The Russian Colonization of Alaska

Throughout the eighteenth century, Russian mariners, traders, and navigators investigated what is known today as Alaska. By 1784, Russian fur trader Grigory Shelikhov began the first Russian settlement in Alaska on Kodiak Island, legitimizing Russian claims to discovered territories in the Pacific North. The Russian colonization of Alaska and the nearby Aleutian Islands involved the exploitation of Indigenous communities, overhunting and extermination of local species, and an overall extension of Imperial Russia’s colonization of Siberia toward the North American continent. The Russian tsarist government legitimized territorial claims through maps and settlement while their British rivals challenged these claims by means of cartography.

As early as the 1680s, Russian fur traders, known as promyshlenniki, began to occupy the Kamchatka Peninsula, located in the far eastern part of Russia. Kamchatka became a principal base for trade and exploration into the North Pacific.¹ On December 23, 1724, Peter I of Russia issued an organizational decree assigning Danish-born Captain Vitus Bering and Aleksei Chirikov (Tchirikov) to investigate the region to the north of Kamchatka where the Siberian continent converges with the North American landmass. The Russian Senate urged Bering to maintain peaceful relations with local populations to encourage their interest in Russian citizenship and secure regular tribute to Russian authority.² The senate sent German naturalist Georg Wilhelm Stellar and French astronomer Louis Delisle de la Croyere on the expedition to strengthen Russian claims to any newfound territory.³ Bering surmised that accessing North America would enable contact with California and Mexico to the east and Russia could benefit from the rich metals of the Spanish without war.⁴

Bering and Chirikov investigated the region, departing from Kamchatka in two expeditions. In June 1728, the first expedition led to the discovery of St. Lawrence Island and Ratmanov Island in what would soon be named the Bering Strait. The second expedition departed in June 1741. Following established European precedent, they successfully claimed some of the northwestern most portions of North America and the Aleutian Islands as Russian possessions.⁵ The expedition also revealed the abundance of furs on the islands, and it was not long before Siberian Cossacks and merchants gained an interest in the recently “discovered” region. By the early 1750s, a system of hunting on the islands formed with members of merchant companies holding shares of hunting assets.⁶ Russian promyshlenniki continued to open and hunt the Aleutian Islands, exterminating local species, such as the western Aleutian sea otter, and depopulating native Aleutians through labor exploitation, disease, and starvation.⁷

Throughout the 1740s and 1750s, while Russians occupied and hunted on the Aleutian Islands and Alaska, the British produced high volumes of maps of the North American continent to assert authority and lay territorial claims. In 1753, British cartographer Braddock Mead, alias John Green, published his Remarks, in Support of the New Chart of America in Six Sheets to accompany his New Chart of America. Green completed the New Chart of America in six separate sheets that displayed Russian, English, French, and Spanish discoveries in North America. Green argued his maps would benefit future navigation and critiqued inaccuracies in earlier French cartographic material. He explained that earlier mapmakers poorly depicted Russian discoveries to the north of the American continent.⁸ One of the six sheets that Green produced in 1753 was the Chart containing the coasts of California, New Albion, and Russian discoveries to the north. This map depicted the coast of California and the Pacific Northwest of America and included Chirikov and Bering’s Kamchatka expeditions.

In 1778, off the coast of the Fox Islands, Russian promyshlenniki on the Sv. Vladimir encountered two ships under the prominent British mariner James Cook. When news of the encounter reached the Russian crown, the tsarist government prioritized legitimization of Russian claims by directing the Admiralty Board and Academy of Sciences to compile maps of the region. These maps included inaccuracies and imprecise recordings of geographical landmarks and coordinates. As a result, Europe viewed the Russian maps negatively, and this effected their future land claims.⁹

Nearly four years later, the notorious Russian fur trader Grigory Shelikov organized the Northeast American Company with merchant Ivan Larianovich Golikov. The goals of the Northeast American Company included procuring sea otter furs on the Pacific Islands to trade with China and founding permanent settlements. In doing so, the company could further solidify Russian tsarist claims to the land. The company also strived to bring Indigenous populations under the imperial Russian crown. Shelikhov’s historical reputation is tainted today by his gross mistreatment of native populations on Kodiak.¹⁰

British explorer George Vancouver’s Pacific voyages encountered Russian populations in the Pacific Northwest. This heightened Shelikov’s desperation to permanently settle large expanses of Russian discoveries in the Aleutian Islands and the Alaskan coast. From April to June 1794, Vancouver navigated the waters near Alaska. In 1801, Vancouver published his journal, A Voyage of Discovery to the North Pacific, which reported the events of his voyage and referenced specific coordinates, geographical descriptors, and names of land masses to be used on the maps he later created of his journey. Vancouver’s voyage was published in maps such as Charte von der Nordwest Küste von Amerika von 29”54’ und 58”52’ Nördlicher Breite untersucht und bestimt in dem Sommermonathan 1792, 1793, u. 1794 von Capt. Georg Vancouver (Chart of the Northwest Coast of America from 29”54’ and 58”52’ North Latitude examined and determined in the summer months of 1792, 1793, and 1794 by Capt. George Vancouver), which visualized Vancouver’s journey along the Northwest Coast of America, referencing Russian discoveries and expedition routes. Vancouver acknowledged the success of Russia’s colonization efforts in the regions north of California, which acted as a border for Spanish imperialism.¹¹

In 1799, four years after Shelikhov died, the Russian government rewarded the Northeast Company with a charter as the Russian-American Company. With their new charter, the company acquired a twenty-year monopoly over fur trading as well as the authority to govern the Russian colonies located in the Aleutian Islands and Alaska.¹² By then, cartography had become a common tool for asserting territorial claims on the North American continent. Russia’s presence in Alaska throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries intimidated their British and Spanish rivals, yet permanent Russian settlement in the region always remained small. Following its defeat in the Crimean War (1853-1856), Russia began exploring the possibility of selling Alaska to the United States. In 1867, led by Secretary of State William Seward, the U.S. completed the purchase, and Alaska became the forty-ninth state in 1959.¹³

Bibliography

Green, John. Remarks, in Support of the New Chart of North and South America; In Six Sheets. London: T. Jeffreys, 1753.

Grinev, Andrej Valʹterovič, and Richard L. Bland. Russian Colonization of Alaska: Preconditions, Discovery, and Initial Development, 1741-1799. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2018.

“The Purchase of Alaska, 1867” Office of the Historian, U.S. Department of State.

Taylor, Alan. American Colonies: The Settling of North America. New York: Penguin, 2001.

Vancouver, George. A Voyage of Discovery to the North Pacific Ocean: And Round the World. London: J. Stockdale, 1801.