Istoriia Russkoi Ameriki (1732-1867) (review)

Abstract

The Russian empire in the 19th century was exceptionally vast; in 1815 its territory stretched from Warsaw and Helsingfors (now Helsinki) in the West, to Alaska, the Aleutian Islands, and the northern part of California (Fort Ross and the territory adjoining it) in the East. In 1815-17 the Russian flag was even unfurled on one of the Hawaiian Islands - the island of Kauai. With the aim of buying provisions for Russian America, Georg A. Sheffer, a physician by profession and an emissary of the Russian American Company (henceforth RAC) was sent to Hawaii and even founded a trading post. Sheffer persistently sought an agreement from the Russian government for the official unification of the Hawaiian Islands to Russia. However, Alexander I categorically refused to take the Hawaiian leader Kaumualii under his protection. Nikolai Nikolaevich Bolkhovitinov, the main editor (otvetstvennyi redaktor) of the three volumes under review, finds explanations for this refusal in the conservative turn of Russian policy in the Pacific North, in adherence to the course of the Holy Alliance. He also notes an unwillingness to strain Russia's relations with the United States, which even at that time indicated its claims to Hawaii (2: 291-93). Istoriia Russkoi Ameriki describes this and other Russian efforts to include American lands in the composition of the Russian empire. It is the first major work to encompass the entire history of Russian America, and not just individual aspects of it, which have been elucidated in numerous works on the colonization of the Northwest part of the American continent. The three-volume work traces the dramatic events stretching from the beginning of colonization in 1638 to the sale of the holdings of the RAC to the United States in 1867.