: How the story of India and US began in revolution

Published 14 June 2026 · us

Two centuries before they became strategic partners, India and the United States of America had developed an unusual connection — one involving a common enemy

Two centuries before they became strategic partners, India and the United States of America had developed an unusual connection — one involving a common enemy and a common ally. Let's rewind to the 1770s. What is now India and what is now the US were both under the shadow of the British Empire. After initially cheering the British East India Company's victories in India, many settlers in the 13 British colonies had gradually turned against the empire. Read Full Story Unfair taxation, restrictive trade rules and the lack of representation in the British Parliament were the main triggers for their discontent. One of the earliest acts of defiance in the American Revolution had a direct Indian connection. The 1773 Boston Tea Party was a protest against the British Parliament's decision to grant the East India Company a virtual monopoly over the tea trade in the 13 colonies. What began as a revolt against exploitative taxation soon fuelled an independence movement. The Marquis de La Fayette was a French military man who served the Continental Army with distinction. Like Lafayette, several French military experts aided the Revolutionary Army as well as the Mysuru Army. A SHARED ENEMY: MYSORE AND AMERICAN REVOLUTION The idiom "the enemy of my enemy is a friend" found practical expression among the American Founding Fathers. As the East India Company expanded across 18th-century India, one small kingdom captured the imagination of the revolutionaries. The Mysore kingdom, led by Hyder Ali, stood as a formidable obstacle to British imperial expansion in southern India. His wars not only stunned the British but were watched closely by American revolutionary leaders. The common link was France, which sought to tie Britain down across two continents after its defeat in the Seven Years' War. Bolstered by French arms and a military sophistication that belied its size, Mysore became a subject of fascination in the 13 colonies: celebrated in newspaper articles, conversations and poems that turned Hyder Ali into something of a folk hero. "...Hyder Ally having collected an Army of 80000 horse, had laid siege to Arcot, that the Colonels Baillie and Fletcher attempting to go to its relief were totally defeated with the loss of 400 Europeans and 4000 Sepoys," read a 1781 letter to John Adams, the future US President.

The Continental Congress — the governing body of the revolutionary colonies — had even contemplated sending an expeditionary force to Mysore. The nascent nation lacked the resources to do so, and ultimately directed its privateers to attack British ships off the North American coast instead. The fascination, however, ran deep enough that the revolutionaries named one of their warships after Mysore's ruler — Hyder Ally (the spelling, not a pun). American revolutionaries followed the Second Anglo-Mysore War with keen interest, viewing Hyder Ali's campaign against the British as another front that could weaken their common adversary. INDEPENDENCE AND A CENTURY OF DISTANCE By the time Hyder Ali died, the situation in North America had changed decisively. George Washington's forces defeated the British, and the Treaty of Paris (1783) recognised the independence of the thirteen colonies. For India, however, American independence changed little. The United States opened a consular office in Kolkata in 1792, one of its earliest overseas posts, but beyond commerce, India remained largely peripheral to American foreign policy for much of the next century. During the 19th century, American perceptions of India were shaped primarily by missionaries and travellers. Many of them portrayed the country as impoverished, illiterate and bound by superstition. At the same time, a growing circle of American intellectuals and writers developed an appreciation for India's ancient civilisation, philosophy and literary traditions. Even so, for most Americans, India remained a distant and exoticised "Oriental" land which was admired in the abstract, but little understood in practice. Yet another development, this time within the United States itself, would eventually have far-reaching direct and indirect influence on India. HOW US CIVIL WAR SHAPED INDIA The American Civil War, fought between the Union North and the Confederate South over slavery, played out thousands of miles from India. Yet its economic ripple reached the subcontinent almost immediately. Cotton was central to the conflict — the Southern economy ran on slave labour to sustain it. When the war began, American cotton exports to Britain dried up, forcing the British Empire to seek alternatives.