Russian North America
Russian expansion to North America was a natural extension of her drive across northern Asia, but there also were some fundamental differences. The Russian sweep across northern Asia was neither a grand design nor a clearly coordinated, planned, national undertaking. In the case of Alaska, the most basic difference was the full involvement of the government in the expansion progress. In Siberia, furs, tusks, gems, and other natural products were obtained by a host of individuals and companies competing against each other. Not so in Russian America, where no individual entrepreneur could afford the expense of acquiring, outfitting, and manning a ship for a voyage of several years. The government eventually was obliged to intervene and the Russian-American Company (RAC) was formed.
Since the Russian colonization of the Aleutian islands and Alaska was a direct continuation of the occupation of Siberia and the concluding stage in the process of the eastward expansion of Russia over several centuries, historians have usually paid attention to common features of the colonization of Siberia and Russian America. Their main focus has been the fur rush as well as the activities of Cossacks, merchants, and hunters. But there were also many differences, and these differences in my opinion seem quite substantial, even crucial.
The main and defining feature of the Russian colonization of the American Northwest lies in the fact that it was of a maritime nature and therefore differed fundamentally from the continental colonization of Siberia. The maritime nature of the colonization of Russian America defined the feature of the colonization of Alaska and in the final analysis, the future destiny of Russian America.
The seagoing fleet, although it began to play an important role in the foreign policy of Russia at the time of Peter the Great, was never the main factor in Russian life and foreign policy. Even at the height of the Russian Empire - in the period of the victory over Napoleon - the army continued to be the principal force of Russia. Fifty years later, the Crimean War of 1853-1856 clearly demonstrated that Russia was unable to stand on the sea against strong naval powers (England and France).
It was not by chance that the plans to sell Alaska to the U.S. emerged just after the Crimean War. The basic difference between the seagoing colonization of Russian America and the continental colonization of Siberia can be defined in two words: the sable and the kalan (sea otter). At the end of the sixteenth and then seventeenth centuries, the Russians were led to the endless expanse of Siberia by the "sable" and later in the second half of the eighteenth century, the valuable fur of sea otter brought them to the shores of Alaska. In 1620-1680, according to P.N. Pavlov, Russian and local fur hunters acquired more than 7 million sables! In the seventeenth century, the bounty of Siberian furs (sable, squirrel, beaver, and fox, among others) accumulated to a total amount of 15 million rubles. Siberian furs went to Moscow, the northern part of Russia, and to the European markets - to Leipzig, later to St. Petersburg, as well as to Holland and England, where they were exchanged for various metal products, fabrics, colonial goods, etc.
On the other hand, sea otters were especially prized in China. They were imported into China mainly through Kiakhta and exchanged for tea, silk and other Chinese goods. To a certain extent, as Gibson has concluded, the furs of sea otters, which were so highly prized by the Chinese aristocracy, promoted to a great extent the development of the Russian tradition of drinking tea. He has also enumerated a number of differences connected with the hunt for sable and sea otter. In Siberia, the hunt for sable and other continental animals took place during the winter, which left enough time to work in agriculture during the summer. It is not surprising, therefore, that the majority of the Russian population of Siberia was very active in the field of agriculture, especially field crops. But in Russian America, the hunt for sea otters and seals began in April and lasted all summer, which naturally inhibited agricultural work.
The fur hunt, and especially the hunt for sea animals, however, was successful and brought significant income to the RAC. In 1797-1821, according to data from P.A. Tikhmenev, sea otters, fur seals, and other furs brought the RAC more than 16 million rubles. During the fur rush in the North Pacific, plans to expand the regional influence of Russia were put forward, but failed to receive the support of the government in St.Petersburg. The fate of the Ross colony in California remained uncertain from its foundation in 1812. In 1818-1819, Aleksander I and the Russian foreign minister, K. V. Nesselrode, categorically refused to ratify an agreement to establish Russian protection over the Hawaiian Islands (Dr. Schaeffer on his own initiative occupied Kauai Island and signed a treaty with King Kaumualii to take the Hawaiian Islands under the protection of Emperor Aleksander I).
From 1793 until 1808, the community of Pavlovsk, today's Kodiak, was the headquarters of the Russian-American Company and the main receiving point for furs from as far away as the Pribilof Islands in the north and Yakutat in the east. During this period, the Russians built a storehouse or magazin at Kodiak to house their wealth of furs before transit to Russia and the Orient.
By 1817 the importance of establishing a defined southern limit to Russian settlement in America was considered. In 1816 Russian traders from Alaska established a fort at Bodega Bay in what is now California, north of San Francisco, and another at Atooi in the Sandwich Islands. In 1821 the tsar by ukase gave to a Russian company exclusive right to territory as far south as 51 degrees and threatened to make the northern Pacific a mare clausum by excluding foreigners from the seas within 100 miles from the coast.
Against this Russian policy the United States co-operated with Great British in remonstrance, and President Monroe incorporated a manifesto in his famous declaratory announcement of 2 Dec. 1823. Finally, Russia, refusing the bribe of California which Mexico had offered for a recognition of Mexican independence, yielded to the combined protest of the United States and Great Britain, and on 17 April 1824 concluded her treaty with the United States fixing the parallel of 54°40' as the southern boundary of Russia and also providing for freedom of trade for 10 years and granting the right to fish along the coasts of Russian America, except in the rivers and harbors; but, after 10 years, believing that the privilege had been abused, she refused to renew the agreement for allowing either fishing or trading.
In 1799, the Russian-American Company was given exclusive rights to the American trade by Russian Emperor Paul I. During the next 68 years, the Russian-American Company served as the instrument of government in Alaska, acting under charter of the imperial crown. It provided schools, supported the clergy, maintained an elaborate welfare system for disabled and the elderly, administered Russian law, collected taxes, and supervised the exploitation of the resources of the land and waters of Alaska. It also supported exploration and scientific investigation which provide much of our knowledge of pre-contact life among the coastal peoples from Sitka to Kotzebue Sound, as well as those living in the interior of Alaska along the Yukon and Kuskokwim rivers.
At the same time, it was extremely expensive to deliver food supplies and other necessary goods for the colonists in Alaska by way of Siberia. The RAC and the government tried to solve the problem by setting up round-the-world voyages from St.Petersburg to Alaska. According to a modest evaluation in the XIXth century (up to 1867) more than 70 circumnavigation and long voyages to Russian America were organized. Many of them were of a great scholarly importance, but in the final analysis, failed to solve the problem of food supplies for the Russian colonies in America. Trade connections with "American ship men" ("The Bostonians", as they were called in the colonies), with the Hudson Bay Company (Canada), Spanish California, and the Hawaiian islands were more successful.
Throughout the first half of the nineteenth century the Russian American Company established settlements in Alaska, initially to trap furbearing animals. Later, these settlements became largely self sufficient by taking advantage of Alaska's tremendous natural resources. Russian-American Company ships sailed half way around the world to provide luxury items not available locally and brought news from home.
The differences between the continental colonization of Siberia and the maritime colonization of Russian America in the end determined their respective fates: Siberia became an integral part of Russia, and Alaska in 1867 passed into the possession of the United States. By selling her possessions in America to the United States, Russia became the first European power to relinquish her overseas colonies.
The sole purpose of the Russians coming to the new territory and establishing permanent settlements was because of the fur trade. Fur trading was a great resource for quick and large sums of money and Russia had a market for furs in China. Fur-bearing animals, such as the sea otter, were plentiful when the Russians arrived in Alaska and for many years they hunted and killed these animals only for their fur. Soon the animals could not reproduce fast enough and the animals became scarce. It didn’t help that the Hudson’s Bay Company competed in the fur market.
Russians in Russian America never numbered more than four hundred at any given time. Russian America was a fur producing colony and the Russian government never wanted to over commit valuable resources to its development. The Russians gradually lost control in America. Profits from the furs were declining and the cost of maintaining the posts in Alaska was too high. Also, Russia became more interested in developing territories north of China, as they would be easier to develop and maintain because they were on the same continent.
By the 1850s, Russian interest in Alaska began to wane as a consequence of changing economic prospects and geopolitical concerns. The fur trade in sea otter pelts, which had been profitable in Russian America for more than a century, slumped for both ecological and commercial reasons. Russia’s contemporaneous acquisition of new lands from China lessened further the importance of Alaska. Emperor Aleksandr II (1818-1881) added the northern portion of the Amur region to the Russian Empire under the Treaty of Aigun in 1858, and the Maritime region east of the Ussuri River under the Treaty of Peking in 1860. These acquisitions shifted the focus of Russia’s eastern attentions from Alaska to the area around Khabarovsk and Vladivostok, which provided better access to the Pacific Ocean and the markets of East Asia.
After weighing all its options, the tsarist government concluded that it had little choice but to sell its American colony. Great Britain had shown sustained interest in obtaining Alaska as an addition to its territory in British North America (Canada), and had potentially threatened it during the Crimean War (1853-56) after attacking the Kamchatka Peninsula. Russia in particular recognized that the long-standing economic ambition of the Hudson’s Bay Company to tap Alaskan resources made the region vulnerable to British designs. But, after losing the Crimean War to Britain, France, and Turkey in 1856, the tsar was in no mood to negotiate with Great Britain or to see Alaska absorbed by a recent enemy.
Russia thus turned to the only other potential buyer, the United States. In the mid-nineteenth century, Russia and the United States were drawn together by a common hostility toward Great Britain and a basic agreement on most foreign policy issues. Of the major European powers, Russia was the only one to support the Union in the American Civil War of 1861-65. The United States had already become aware of the possible Russian interest in selling Alaska in the mid-1850s, during the term of President Franklin Pierce. Faced with the breakup of the nation, however, the administrations of Presidents James Buchanan and Abraham Lincoln were in no position to respond positively to Russian offers. Ardent expansionists such as William H. Seward, secretary of state under both Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson, nonetheless retained an abiding interest in obtaining Alaska, which they saw as an integral component of Manifest Destiny and the American drive to the Pacific.
In the process of forming a consensus to sell Alaska to the United States, the Russian government conducted a lengthy internal debate. Within the Romanov court, Grand Duke Konstantin Nikolaevich, the younger brother of Emperor Aleksandr II, was the strongest advocate for the sale. But several important officials contended that the tsar should hold on to the territory. They included Prince Aleksandr Gorchakov, the Russian Foreign Minister, as well as former managers and large shareholders of the Russian-American Company. Prominent among these persons was Baron Ferdinand von Wrangell, who had been chief manager of the Russian-American Company and subsequently on its board of directors. From his perspective as a prior governor of Alaska, von Wrangell cited the enormous potential of Russian America in his correspondence with Grand Duke Konstantin. The pressures to sell proved insurmountable, however.
In Russia, the younger brother of Emperor Aleksandr II, Grand Duke Konstantin Nikolaevich, provided a major impetus for the sale. As early as the 1850s, he expressed the view that the United States eventually would overrun the entire North American continent and that the tsarist government might as well be paid for its colony before it was seized outright by either the United States or Great Britain. The Russian Foreign Minister, Prince Aleksandr Gorchakov, was more conservative in temperament and initially resisted the loss of any Russian territory. But Edouard de Stoeckl, the Russian ambassador in Washington, constituted an increasingly influential voice that helped convince the powers in St. Petersburg that a sale of Alaska to the United States was the best course.
In 1867, Seward reached an agreement with the Russian ambassador in Washington to purchase the territory for $7.2 million.
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