Alaska

 

Alaska

Alaskan sunset

Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons

Why did Russia sell Alaska?

Russia discovered Alaska in the first half of the eighteenth century, claiming the coast for the Russian Empire in 1741. The first settlement was made on Kodiak Island in 1784, but it didn’t become a formal colony for another fifteen years.

Few Russians settled in Alaska, finding it inhospitable. Primarily, they traded in sea otter skins, which were popular with the Chinese, because of their fine, soft quality. Sea otters had been hunted almost to extinction by the first half of the nineteenth century.

Whaling and fishing were secondary pursuits, with a trade in ivory from walrus tusks. Timber and ice were plentiful and were sometimes supplied to Russia and, on occasion, to California.

In 1867, impoverished by its three-year war (1853-1856) and eventual defeat in the Crimea, Russia desperately needed money to return the country to some stability.

The US Secretary of State, William Seward, agreed to buy Alaska from the Russian Empire for $7.2 million. It was thought at the time to be an expensive, foolish purchase, and was denigrated as ‘Seward’s Folly’ and ‘Seward’s Icebox.’ The procurement added more than 586,000 square miles to the US, but no-one thought the remote territory a worthwhile economic purchase. There is historical disagreement over that opinion.

However, almost thirty years later, in 1896, gold was discovered. That precipitated the Klondike Gold Rush, which, followed by the discovery of oil, ensured that the acquisition of Alaska came to be celebrated.                                                             

Would Russia attempt to ‘reclaim’ Alaska one day?