Creating a Creole Estate in early nineteenth-century Russian America

Abstract

AbstractIn Russian America, creoles were the offspring of Russian men and Native women. This article argues that the creation of a creole estate in the early nineteenth century by the Russian-American Company (RAC) and the Russian government had two main goals: to create a non-taxable estate that would serve the RAC rather than the state and to spread the Russian way of life. Rather than envisioning Russian workers for the RAC as culture bearers, the RAC and the state expected creoles to bring together experience of local conditions with knowledge of Russian traditions, culture and language, which was fostered by the expectation that all creoles would be educated by the company. Using a wide variety of archival sources from the 1810s and 1820s, the article examines the origin of the creole estate as an attempt to create a new orderly, monogamous, and productive Russian civilization in the New World.