Tsarist Russia in America’s Pacific Backdoor III: Hawai’i

Regional History

The story of the Russian-American Company’s (RAC) Hawai’ian ‘colony’ reads as a minor footnote in the history of Russian America. In fact, rather than amounting to a colony, the ephemeral Hawai’ian enclave might at best be described as a putative outpost. The first tentative contacts between the Russians of RAC and the Sandwich Islands (Hawai’i) was in 1804 when Russian ships visited two of the islands, O’ahu and Kaua’i❈. RAC funded such circumnavigational expeditions from the early 19th century – one of its commercial aims to locate suppliers for its Russian-American settlements and markets for its manufactured goods (eg, China, Japan)[1].

Hawai’i: Fort Elizabeth
In 1807 RAC vessels began exchanging goods with the Hawaiian chieftains (animal pelts for foodstuffs and supplies). The following year RAC sent Lieutenant Hagemeister to Hawai’i to obtain salt (vital to Alaska for the preservation of both food and furs). Russian trade approaches were soon reciprocated by King Kamehameha I who had unified most of the Hawai’ian Islands under his kingdom[2]. Kamekameha exchanged correspondences with the governor of Russian Alaska at Sitka (New Archangel), Baranov, welcoming an annual trade between the two – hogs, batatas (sweet potato) and salt for otter pelts[3].

The Schaffer Fiasco – the “Hawai’ian Spectacular”
Around late 1814 early 1815 an RAC vessel was shipwrecked on Kaua’i and its company goods were seized by the island’s chieftain Kaumuali’i. Lieutenant Podushkin and George Anton Schäffer (a German surgeon in the Company’s employ) were sent to Kaua’i to recover the goods, but Schäffer, instead of following instructions, allowed himself to be embroiled in Hawai’ian politics and a plot hatched by Chief Kaumuali’i to regain power in the archipelago. Kaumuali’i and Schäffer entered into an alliance (without the approval of RAC!) – the Kaua’i king would provide 500 warriors + Schäffer would provide ships and ammunition for a military assault on King Kamekameha’s stronghold. The injudicious Schäffer embraced the quixotic notion that he was capable of paving the way for the RAC and the Russian navy to colonise Hawai’i[4].

Dr GA Schäffer

What followed was a bizarre 18-month misadventure during which Schäffer built fortifications at Waimea which he named Fort Elizabeth (Rus: Форт Елизаветы) and two smaller, earthworks forts on Kaua’i, made costly purchases of American ships without RAC authority, planted crops and failed to muster any native support for a Russian takeover of the archipelago (except for Kaumuali’i who was playing him for his own advantage) – all the while Shäffer was losing touch with reality and succumbing to delusions of grandeur (eg, naming the region of the island where the fort was, Shäfferthal). Schäffer’s faux colony finally came a cropper when Kamekameha’s influential clique of American traders ejected him from Hawai’i in 1817. Back in Sitka Baranov and RAC disavowed Schäffer’s actions and refused to pay the outstanding bills incurred by the German physician-cum-imperialist adventurer¤.

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Kaua’i

PostScript: Baranov, RAC and Russian designs on Hawai’i
Did Baranov at any stage perhaps want to go further than just establishing bilateral trade with the Hawai’ian chiefs? His written instructions to Lt Podushkin in early 1816 hint at something more imperially expansionist – Podushkin was told to secure King Kaumuali’i’s agreement to conduct trade and the construction of a Russian factory on Kaua’i, or failing that “… the whole island of Kauai should be taken in the name of our Sovereign Emperor of all the Russias and become a part of his possessions”[5]. After the War of 1812 broke out Baranov certainly sensed the chance to get a foothold in the Sandwich Islands and the lucrative sandalwood trade whilst the two combatants (Britain and the US) were likely to be distracted. Schäffer’s forcible removal from Hawai’i did not put an end to his advocacy … he continued to make grander and grander proposals to the Tsar that the islands be taken by force ASAP to safeguard all of Russian American possessions. And the delusional Schäffer was not entirely alone in running this line … after Baranov left Sitka elements of RAC continued to entertain Russia’s “Hawai’ian project” until 1821. The whole disastrous business was finally brought to a conclusion when Alexander I unequivocally expressed his disapproval of Schäffer’s scheme to integrate Hawai’i into the Russian Empire✥ (Alexander was very mindful of the necessity of not antagonising the European powers who used Hawai’i as a free port and regular trading station). Whether Russia and RAC harboured designs on Hawai’i or not, Washington was quick to react to the Russian incursion by establishing a consulate on Hawai’ian territory in 1820 – paving the way for the missionaries[6].

FN: Surprisingly, rather than disappearing without trace as you might imagine, the discredited Doctor Schäffer resurfaced in Brazil in the early 1820s, reinventing himself as an agent for Emperor Dom Pedro I securing large-scale emigration of Germans to newly independent Brazil.

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❈ following upon Captain James Cook’s discovery of the Sandwich Islands in 1778 American and British traders had established close commercial ties with the Hawai’ians
¤ described by RA Pierce as “a fast-working interloper”
✥ this was not the end of Russian involvement with Hawai’i by any measure – a Russian political exile, Nikolai Sudzilovsky, was elected the first Senate president of Hawai’i in 1901 (socialist Sudzilovsky was both opposed to Hawai’i joining the US and hostile to Tsarist Russia)

[1] ‘First Russian circumnavigation – Russian Voyage’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org
[2] E Joesting, Kauai: The Separate Kingdom (1988)
[3] RA Pierce, Russia’s Hawaiian Adventure, 1815-1817, (1965)
[4] H Schwartz, ‘Fort Ross California – A Historical Synopsis’, Fort Ross Conservancy, (IP Unit, Dept of Parks & Rec. California, Feb 1977)
[5] A.A.Baranov to I.A.Pudushkin, Feb. 15, 1816, cited in Pierce, op.cit.
[6] ‘Georg Anton Schäffer’, Wikipedia, http://.wikipedia.n.em.org

Tsarist Russia in America’s Pacific Backdoor II: California

Cinema, Popular Culture, Regional History

The establishment by the Russian Empire of a colony in California in the early 19th century was a corollary of the earlier North American colony in Alaska. The inherent deficiencies that surfaced in the operation of the Russian American colony convinced the Russian-American Company that it needed to find new, more propitious outposts in the region that could service Russian America’s needs.

California: Fort Ross
Zealous over-hunting of the prized sea otters by the Russian-American Company et al in Alaska’s waters led the company to seek out new, profitable hunting grounds further south. After some early fur hunting expeditions (1806-11) confirmed the presence of abundant sea otters along New Spain’s Pacific coastline, RAC chief Aleksandr Baranov authorised his assistant Ivan Kuskov to find a suitable location in Northern California and establish a Russian colony.

Fort Ross

The location chosen by the RAC to settle its new colony in 1812 – on the “New Albion” shore to the north of Bodega Bay (today in Sonoma County)❈ – was carefully selected. It was close to but outside of the border that Spain had set as its northern-most jurisdiction (San Francisco). As well as the proximity to plentiful sea otter fields, the Russian-American Company wanted its Californian base to be close enough to facilitate trade with Alta (Upper) California.

(photo: www.fortross.org)

The exact spot picked by Kuskov for the settlement was the site of an Indian village called Meteni by the local Kashaya (Kashia Pomo) tribes. After negotiating the sale of the land with the Pomo[1], Kuskov built RAC’s fortress called Fort Ross (Rus: Фopт-Pocc). The other raison d’être of the Californian colony was to provide an agricultural base for the northern settlements (Alaska had proved too harsh an environment and its climate too raw to supply sufficient quantity or variety for the nutritional needs of its settlers).

Russian stamp commemorating 200th anniversary of founding of Fort Ross

By 1814 Kuskov’s men (which included Aleut natives from Alaska) had planted the beginnings of an orchard, a solitary peach tree, later adding more trees which would eventually yield grapes, apples, cherries, pears, quinces and bergamots. This fresh fruit was to prove important in preventing outbreaks of scurvy which had dogged the early Californian colony[2].

An inhospitable neighbourhood
As things transpired, the emergence of the Russian settlement at Fort Ross did provoke the displeasure of the Las Californias authorities who responded by establishing a new mission station and presido (fort) in the vicinity to check any attempt by RAC to colonise any parts of California further south. Early trade opportunities were impeded by Madrid which forbid its Californian outposts from having commercial transactions with Fort Ross (although a healthy contraband trade did exist)[3]. With the Adams-Onis Treaty (1819) by which the US acknowledged Spain’s claim to all land south of the Oregon country border, Russia was even further squeezed out diplomatically in California¤ (and forced to renounce its own Oregon claim[4]. After Mexico gained its independence from ‘Old’ Spain in 1821 it constructed its own forts (such as the Sonoma Barracks) not far from the Russian Fortress to hem it in[5].

Russian chart – Fort Ross & Bodega Bay

Other drawbacks imperiling the viability of Russia’s Fort Ross colony
A. Otter hunting and shipbuilding

Hostility from Hispanic California and free-spirited westward-roaming American pioneers was not the only issue the Russians at Fort Ross had to contend with. By around 1817 the Californian coastline was displaying the same tell-tale signs of rapid depletion of the much sought-after sea otters that had plagued the Northwest Pacific and turned RAC’s focus southward ten years earlier. Being closer to both the US and Mexico and within the English’s sphere of operations, the competition for pelts in Alta California was even more intense. With the southern colony’s annual otter pelt catch declining every year, RAC tried diversifying its industries. For a while shipbuilding took commercial centre stage at the colony’s port at nearby Rumyartsev Bay … in a productive six years from 1818 six major vessels were built there. Unfortunately the Rumyartsev builders used Tanbark oak, which wasn’t suitable for ocean-going vessels and to make matters worse, seasoned it improperly so that the wood progressively rotted and all the ships were unseaworthy within a few years[6].

B. Ranching and animal husbandry
After the wood rot disaster shipbuilding in the colony ceased and Fort Ross switched his emphasis to agriculture and the development of its animal husbandry. New ranches opened up for stock-raising, especially from the early 1830s, with some success in the production of beef and mutton. A 1841 inventory of livestock at Fort Ross (taken just prior to the colony’s demise) listed 1,700 head of cattle, 940 horses and 900 sheep … indicating some marginal success in ranching – but to put it in perspective this was far behind the herd sizes of livestock achieved by the contemporary Spanish and Mexican Californian ranchers[7].

C. Grain production and other agriculture
RAC’s hope was that a colony in Alta California – with its better soils and pasture lands, plentiful timber and good water supply – would be conducive to productive and consistent yields of produce, and would become the granary for the northern outposts in Alaska. Flawed agricultural methods and planning however meant that this would remain a pipe dream. The colonists failed to rotate their crops and fertilise the fields adequately for arability. The type of farming at the ‘Fortress’ was more that of private plots producing fruit and vegetables for local consumption rather than exporting. The quantities sent north were never sufficient, nor were they consistent in quality. At different periods the Russian colony had to trade its manufactured goods♦ for grain and seed from New Spain, both for the colonists’ use and to ship north to Russian America’s capital, Sitka. From the late 1820s on occasionally there were good crops, but even in the most fecund times Fort Ross could only supply a mere 1/12th of RAC’s needs for Alaska[8].

The Fort Ross colony workforce
The colonists’ division of labour comprised the Russians and Creoles in one group of occupations, guards, overseers, artisans and cooks, and the Aleut men as hunters (Aleut women and other native tribes were allotted the more menial tasks). After the sea otter haul largely disappeared, the Aleut hunters were reassigned to herding and lumbering jobs. The calibre of men Kuskov had at his disposal was problematic … the Russian men were often described as “riff-raff” – the risk of desertion was always a concern and many were suspected of criminal intent. As for the native workers, most brought from Alaska were convicts under punishment for “crimes committed against the colony” and many of the Indians were considerable unreliable[9]. The lack of an ongoing, stable workforce added to the colony’s woes. Quantity as well as quality – a sheer lack of manpower also contributed to Fort Ross’s failure.

Hudson’s Bay Co

Endgame for Krepost’ Ross
The isolated colony struggled on through the 1830s trying to make a go of it commercially, but Fort Ross’ death knoll was sounded when the Russian-American Company signed an agreement with the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) in 1839 … HBC would henceforth supply all provisions required by RAC’s Alaskan outposts[10]. RAC, pulling the plug, tried at first to sell Fort Ross to the Hudson’s Bay Company, and then to the Mexican government, but were unsuccessful in both instances. Consequently Fort Ross’s Governor Rotcher managed to sell the Fortress and all its contents (including a disused schooner in Bodega Bay) to Californian settler pioneer and businessman Johann (John) Sutter for $30,000.

ↂ ↂ ↂ ↂ ↂ

Endnote:
The Russians were only one of several players eyeing off the colonial potentiality of Spanish Alta California. French, American and British visitors all made note of how surprisingly tenuous Madrid’s hold was on the territory [11].

PostScript: Fort Ross – the movie!
Intriguingly in a time witnessing a latent reheating of American/Russian superpower tensions, a Russian film company made a feature film about the Fort Ross colony (released in 2014 presumably as a celebration of the Fort’s 200th anniversary two years earlier). Written by Dimitriy Poletaev, Fort Ross is billed as a historical adventure/action/fantasy movie. I’m more than a little skeptical about how historically accurate it is … though it does contain a character called “Komendant Kuskov”. Basically, the plot revolves around a “Gen Y” journalist who find himself transported back to 1814 Fort Ross, coonskin caps, muskets, otter pelts and everything – courtesy of his malfunctioning iPhone! (the fantasy bit). The time-travelling protagonist finds himself embroiled in various intrigues and adventures and the film gives a few nods to the state of contemporary US/Russian relations. A part of the external footage was filmed at Fort Ross National Park – shots of the Russian River (Slavyanka) and the surrounding countryside – though the producers used the recently renovated original Fort Ross itself as a model to re-create a full-scale replica of the fort in Belarus.

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❈ about 130km northwest of San Francisco Bay
¤ A further blow to morale was that Spain, Mexico, the US and Britain never recognised the legitimacy of Russia’s Fort Ross colony … although in the case of Mexico, it was prepared to do so provided Russia recognised it in return, but the conservative Tsar’s suspicion that the new Republic was a radical regime vetoed that diplomatic breakthrough (Schwartz 1977)
♦ such as barrels, bricks, furniture, soap, etc.

[1] ‘negotiated’ for almost sweet FA according to one account – Kuskov bought the area for a small quantity of clothing, bedding and tools, ‘History of the Russian Settlement at Fort Ross, California’, www.parks.sonoma.net/ross
[2] ‘Historic Orchard at Fort Ross’, Fort Ross Conservancy, www.fortross.org
[3] H Schwartz, ‘Fort Ross California – A Historical Synopsis’, Fort Ross Conservancy‘, (Interpretive Planning Unit, Dept of Parks & Rec, Calif. Feb 1977), http://fortross.org/lib.html
[4] ibid.
[5] ‘History of the Russian Settlement’, Wikipedia, www.wikipedia.n.em.org
[6] ibid.; Schwartz, loc.cit.
[7] Schwartz, loc.cit.
[8] ibid.
[9] AA Istomin, ‘Indians at the Ross Settlement – According to the censuses by Kuskov in 1820 and 1821’, (Fort Ross Interpretive Association, Jul 1992), www.fortross.org
[10] ‘Yukon/Alaska Chronology’, Explore North – An Explorer’s Guide to the North, www.explorenorth.com

[11] Kevin Starr, Americans and the California Dream 1850-1915, (1971)

Tsarist Russia in America’s Pacific Backdoor I: Alaska

Regional History

All school children in the United States learn the story of America’s acquisition of Alaska. In 1867 Tsarist Russia sold its vast Alaskan territory to the US for $7.2 million in gold bullion. It is together with the Louisiana Purchase the two great stories of government mega-scale real estate acquisition in US history. The United States’ motives for acquiring Alaska at that time have been fairly well canvassed[1]. But less well-known is Russia’s role in Alaska and the North Pacific littoral prior to 1867 and the reasons for its eventual and permanent withdrawal from the region.

Russia’s move into Alaska was a natural outgrowth of the Romanov Empire’s expanding imperial reach eastwards. It was also driven by the need to find a new source of fur-bearing mammals❈. Siberia and the Russian Far East (Tartaria Oriental) had become rapidly depleted in stock and Imperial Russia was intent on exploring the lands and islands further east and, among other things, getting a stranglehold on the trade in pelts there[2].

Soon after Russian explorers first sighted the Alaskan shoreline in 1741, Russian hunters and fur traders (the promyshlenniki) began to move into the Aleutian Islands, a preliminary step to further expansion into the Gulf of Alaska. An outpost was established at Unalaska, from here the Russian traders encroached on Alaskan territory in a piecemeal fashion. Using the same strategy employed against the Siberian tribes earlier, the promyshlenniki coerced the indigenous Aleuts into hunting sea otters for them. The missionary zeal of Russian Orhodox priests, who were part of the colonial community in the outposts, played a role in the ‘pacification’ of the Alaskan native populations[3]. Contact with the Russians was also devastating to the health of indigenous Americans: it is estimated that 80% or more of Alaskan peoples were wiped out as a result of infectious diseases brought by the Europeans[4].

The Russian-American Company

Moscow chose as its template the successful model of Britain’s East India Company, a powerful enterprise which capitalised on Robert Clive’s triumph over the moguls of India [5]. A Russian foothold was established in 1784 on the peninsula, with the name “the Three Saints Bay Colony” on Kodiak Island. The settlement’s founder, powerful merchant Grigory Shelekhov used brutal and excessive force against native tribes that rebelled against his authority (eg, wholesale massacre of natives from the Alutiiq nation). But the nucleus of the Russian presence in Alaska was to be the Russian-American Company (RAC) (established in 1799). Headed by autocratic Chief Manager Aleksandr Baranov de facto governor of the Russian colony (till 1818), the Company effectively controlled all of Russia’s possessions in North America. RAC established a number of settlements including the Russian American capital, New Archangel (Novo-Arkhangel’sk), modern-day Sitka.

Northern sea otter (enhydra lutris kenyoni)▼ )

Russian over-dependence on the indigenous population
Food: the Russian colonists failed to establish self-sufficiency in food … a foul climate made for low or poor agricultural yields (not helped by the Russians’ inexperience in farming the local Tanana soil) and a lack of fresh food. This made them reliant on the local Indians for the acquisition of deer, fish, etc. The Russians also needed to trade with Hispanic California, the British in Canada and the United States for many of the foodstuffs they couldn’t grow in Alaska (wheat, barley, peas and beans, etc).
Labour shortage: the RAC labour force in Russian America was always well below requirements to make the colony thrive. Most Russian workers were not attracted to Russian America … too far from Russia, a particularly inhospitable, desolate climate, low pay, heavy work, sparse diet. The colony lacked essential infrastructure (no attendant medical doctor before the 1820s).
Unskilled providers of goods: RAC’ eye was on the prized sea otter trade (or “sea beavers” as they sometimes referred to them)✦, but the Russians themselves were not adept at pelagic hunting … the mustelid creatures proved especially elusive, without the superior hunting skills of the compliant Aleuts, RAC’s pelt haul (and therefore its profits) would have been vastly diminished.

Companionship and sex: the colony’s male to female ratio was heavily skewed in favour of men – at its nadir in 1819 there were 29 Russian men for every one Russian woman. An inevitable outcome of this was that many Russian men took indigenous mistresses, with the equally inevitable consequence of producing numerous Creole (or mestizo) offspring[6].

Tlingit resistance to Russian rule
The Russian colonists met with much stiffer resistance from the Tlingit or Kolosh Indians (southern Alaska) than it did from the eastern native tribes. The Tlingits were more war-like and equipped with firearms, and early on engaged in fierce warfare with the Russians. Unable to subjugate them like the Aleuts, the RAC resorted to an assimilation strategy, herding them in close to the reinforced New Archangel fort and engaging in barter with the Tlingit chiefs for fur skins and other, edible animals … RAC created a special ‘Kolosh’ market which allowed the Company to monopolise the trade in Alaska[7].

Eastern Siberian Governor-General Muruvyov on the RUB5,000 bank-note ▼

The Russian withdrawal from Alaska
Although RAC’s brief was to establish a network of settlements in Alaska and its chain of islands, it never managed to penetrate far into the Alaska landmass and so clearly failed to develop the territory as a whole. But this was not entirely down to the RAC and its leadership – as Oleh Gerus notes, had the Russian government taken “a more positive and imaginative approach to (the colony’s) potential”, it may be been a “viable enterprise'[8].

Deprived of adequate funding and support from Moscow, the RAC’s administrative and technological capacities were ultimately found wanting: the provisioning of the colony was way short of the mark, the Company was chronically unable to provide sufficient supplies for its personnel in Alaska … undernourished, understaffed and isolated in a raw, harsh climate, the men slowly drifted into apathy and alcoholism (at the best of times in Russia, not an atypically characteristic trait!)¤.

A trigger for the colony’s economic undoing was the over-farming of sea otters[9] – as had also occurred in Siberia. Diversification into coal-mining and other activities was tried but the lost economic return from otter pelts couldn’t be offset[10]. The Russian colony was also subject to fierce competition from American and British traders. By the 1860s RAC’s share value on the Russian Stock Exchange had plummeted and the quasi-government commercial venture was facing bankruptcy. The cost of transportation to and from the colony was an expensive burden for the Russian economy. Overall, from the 1820s, the colony’s expenses were rising at a much higher rate that its revenue[11].

Alaska Purchase

Thus, clear economic reasons for the ultimate unravelling of Russkaya Amerika can be identified, and the $7,200,000 in gold sale price would have eased some of the burden on Moscow’s treasury, but James Gibson downplays the economic factor in the cession of the territory by Russia. He concludes that Russia’s decision was prompted more by political and geo-strategic considerations. The reversals suffered by Russia in the Crimean War, Gibson argues, exposed the vulnerability of Russian America to naval attack by the Allies (GB and France). The inability to match the might of the British Navy in Pacific waters helped convince Moscow that Alaska was a liability and a threat to its security in the event of new conflicts. Gibson continues, Russia’s over-stretched navy was not only unable to defend its Pacific colony from enemy warships, but even from the incursions of ‘freewheeling’ Yankee traders who roamed around the North Pacific trafficking in various goods and products in disregard of Russian authority[12].

If Russian America was not viable as a base for Russian activities in the Pacific and eastern Asia, somewhere else needed to be found. The problem was solved by the Governor-General of Eastern Siberian Nikolay Muruvyov. Muruvyov’s plan was to refocus Russia’s Pacific Destiny on Asia – rather than North America. Whilst China was racked by internal strife (the Taiping Rebellion), Muruvyov took the opportunity to expand Russia’s imperial territory between the Amur and the Ussuri rivers. This waterway foothold gave Russia access to the Pacific at the Sea of Japan and led to the establishment in 1860 of the strategically important port of Vladivostok which became home to the Russian Pacific fleet[13].

RAC flag

PostScript: The Alaska Sale – why sell to the US and not Britain?
Britain already possessed a territory contiguous with Russian Alaska, British Columbia (including at that time the Yukon), so it made geographic sense for Britain to take over and control the northwestern chunk of the continent回. The Russian government’s decision was a political calculation, post-Crimea Britain was still very much Russia’s number one enemy, whereas with the US, if not exactly a friendly power, it had neutral relations. Moscow reasoned that with Alaska American, England’s British Columbia colony, ‘bookended’ by the US, would be under pressure. It was widely thought that given the US’s recent record of territorial aggression on its borders, it would be inevitable that British Columbia would eventually fall into its hands. The positive spin-off for Russian imperial and commercial aspirations in the Pacific would be Britain’s loss of its naval base on Vancouver Island[14].

╼╾╼╾╼╾╼╾╼╾╼╾╼╾╼╾╼╾╼╾╼╾╼╾╼╾╼╾╼╾╼╾╼╾
❈ much in demand domestically in the Empire as Russia’s northern cold climate necessitated rugging up most of the time
✦ also much in demand by the Russians as a commodity to trade was walrus ivory
¤ the perception of the typical Russian on the ground was that Russian America was more remote and desolate than even Siberia! (JR Gibson 4)
回 as it transpired Britain for its part expressed little interest in buying Alaska

[1] enlarging the American dominion in the name of republicanism (Secretary of State Seward’s aggrandising ambitions which included eyeing off British Columbia and thus strategically flanking British Canada on its west); expanding the US base of its international commerce to Japan and China; knowledge of potential gold deposits in the territory, etc, JR Gibson (1), ‘The Sale of Russian America to the United States’, (PDF, 1983), www.eprints.lib.hokudai.ac.jp
[2] As well as domestic consumption, furs were also important to Russia’s export market. At one point furs were used as a monetary unit in Siberia due to a shortage of roubles, S Crawford Isto, The Fur Farms of Alaska: Two Centuries of History and a Forgotten Stampede, (2012)
[3] punitive measures against the Indians included displays of the superior technology of their weaponry, holding of family members as hostages, wholesale destruction of villages, reducing the Aleuts and after them the Kodiak tribes to the status of serfs, RM Carpenter, “Times Are Altered with Us”: American Indians from the First Contact to the New Republic, (2015); the priests were very successful in converting Aleuts and other indigenous Indians, ‘Russian Orthodox’, www.alaskaweb.org
[4] JR Gibson (2), ‘Russian Dependance on the Natives of Alaska’, in SW Haycocks & M Childers Mangusso, An Alaskan Anthology: Interpreting the Past (2011)

[5] Owen Matthews, Glorious Misadventures: Nikolai Rezanov and the Dream of a Russian America (2013)]
[6] Gibson (2), loc.cit.
[7] although a smallpox epidemic in 1836 seriously weakened the Tlingits’ power, ibid; AV Grinev, The Tlingit Indians in Russian America, 1741-1867, (2005)
[8] OW Gerus, ‘The Russian Withdrawal from Alaska: The Decision to Sell’, Revista de Historia de América, Nos 75/76. (Jan-Dec 1973)
[9] the promyshlenniki also coveted the furs of other creatures (the largest quantities of animal skins exported by RAC came from sea otters, beavers, land otters, Polar foxes, fur seals and sables), but it was the sea otters that fetched the highest prices – the otter pelt market was highly prized in Canton, China, JR Gibson (3), ‘Russian America in 1833. The Survey of Kirill Khlebnikov’, Pacific Northwest Quarterly, 63(1), Jan 1972
[10] at its peak RAC was transporting one million roubles’ worth of furs back to Russia annually, ibid.
[11] JR Gibson (4), ‘Imperial Russia in Frontier America: The Changing Geography of Supply in Russian America, 1784-1867 (1976); Gibson (3), loc.cit.
[12] Gibson (1), op.cit.
[13] ibid.
[14] Britain countered this threat by forming the Canadian Confederation three months after the Purchase, and admitting British Columbia to it in 1871, RE Neunherz, ‘ “Hemmed In”. Reactions in British Columbia to the Purchase of Russian America’, Pacific Northwest Quarterly, 80(3), Jul 1989