What Was the Russian-American Company?
The Russian-American Company was a state-chartered trading company that governed Russia’s North American colonies from 1799 to 1867. The Company held a monopoly on the fur trade in Russian America, administered the Russian settlements in the Pacific, and effectively ruled a colonial territory the size of Western Europe. The Company was chartered by Tsar Paul I on 8 July 1799, was reorganised by Nicholas I in 1821, and was dissolved on the sale of Alaska to the United States in 1867. The Company’s territory at its maximum extent included the Alaskan mainland, the Aleutian Islands, the Alexander Archipelago, the Pribilof Islands, and posts on the Pacific coast as far south as Fort Ross in northern California (see Tikhmenev, A History of the Russian-American Company, 1978).
The predecessors
The Russian presence in the North Pacific was the work of two generations of Russian explorers and fur traders. The Second Kamchatka Expedition of 1733-1743, led by Vitus Bering and Alexei Chirikov, was the first to chart the Alaskan coast. The fur traders who followed Bering established a chain of posts in the Aleutian Islands and on the Alaskan mainland, and the largest of these, the post at Kodiak, was the centre of the fur trade from 1792. The Russian state did not directly administer these posts, and the principal organisers were the merchant houses of Irkutsk, particularly the Golikov-Shelikhov Company (founded 1783) (Bolkhovitinov, The Beginnings of Russian-American Relations, 1975).
The 1799 charter
The Russian-American Company was chartered by Tsar Paul I in 1799. The charter was modelled on the Dutch and English East India companies: it gave the Company a 20-year monopoly on the fur trade in Russian America, the right to govern the Russian settlements in the Pacific, the right to maintain a private army and a private fleet, the right to negotiate with foreign governments, and the right to explore new territories. The Company’s headquarters was at New Archangel (now Sitka) on Baranof Island, the principal Russian settlement in the Pacific.
The first administrator of the Company was Alexander Baranov, who had been the principal Russian trader in the region since 1790. Baranov ruled the Russian settlements from 1790 to 1818, and his correspondence with the Russian government was the principal source of information about the North American colony. The 1804 Battle of Sitka, in which Baranov’s forces defeated the Tlingit and established Russian control over the Sitka area, was a turning point in the colony’s history (Tikhmenev, 1978).
The 1821 charter
The Company’s 1799 charter was due to expire in 1819. The Russian government, recognising the strategic and economic value of the North American colony, reorganised the Company in 1821 under a new charter. The new charter extended the Company’s monopoly for a further 20 years, gave the Company the right to govern the Russian settlements in the Pacific, and gave the Russian government the right to appoint a Russian Imperial Navy officer as the Company’s “chief commander.” Ferdinand von Wrangel, the former chief of the Russian Naval Hydrographic Service, was the first chief commander. The 1821 charter was renewed in 1841, in 1852, and in 1858; the Company remained in existence until 1867 (Dmytryshyn, Russian-American Relations and the Sale of Alaska, 1986).
The Russian presence in California
The Russian-American Company was also active on the coast of California, where it established a series of settlements in the early nineteenth century. The most important of these was Fort Ross, established in 1812 about 90 miles north of San Francisco. The Fort Ross settlement, which had a population of about 200 in 1840, was designed to provide food for the Russian settlements in Alaska and to serve as a base for the Russian Pacific trade. The Company also had interests in the Hawaiian Islands, and it traded with the Spanish colonies in California and Mexico.
The Russian presence in California was limited. The Russian government, which was interested in the Russian Pacific colonies, did not see California as a useful acquisition, and the Company’s California operations were never profitable. The Company sold Fort Ross in 1841 to John Sutter, a Swiss-born Mexican citizen, and the Russian presence in California came to an end. The Russian settlements in California were a relatively minor part of the Company’s activities, but they were an important part of the broader Russian presence in the Pacific (Bancroft, History of Alaska, 1886).
The decline and the sale of Alaska
The Russian-American Company was never profitable. The fur trade, which was the principal source of revenue, was declining: the sea otter population, which had been the basis of the trade, was being depleted by the 1830s, and the fur seal population of the Pribilof Islands, the other principal source, was also being depleted. The Company required regular subsidies from the Russian government, and the Russian government, by the late 1850s, was looking for an opportunity to divest itself of the Russian American colonies. The financial crisis of the Crimean War, the British threat to Russian interests in the Pacific, and the need for money to fund the reforms of Alexander II all contributed to the decision to sell.
The Russian-American Company was, in the end, sold to the United States as part of the Alaska Purchase. The treaty was negotiated by the Russian diplomat Eduard de Stoeckl and the American Secretary of State William Seward, and was signed on 30 March 1867. The purchase price was $7.2 million, or about 11 million rubles; the actual transfer of the territory was on 18 October 1867, when the Russian flag was lowered in New Archangel and the American flag was raised. The Company’s assets were transferred to the United States, and the Russian-American Company as an institution ceased to exist (Dmytryshyn, 1986).
The legacy
The Russian-American Company left a permanent mark on the North Pacific. The Russian Orthodox Church, which had been established in the colony in 1794, has continued to function in Alaska, and the Orthodox parishes at Sitka, Kodiak, and other former Russian settlements remain a living Russian heritage. The Russian language, which had been the principal language of the colony, has been preserved in some of the place names and in the Orthodox liturgical tradition. The Company’s activities also produced the first substantial Russian literature about North America, including the writings of Rezanov, Baranov, and Wrangel.
The Russian-American Company was, in addition, an early example of a state-chartered trading company. The Company was, in many respects, a Russian counterpart to the English East India Company and the Dutch East India Company, and it was the only such company to be chartered in Russian history. The Company’s history has, accordingly, been the subject of both Russian and American historiography, and it remains a touchstone of the history of European overseas expansion (Grinev, The Russian-American Company and the Imperial Design, 2011).