On October 18, 1867, a group of Russian and American soldiers met in front of the governor’s house in New Archangel, Alaska to officially transfer control of the territory from Russia to the United States. The ceremony itself did not go smoothly, with the Russian flag becoming ensnared on the flagpole as the soldiers were pulling it down. It took three attempts by three men to scale the pole and retrieve the symbolic cloth, after which the American flag was raised in its place, speeches were said, cannons were fired, and the Russians left, never to speak of the botched ceremony again. This ended over a century of Russian involvement in the Alaskan territory and throughout the Pacific coast of North America.
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| The check written by the United States to pay for Alaska |
Russians first officially traveled to Alaska as part of an expedition at the request of Tsar Peter I in 1741. Two parties on this voyage reached different areas on the Alaska coastline just a day apart. The first landed a longboat on Prince of Wales Island in Southeast Alaska, while the other, led by Vitus Bering, was the first to sight the Alaskan mainland before turning back to Russia. Bering and his men wrecked their ship on Bering Island (it wasn’t called that when they struck it), the westernmost island in the Aleutian chain and despairingly close to Russia. The crew was forced to spend the winter on the barren rock and Bering himself wouldn’t survive, perhaps enticing the powers that be to name the Island and the sea that surrounds it after him. Much of his crew made it back to Russia, however, and the fur pelts they brought from Alaska were enticing enough to spur a permanent Russian presence in the new territory.
The story of Russian America, as the Alaskan territory was known while under Russian control, is not too different from the colonization that occurred on the eastern side of the continent. Russians came in force and met two main indigenous peoples, the Aleut and the Tlingit. At first, the Aleut sold their trapped furs to the Russians, but this relationship devolved until the tribe was in de facto slavery. Many Aleuts converted to Russian Orthodox Christianity and began speaking Russian, traditions some maintain today. The Tlingit had less of a close relationship with the colonists, at first partaking in shady land deals, and later facing the Russians in open combat. The city of Sitka, formerly New Archangel, stands on the ruins of a razed Tlingit village.
Russian America peaked in the early 19th century. There were numerous settlements in the Aleutian Islands, along the southern coast of Alaska, and even as far south as California wine country. Fort Ross was a Russian settlement in modern day Sonoma County that was operational as late as 1842, just 6 years before the United States acquired California from Mexico in the Treaty of Guadeloupe Hidalgo. The Russians sold Fort Ross, and began contemplating a sale of the entire Russian America territory in the midst of declining fur trapping business and troubles at home. Additionally, the crown saw a diminishing value in the territory and predicted that either America or Britain would try and take it forcibly at some point in the future. Avoiding a costly war, and turning their asset into cash, the Russians decided to sell and America was ready to buy. In 1867, William Seward, the Secretary of State, negotiated a purchase of the entire Russian America territory for around $7 million.
Most Americans weren’t convinced that Seward’s purchase was a good move. It was a hefty price tag for the time, and for a distant, largely uninhabited plot of land where most Americans hadn’t been and would never go. Historical economists are still in disagreement on whether the financial side of the purchase made sense and if the United States ever actually recovered a profit on the sale. (It would seem historical economists don’t have much to do.) It is still under appreciated just how big Alaska really is: if you overlaid the state on the lower 48, the easternmost point would be in Jacksonville, with the furthest west Aleutian Island would lie just north of San Francisco. The landmass itself is bigger than Texas, California, and Montana put together. To put it plainly, it’s huge. And it contains some of the most ruggedly intense natural beauty in the world, unparalleled wildlife, and, if we’re making a practical economic argument, vast oil reserves that keep the United States closer to energy independence. In geopolitical terms, it was no doubt a good idea to buy up as much of the North American continent as possible - the Cold War would have been a little bit warmer with Russian missile bases sitting just 400 miles from Seattle.
Understanding Russia’s early presence in Alaska is important for a number of reasons. When painted in broad strokes, American history pivots around the point of the Revolutionary War, when Americans won their right for self-determination. This, however, did not guarantee them the right to spread across the entire continent. For nearly a century after 1783, Spain, France, Mexico, England, and even Russia held claim to different parcels of land within the United States’ current borders (read more about this in the story of how California got its shape), Our borders were not destined, and there were numerous occasions on which events could have transpired a little differently and America today would be adjacent to 3, 4, or even 5 different nations. Removing the rhetoric and politics, it’s a whimsical notion that had events happened on a slightly different course, we could today be importing wines from the Napa region of Russian America.
