Russian colonization of North America

By the middle of the 19th century, profits from Russia's North American colonies were in steep decline. Competition with the British Hudson's Bay Company had brought the sea otter to near extinction, while the population of bears, wolves, and foxes on land was also nearing depletion. Faced with the reality of periodic Native American revolts, the political ramifications of the Crimean War, and unable to fully colonize the Americas to their satisfaction, the Russians concluded that their North American colonies were too expensive to retain. Eager to release themselves of the burden, the Russians sold Fort Ross in 1841, and in 1867, after less than a month of negotiations, the United States accepted Emperor Alexander II's offer to sell Alaska. The purchase of Alaska for $7.2 million (equivalent to $157 million in 2023) ended Imperial Russia's colonial presence in the Americas.

Exploration

The earliest written accounts indicate that the Eurasian Russians had the first Europeans to reach Alaska. There is an unofficial assumption that Eurasian Slavic navigators reached the coast of Alaska long before the 18th century.

In 1648 Semyon Dezhnev sailed from the mouth of the Kolyma River through the Arctic Ocean and around the eastern tip of Asia to the Anadyr River. One legend holds that some of his boats were carried off course and reached Alaska. However, no evidence of settlement survives. Dezhnev's discovery was never forwarded to the central government, leaving open the question of whether or not Siberia was connected to North America.^[4]

The first sighting of the Alaskan coastline was in 1732; this sighting was made by the Russian maritime explorer and navigator

The first landfall happened in southern Alaska in 1741 during the Russian exploration by Vitus Bering and Aleksei Chirikov. In the early 1720s, Tsar Peter the Great called for another expedition. As a part of the 1733–1743 Second Kamchatka expedition, the Sv. Petr under the Dane Vitus Bering and the Sv. Pavel under the Russian Alexei Chirikov set sail from the Kamchatkan port of Petropavlovsk in June 1741. They were soon separated, but each continued sailing east.^[5] On 15 July, Chirikov sighted land, probably the west side of Prince of Wales Island in southeast Alaska.^[6] He sent a group of men ashore in a longboat, making them the first Europeans to land on the northwestern coast of North America. On roughly 16 July, Bering and the crew of Sv. Petr sighted Mount Saint Elias on the Alaskan mainland; they turned westward toward Russia soon afterward. Meanwhile, Chirikov and the Sv. Pavel headed back to Russia in October with news of the land they had found. In November, Bering's ship was wrecked on Bering Island. There Bering fell ill and died, and high winds dashed the Sv. Petr to pieces. After the stranded crew wintered on the island, the survivors built a boat from the wreckage and set sail for Russia in August 1742. Bering's crew reached the shore of Kamchatka in 1742, carrying word of the expedition. The high quality of the sea otter pelts they brought sparked Russian settlement in Alaska.

Due to the distance from central authority in St. Petersburg, and combined with the difficult geography and lack of adequate resources, the next state-sponsored expedition would wait more than two decades until 1766, when captains Pyotr Krenitsyn and Mikhail Levashov embarked for the

Imperial Russia was unique among European empires for having no state sponsorship of foreign expeditions or territorial (conquest) settlement. The first state-protected

Beginning in 1743, small associations of fur-traders began to sail from the shores of the Russian Pacific coast to the Aleutian islands.^[9]

Rather than hunting the marine life themselves, the Sibero-Russian

As word spread of the potential riches in furs, competition among Russian companies increased and a large number of Aleuts were apparently enserfed.^{[12][10][13][14]}

Sitka

As the animal populations declined, the Aleuts, already too dependent on the new

immunity against the new diseases.^[15]

Though the Alaskan

better source needed

In 1790 Shelekhov, back in Russia, hired Alexander Andreyevich Baranov to manage his Alaskan fur-enterprise. Baranov moved the colony to the northeast end of Kodiak Island, where timber was available. The site later developed as what is now the city of Kodiak. Russian colonists took Koniag wives and started families whose surnames continue today, such as Panamaroff, Petrikoff, and Kvasnikoff.^{[citation needed]} In 1795 Baranov, concerned by the sight of non-Russian Europeans trading with the natives in southeast Alaska, established Mikhailovsk six miles (10  km) north of present-day Sitka.^{[citation needed]} He bought the land from the Tlingit, but in 1802, while Baranov was away, Tlingit from a neighboring settlement attacked and destroyed Mikhailovsk. Baranov returned with a Russian warship and razed the Tlingit village. He built the settlement of New Archangel (Russian: Ново-Архангельск, romanized: Novo-Arkhangelsk) on the ruins of Mikhailovsk.^{[citation needed]} It became the capital of Russian America – and later the city of Sitka.^{[citation needed]}

As Baranov secured the Russians' settlements in Alaska, the Shelekhov family continued to work among the top leaders to win a monopoly on Alaska's fur trade.^{[citation needed]} In 1799 Shelekhov's son-in-law, Nikolay Petrovich Rezanov, had acquired a monopoly on the American fur trade from Emperor Paul I. Rezanov formed the Russian-American Company. As part of the deal, the Emperor expected the company to establish new settlements in Alaska and to carry out an expanded colonization program.^{[citation needed]}

1800 to 1867

By 1804, Baranov, now manager of the Russian–American Company, had consolidated the company's hold on fur trade activities in the Americas following his suppression of the Tlingit clan at the Battle of Sitka. The Russians never fully colonized Alaska. For the most part, they clung to the coast and shunned the interior.^{[citation needed]}

From 1812 to 1841, the Russians operated Fort Ross, California. From 1814 to 1817, Russian Fort Elizabeth was operating in the Kingdom of Hawaii. By the 1830s, the Russian monopoly on trade was weakening. The British Hudson's Bay Company was leased the southern edge of Russian America in 1839 under the RAC-HBC Agreement, establishing Fort Stikine which began siphoning off trade.^{[citation needed]}

A company ship visited the Russian American outposts only every two or three years to give provisions.^[18] Because of the limited stock of supplies, trading was incidental compared to trapping operations under the Aleutian laborers.^[18] This left the Russian outposts dependent upon British and American merchants for sorely needed food and materials; in such a situation Baranov knew that the RAC establishments "could not exist without trading with foreigners."^[18] Ties with Americans were particularly advantageous since they could sell furs at Guangzhou, closed to the Russians at the time. The downside was that American hunters and trappers encroached on territory Russians considered theirs.^{[citation needed]}

Starting with the destruction of the Phoenix in 1799, several RAC ships sank or were damaged in storms, leaving the RAC outposts with scant resources. On 24 June 1800, an American vessel sailed to Kodiak Island. Baranov negotiated the sale of over 12,000 rubles worth of goods carried on the ship, averting "imminent starvation."^[19] During his tenure Baranov traded over 2 million rubles worth of furs for American supplies, to the consternation of the board of directors.^[18] From 1806 to 1818 Baranov shipped 15 million rubles worth of furs to Russia, only receiving under 3 million rubles in provisions, barely half of the expenses spent solely on the Saint Petersburg company office.^[18]

The Russo-American Treaty of 1824 recognized exclusive Russian rights to the fur trade north of latitude 54°40'N, with the American rights and claims restricted to below that line. This division was repeated in the Treaty of Saint Petersburg, a parallel agreement with the British in 1825 (which also settled most of the border with British North America). However, the agreements soon went by the wayside, and with the retirement of Alexandr Baranov in 1818, the Russian hold on Alaska was further weakened.

When the Russian-American Company's charter was renewed in 1821, it stipulated that the chief managers from then on be naval officers. Most naval officers did not have any experience in the fur trade, so the company suffered. The second charter also tried to cut off all contact with foreigners, especially the competitive Americans. This strategy backfired since the Russian colony had become used to relying on American supply ships, and the United States had become a valued customer for furs. Eventually the Russian–American Company entered into an agreement with the Hudson's Bay Company, which gave the British rights to sail through Russian territory.^{[citation needed]}

Colonies

Part of a series on
European colonization of the Americas
First wave Basque British Curonian Danish Dutch French German Hospitaller Italian Norse Portuguese Russian Scottish Spanish Swedish Colonization of Canada Colonization of the United States Decolonization
History portal
v t e

The first Russian colony in Alaska was founded in 1784 by Grigory Shelikhov.^[5]: 102 Subsequently, Russian explorers and settlers continued to establish trading posts in mainland Alaska, on the Aleutian Islands, Hawaii,^{[citation needed]} and Northern California.

Alaska

The

The Russians established an outpost called Fortress Ross (Russian: Крѣпость Россъ, or Krepostʹ Ross) in 1812 near Bodega Bay in Northern California,^[5]: 181 north of San Francisco Bay. The Fort Ross colony included a sealing station on the Farallon Islands off San Francisco.^[20] By 1818 Fort Ross had a population of 128, consisting of 26 Russians and of 102 Native Americans.

At Three Saints Bay, Shelekov built a school to teach the natives to read and write Russian, and introduced the first resident missionaries and clergymen who spread the Russian Orthodox faith. This faith (with its liturgies and texts, translated into Aleut at a very early stage) had been informally introduced, in the 1740s–1780s. Some fur traders founded local families or symbolically adopted Aleut trade partners as godchildren to gain their loyalty through this special personal bond. The missionaries soon opposed the exploitation of the indigenous populations, and their reports provide evidence of the violence exercised to establish colonial rule in this period.

The RAC's monopoly was continued by Emperor Alexander I in 1821, on the condition that the company would financially support missionary efforts.^[23] Company board ordered chief manager Etholén to build a residency in New Archangel for bishop Veniaminov^[23] When a Lutheran church was planned for the Finnish population of New Archangel, Veniamiov prohibited any Lutheran priests from proselytizing to neighboring Tlingits.^[23] Veniamiov faced difficulties in exercising influence over the Tlingit people outside New Archangel, due to their political independence from the RAC leaving them less receptive to Russian cultural influences than Aleuts.^[23][24] A smallpox epidemic spread throughout Alaska in 1835-1837 and the medical aid given by Veniamiov created converts to Orthodoxy.^[24]

Inspired by the same pastoral theology as Bartolomé de las Casas or St. Francis Xavier, the origins of which come from early Christianity's need to adapt to the cultures of Antiquity, missionaries in Russian America applied a strategy that placed value on local cultures and encouraged indigenous leadership in parish life and missionary activity. When compared to later Protestant missionaries, the Orthodox policies "in retrospect proved to be relatively sensitive to indigenous Alaskan cultures."^[23] This cultural policy was originally intended to gain the loyalty of the indigenous populations by establishing the authority of Church and State as protectors of over 10,000 inhabitants of Russian America. (The number of ethnic Russian settlers had always been less than the record 812, almost all concentrated in Sitka and Kodiak).

Difficulties arose in training Russian priests to attain fluency in any of the various Alaskan Indigenous languages. To redress this, Veniaminov opened a seminary for mixed race and native candidates for the Church in 1845.^[23] Promising students were sent to additional schools in either Saint Petersburg or Irkutsk, the later city becoming the original seminary's new location in 1858.^[23] The Holy Synod instructed for the opening of four missionary schools in 1841, to be located in Amlia, Chiniak, Kenai, Nushagak.^[23] Veniamiov established the curriculum, which included Russian history, literacy, mathematics and religious studies.^[23]

A side effect of the missionary strategy was the development of a new and autonomous form of indigenous identity. Many native traditions survived within local "Russian" Orthodox tradition and in the religious life of the villages. Part of this modern indigenous identity is an alphabet and the basis for written literature in nearly all of the ethnic-linguistic groups in the Southern half of Alaska. Father Ivan Veniaminov (later St. Innocent of Alaska), famous throughout Russian America, developed an Aleut dictionary for hundreds of language and dialect words based on the Russian alphabet.

The most visible trace of the Russian colonial period in contemporary Alaska is the nearly 90 Russian Orthodox parishes with a membership of over 20,000 men, women, and children, almost exclusively indigenous people. These include several Athabascan groups of the interior, very large Yup'ik communities, and quite nearly all of the Aleut and Alutiiq populations. Among the few Tlingit Orthodox parishes, the large group in Juneau adopted Orthodox Christianity only after the Russian colonial period, in an area where there had been no Russian settlers nor missionaries. The widespread and continuing local Russian Orthodox practices are likely the result of the syncretism of local beliefs with Christianity.

In contrast, the Spanish Roman Catholic colonial intentions, methods, and consequences in California and the Southwest were the product of the Laws of Burgos and the Indian Reductions of conversions and relocations to missions; while more force and coercion was used, the indigenous peoples likewise created a kind of Christianity that reflected many of their traditions.

Observers noted that while their religious ties were tenuous, before the sale of Alaska there were 400 native converts to Orthodoxy in New Archangel.^[24] Tlingit practitioners declined in number after the lapse of Russian rule, until there were only 117 practitioners in 1882 residing in the place, by then renamed as Sitka.^[24]

Russian settlements in North America

• Alaska
  • Unalaska, Alaska – 1774
  • Three Saints Bay, Alaska
    – 1784
  • Fort St. George in Kasilof, Alaska – 1786
  • St. Paul, Alaska – 1788
  • Fort St. Nicholas in Kenai, Alaska – 1791
  • Pavlovskaya, Alaska (now Kodiak) – 1791
  • Fort Saints Constantine and Helen on Nuchek Island, Alaska – 1793
  • Fort on Hinchinbrook Island, Alaska – 1793
  • New Russia near present-day Yakutat, Alaska – 1796
  • Redoubt St. Archangel Michael, Alaska near Sitka – 1799
  • Novo-Arkhangelsk, Alaska (now Sitka) – 1804
  • Fort (New) Alexandrovsk at Bristol Bay, Alaska – 1819
  • Redoubt St. Michael, Alaska – 1833
  • Nulato, Alaska – 1834
  • Redoubt St. Dionysius in present-day Wrangell, Alaska (now Fort Stikine) – 1834
  • Pokrovskaya Mission, Alaska – 1837
  • Kolmakov Redoubt, Alaska – 1844
• California
  • Fort Ross, California – 1812
• Hawaii
  • Fort Elizabeth near Waimea, Kaua'i, Hawai'i – 1817
  • Fort Alexander near Hanalei, Kaua'i, Hawai'i – 1817
  • Fort Barclay-de-Tolly near Hanalei, Kaua'i, Hawai'i – 1817

Purchase of Alaska

By the 1860s, the Russian government was ready to abandon its Russian America colony. Over-hunting had severely reduced the fur-bearing animal population, and competition from the British and Americans exacerbated the situation. This, combined with the difficulties of supplying and protecting such a distant colony, reduced interest in the territory. In addition, Russia was in a difficult financial position and feared losing Russian Alaska without compensation in some future conflict, especially to the British. The Russians believed that in a dispute with Britain, their hard-to-defend region might become a prime target for British aggression from

After Russian America was sold to the U.S. in 1867, for $7.2 million (2 cents per acre, equivalent to $156,960,000 in 2023), all the holdings of the Russian–American Company were liquidated.

Following the transfer, many elders of the local

At the height of Russian America, the Russian population had reached 700, compared to 40,000 Aleuts. They and the Creoles, who had been guaranteed the privileges of citizens in the United States, were given the opportunity of becoming citizens within a three-year period, but few decided to exercise that option. General Jefferson C. Davis ordered the Russians out of their homes in Sitka, maintaining that the dwellings were needed for the Americans. The Russians complained of rowdiness of the American troops and assaults. Many Russians returned to Russia, while others migrated to the Pacific Northwest and California.

Legacy

The

At the beginning of the 21st century, a resurgence of Russian ultra nationalism has spurred regret and recrimination over the sale of Alaska to the United States.[25]^[26][27] There are periodic mass media stories in the Russian Federation that Alaska was not sold to the United States in the 1867 Alaska Purchase, but only leased for 99 years (= to 1966), or 150 years (= to 2017)—and would be returned to Russia.^[28] However, the Alaska Purchase Treaty is absolutely clear that the agreement was for a complete Russian cession of the territory.^{[29][non-primary source needed][original research?]}

Russian settlements in North America

• Unalaska, Alaska – 1774
• Three Saints Bay, Alaska
  – 1784
• Fort St. George in Kasilof, Alaska – 1786^{[citation needed]}
• St. Paul, Alaska – 1788
• Fort St. Nicholas in Kenai, Alaska – 1791^{[citation needed]}
• Pavlovskaya, Alaska (now Kodiak) – 1791
• Fort Saints Constantine and Helen on Nuchek Island, Alaska – 1793^{[citation needed]}
• Fort on Hinchinbrook Island, Alaska – 1793^{[citation needed]}
• New Russia near present-day Yakutat, Alaska – 1796
• Redoubt St. Archangel Michael, Alaska near Sitka – 1799
• Novo-Arkhangelsk, Alaska (now Sitka) – 1804
• Fort Ross, California – 1812
• Fort Elizabeth near Waimea, Kaua'i, Hawai'i – 1817
• Fort Alexander near Hanalei, Kaua'i, Hawai'i – 1817
• Fort Barclay-de-Tolly near Hanalei, Kaua'i, Hawai'i – 1817^{[citation needed]}
• Fort (New) Alexandrovsk at Bristol Bay, Alaska – 1819^{[citation needed]}
• Kolmakov Redoubt, Alaska – 1832
• Redoubt St. Michael, Alaska – 1833
• Nulato, Alaska – 1834
• Redoubt St. Dionysius in present-day Wrangell, Alaska (now Fort Stikine) – 1834
• Pokrovskaya Mission, Alaska – 1837
• Ninilchik, Alaska – 1847

See also

Native Americans

• Juana Maria
• Peter the Aleut
• Jacob Netsvetov

Russians

• List of Russian explorers
• Herman of Alaska
• Mikhail Tebenkov
• Johan Hampus Furuhjelm
• Nikolai Rezanov
• Vitus Bering

History

• Russian Colonialism
• Territorial evolution of Russia
• Great Northern Expedition
• California Fur Rush
• Awa'uq Massacre
• Russo-American Treaty of 1824
• History of the west coast of North America

Other topics

• Alaska boundary dispute
• Flag of the Russian-American Company
• Alaskan Creole people
• Russian Americans
• Russian–American Telegraph
• Slavic Voice of America
• Ukase of 1821

References

Footnotes

Further reading

See also: Bibliography of California history and Bibliography of Russian history (1613–1917)

• ISBN 978-1-889963-05-1
  .
• ISBN 978-0-295-98601-2
  .
• Essig, Edward Oliver. Fort Ross: California Outpost of Russian Alaska, 1812–1841 (Kingston, Ont.: Limestone Press, 1991.)
• Frost, Orcutt (2003). Bering: The Russian Discovery of America. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
  ISBN 978-0-300-10059-4
  .
• Gibson, James R. "Old Russia in the New World: adversaries and adversities in Russian America." in European Settlement and Development in North America (University of Toronto Press, 2019) pp. 46–65.
• Gibson, James R. Imperial Russia in frontier America: the changing geography of supply of Russian America, 1784–1867 (Oxford University Press, 1976)
• Gibson, James R. "Russian America in 1821." Oregon Historical Quarterly (1976): 174–188. online
• Grinev, Andrei Valterovich (2008). The Tlingit Indians in Russian America, 1741–1867. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press.
  ISBN 978-0-8032-2071-3
  .
• Grinëv, Andrei Val’terovich. "The External Threat to Russian America: Myth and Reality." Journal of Slavic Military Studies 30.2 (2017): 266–289.
• Grinëv, Andrei Val’terovich. Russian Colonization of Alaska: Preconditions, Discovery, and Initial Development, 1741–1799 Translated by Richard L. Bland. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2018.
  ISBN 978-1-4962-0762-3. online review
• Kobtzeff, Oleg (1985). La Colonization russe en Amérique du Nord: 18 - 19 ème siècles (Russian Colonization in North- America, 18th-19th Centuries). Paris: thesis, University of Paris 1 - Panthéon Sorbonne (available in limited editions in specialized libraries).
• Miller, Gwenn A. (2010). Kodiak Kreol: Communities of Empire in Early Russian America. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
  ISBN 978-0-8014-4642-9
  .
• ISBN 978-0-88141-092-1
  .
• Oleksa, Michael J., ed. (2010). Alaskan Missionary Spirituality (2nd ed.). Yonkers, NY: St Vladimir's Seminary Press.
  ISBN 978-0-88141-340-3
  .
• Pierce, Richard A. Russian America, 1741–1867: A Biographical Dictionary (Kingston, Ont.: Limestone Press, 1990)
• ISBN 978-0-8223-0688-7
  .
• Saul, Norman E. "Empire Maker: Aleksandr Baranov and Russian Colonial Expansion into Alaska and Northern California." Journal of American Ethnic History 36.3 (2017): 91–93.
• Saul, Norman. "California-Alaska trade, 1851–1867: The American Russian commercial company and the Russian America company and the sale/purchase of Alaska." Journal of Russian American Studies 2.1 (2018): 1–14. online
• Vinkovetsky, Ilya (2011). Russian America: An Overseas Colony of a Continental Empire, 1804–1867. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
  ISBN 978-0-19-539128-2
  .

Natives

• Grinëv, Andrei V. "Natives and Creoles of Alaska in the maritime service in Russian America." The Historian 82.3 (2020): 328–345. online^{[dead link]}
• The Tlingit Indians in Russian America, 1741–1867, Andreĭ Valʹterovich Grinev (GoogleBooks)
• Luehrmann, Sonja. Alutiiq villages under Russian and US rule (University of Alaska Press, 2008.)
• Smith-Peter, Susan (2013). ""A Class of People Admitted to the Better Ranks": The First Generation of Creoles in Russian America, 1810s–1820s". Ethnohistory. 60 (3): 363–384.
  doi:10.1215/00141801-2140758
  .
• Savelev, Ivan. "Patterns in the Adoption of Russian Linguistic and National Traditions by Alaskan Natives." International Conference on European Multilingualism: Shaping Sustainable Educational and Social Environment EMSSESE, 2019. (Atlantis Press, 2019). online

Primary sources

• Gibson, James R. (1972). "Russian America in 1833: The Survey of Kirill Khlebnikov". The Pacific Northwest Quarterly. 63 (1): 1–13.
  JSTOR 40488966
  .
• Golovin, Pavel Nikolaevich, Basil Dmytryshyn, and E. A. P. Crownhart-Vaughan. The end of Russian America: Captain PN Golovin's last report, 1862(Oregon Historical Society Press, 1979.)
• Khlebnikov, Kyrill T. Colonial Russian America: Kyrill T. Khlebnikov's Reports, 1817–1832 (Oregon Historical Society, 1976)
• baron Wrangel, Ferdinand Petrovich. Russian America: Statistical and ethnographic information (Kingston, Ont.: Limestone Press, 1980)

Historiography

• Grinëv, Andrei. V.; Bland, Richard L. (2010). "A Brief Survey of the Russian Historiography of Russian America of Recent Years" (PDF). Pacific Historical Review. 79 (2): 265–278.
  JSTOR 10.1525/phr.2010.79.2.265
  .

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Russian America.

• The Russian-American Treaty of 1867
• Official Website of Fort Ross State Historic Park
• Fort Ross Cultural History Fort Ross Interpretive Association