Russian colonization of North America

From 1732 to 1867, the Russian Empire laid claim to northern Pacific Coast territories in the Americas. Russian colonial possessions in the Americas were collectively known as Russian America from 1799 to 1867. It consisted mostly of present-day Alaska in the United States, but also included the outpost of Fort Ross in California. Russian Creole settlements were concentrated in Alaska, including the capital, New Archangel (), which is now Sitka.

Russian expansion eastward began in 1552, and Russian explorers reached the Pacific Ocean in 1639. In 1725, Emperor Peter the Great ordered navigator Vitus Bering to explore the North Pacific for potential colonization. The Russians were primarily interested in the abundance of fur-bearing mammals on Alaska's coast, as stocks had been depleted by overhunting in Siberia. Bering's first voyage was foiled by thick fog and ice, but in 1741 a second voyage by Bering and Aleksei Chirikov discovered part of the North American mainland. Bering claimed the Alaskan country for the Russian Empire. Russia later confirmed its rule over the territory with the of 1799 which established the southern border of Russian America along the 55th parallel north. The decree also provided monopolistic privileges to the state-sponsored Russian-American Company (RAC) and established the Russian Orthodox Church in Alaska.

Russian (trappers and hunters) quickly developed the maritime fur trade, which instigated several conflicts between the Aleuts and Russians in the 1760s. The fur trade proved to be a lucrative enterprise, capturing the attention of other European nations. In response to potential competitors, the Russians extended their claims eastward from the Commander Islands to the shores of Alaska. In 1784, with encouragement from Empress Catherine the Great, explorer Grigory Shelekhov founded Russia's first permanent settlement in Alaska at Three Saints Bay. Ten years later, the first group of Orthodox Christian missionaries arrived, evangelizing thousands of Native Americans, many of whose descendants continue to maintain the religion. By the late 1780s, trade relations had opened with the Tlingits, and in 1799 the RAC was formed to monopolize the fur trade, also serving as an imperialist vehicle for the Russification of Alaska Natives.

Angered by encroachment on their land and other grievances, the indigenous peoples' relations with the Russians deteriorated. In 1802, Tlingit warriors destroyed several Russian settlements, most notably Redoubt Saint Michael (Old Sitka), leaving New Russia as the only remaining outpost on mainland Alaska. This failed to expel the Russians, who re-established their presence two years later following the Battle of Sitka. Peace negotiations between the Russians and Native Americans would later establish a , a situation that, with few interruptions, lasted for the duration of Russian presence in Alaska. In 1808, Redoubt Saint Michael was rebuilt as New Archangel and became the capital of Russian America after the previous colonial headquarters were moved from Kodiak. A year later, the RAC began expanding its operations to more abundant sea otter grounds in Northern California, where Fort Ross was built in 1812.

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 the inability 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 Alaska Purchase for $7.2 million (equivalent to $ million in ) ended Imperial Russia's colonial presence in the Americas.

Exploration

alt=Map of northwesterna America, East Asia and the northern Pacific. The coast of northwestern America is only very roughly outlined.|thumb|A 1773 map of northwestern America based on reports from Russian explorers.

The earliest written accounts indicate that the Eurasian Russians were 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.

The first sighting of the Alaskan coastline was in 1732; this sighting was made by the Russian maritime explorer and navigator Ivan Fedorov from the sea near present-day Cape Prince of Wales on the eastern boundary of the Bering Strait opposite Russian Cape Dezhnev. He did not land.

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 Danish-born Russian 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. On July 15, Chirikov sighted land, probably the west side of Prince of Wales Island in southeast Alaska. 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 July 16, 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 Aleutian Islands, eventually reaching their destination after initially been wrecked on Bering Island. Between 1774 and 1800 Spain also led several expeditions to Alaska to assert its claim over the Pacific Northwest. These claims were later abandoned at the turn of the 19th century following the aftermath of the Nootka Crisis. Count Nikolay Rumyantsev funded Russia's first naval circumnavigation under the joint command of Adam Johann von Krusenstern and Nikolai Rezanov in 1803–1806, and was instrumental in the outfitting of the voyage of the Riurik<nowiki/>'s circumnavigation of 1814–1816, which provided substantial scientific information on Alaska's and California's flora and fauna, and important ethnographic information on Alaskan and Californian (among other) natives.

Trading company

Imperial Russia was unique among European empires for having no state sponsorship of foreign expeditions or territorial settlement. The first state-protected trading company for sponsoring such activities in the Americas was the Shelikhov-Golikov Company of Grigory Shelikhov and Ivan Larionovich Golikov. A number of other companies were operating in Russian America during the 1780s. Shelikhov petitioned the government for exclusive control, but in 1788 Catherine II decided to grant his company a monopoly only over the area it had already occupied. Other traders were free to compete elsewhere. Catherine's decision was issued as the imperial (proclamation) of September 28, 1788.

The Shelikhov-Golikov Company formed the basis for the Russian-American Company (RAC). Its charter was laid out in 1799 by the new Tsar Paul I, which granted the company monopolistic control over trade in the Aleutian Islands and the North American mainland, south to 55° north latitude. and California.

Russian colonization

1740s to 1800

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

thumb|left|The [[Bering Strait, where Russia's east coast lies closest to Alaska's west coast. Early Russian colonization occurred well south of the strait, in the Aleutian Islands.]]

thumbnail|upright=1|right|Sibero-Russian (hunter-trapper frontiersmen)

Rather than hunting the marine life themselves, the Sibero-Russian forced the Aleuts to do the work for them, often by taking hostage family members in exchange for hunted seal furs. This pattern of colonial exploitation resembled some of the practices in their expansion into Siberia and the Russian Far East.

As word spread of the potential riches in furs, competition among Russian companies increased and a large number of Aleuts were enserfed.

thumb|upright=0.5|right|Flag of the [[Russian-American Company (1806–1881).]]

thumb|[[Tlingit Chieftain of Sitka]]

As the animal populations declined, the Aleuts, already too dependent on the new barter economy fostered by the Russian fur trade, were increasingly coerced into taking greater and greater risks in the highly dangerous waters of the North Pacific to hunt for more otter. As the Shelekhov-Golikov Company of 1783–1799 developed a monopoly, its use of skirmishes and violent incidents turned into systematic violence as a tool of colonial exploitation of the indigenous people. When the Aleutian serfs revolted and won some victories, the retaliated, killing many and destroying their boats and hunting gear, leaving them no means of survival. The most devastating effects came from disease: during the first two generations (1741–1759 & 1781–1799) of Sibero-Russian contact, 80 percent of the Aleut population died from Eurasian infectious diseases; these were by then endemic among Eurasians, but the Aleuts had no immunity against the diseases.

Though the Alaskan colony was never very profitable because of the costs of transportation, most Russian traders were determined to keep the land for themselves. In 1784, Grigory Ivanovich Shelekhov, who later set up the Russian-American Company

that developed into the Alaskan colonial administration, arrived in Three Saints Bay on Kodiak Island with two ships, the Three Saints () and the St. Simon. The Koniag Alaska Natives harassed the Russian party and Shelekhov responded by killing hundreds and taking hostages to enforce the obedience of the rest. Having established his authority on Kodiak Island, Shelekhov founded the second permanent Russian settlement in Alaska (after Unalaska, permanently settled in 1774) on the island's Three Saints Bay.

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 into what is now the city of Kodiak. Russian colonists took Koniag's wives and started families whose surnames continue today, such as Panamaroff, Petrikoff, and Kvasnikoff. In 1795 Baranov, concerned by the sight of non-Russian Europeans trading with the natives in southeast Alaska, established Mikhailovsk north of present-day Sitka. 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 () on the ruins of Mikhailovsk. It became the capital of Russian America – and later the city of Sitka.

As Baranov secured the Russians' settlements in Alaska, the Shelekhov family continued to lobby Empress Catherine the Great for a monopoly on Alaska's fur trade. In 1799 Shelekhov's son-in-law, Nikolay Petrovich Rezanov, succeeded when he 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. Thus, while the company was focused on its commercial enterprise, it also effectively became an outpost for the Russian Empire in North America.

1800 to 1867

thumb|right|upright=1.3|[[Aleutian & Russian allied forces defeat the Tlingit tribe at the Battle of Sitka, 1804.]]

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.

thumb|upright|[[Alexander Andreyevich Baranov, called "Lord of Alaska" by Hector Chevigny, played an active role in the Russian–American Company and was the first governor of Russian America.]]

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.

A company ship visited the Russian American outposts only every two or three years to give provisions. Because of the limited stock of supplies, trading was incidental compared to trapping operations under the Aleutian laborers. During his tenure, Baranov traded over 2 million rubles worth of furs for American supplies, to the consternation of the board of directors.

By 1818 Fort Ross had a population of 128, consisting of 26 Russians and 102 Native Americans. , Fort Ross is a Federal National Historical Landmark on the National Register of Historic Places. It is preserved—restored in California's Fort Ross State Historic Park, about northwest of San Francisco.

Spanish concern about Russian colonial intrusion prompted the authorities in New Spain to initiate the upper Province settlement, with (forts), (villages), and the California missions. After declaring their independence in 1821, the Mexicans also asserted themselves in opposition to the Russians: the (Sonoma Mission, 1823) specifically responded to the presence of the Russians at Fort Ross; and Mexico established the or Sonoma Barracks in 1836, with General as the Commandant of the Northern Frontier of the Province.

Missionary activity

thumb|left|[[Russian Orthodox Church|Russian Orthodox cathedral, in present-day Sitka]]

thumb|right|[[Peter the Aleut|St. Peter the Aleut, a martyred Aleutian Creole]]

thumbnail|left|upright=1|An Aleutian man and woman

thumb|right|The Sanctuary of [[St. Michael's Cathedral (Sitka, Alaska)|St. Michael's Cathedral]]

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. The company board ordered chief manager Arvid Adolf Etholén to build a residency in New Archangel for bishop Veniaminov A smallpox epidemic spread throughout Alaska in 1835–1837 and the medical aid given by Veniamiov created converts to Orthodoxy. The Alaskan Native peoples claimed that they still had title to the territory in that the U.S. bought the right to negotiate with the indigenous populations, rather than buying the territory outright; however, following the enactment of the Alaska Statehood Act, the U.S. government ceded 44 million acres to Alaska’s native populations.

In the early 21st century, Russian officials and pro-Kremlin bloggers have fuelled discussion in Russia, generally facetious, of an ambition to regain control of Alaska. Some Russian ultra-nationalists viewed the purchase as an enormous mistake.

Russian settlements in North America

thumb|right|New Archangel (present-day [[Sitka, Alaska), the capital of Russian America, in 1837]]

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 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
Fort (New) Alexandrovsk at Bristol Bay, Alaska – 1819
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

References

External links

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

Russian colonization of North America

Exploration

Trading company

Russian colonization

1740s to 1800

1800 to 1867

Missionary activity

Russian settlements in North America

See also

References

Further reading

Natives

Primary sources

Historiography

External links