Rossiisko-amerikanskaia kompaniia: Deiatel'nost' na otechestvennom i zarubezhnom rynkakh, 1799–1867 [The Russian American Company: Activity in the Home and Foreign Markets, 1799– 1867], and: Rossiia Dal'nego Vostoka: Imperskaia geografiia vlasti XIX–nachala XX vekov [Russia of the Far East: An Imperial Geography of Power from the 19th to the Early 20th Century] (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Rossiisko-amerikanskaia kompaniia: Deiatel'nost' na otechestvennom i zarubezhnom rynkakh, 1799–1867 [The Russian American Company: Activity in the Home and Foreign Markets, 1799– 1867], and: Rossiia Dal'nego Vostoka: Imperskaia geografiia vlasti XIX–nachala XX vekov [Russia of the Far East: An Imperial Geography of Power from the 19th to the Early 20th Century] Ilya Vinkovetsky Aleksandr Iur'evich Petrov , Rossiisko-amerikanskaia kompaniia: Deiatel'nost' na otechestvennom i zarubezhnom rynkakh, 1799–1867 [The Russian American Company: Activity in the Home and Foreign Markets, 1799–1867]. 315 pp. Moscow: IVI RAN, 2006. ISBN 5940671535. Anatolii Viktorovich Remnev , Rossiia Dal'nego Vostoka: Imperskaia geografiia vlasti XIX–nachala XX vekov [Russia of the Far East: An Imperial Geography of Power from the 19th to the Early 20th Century]. 552 pp. Omsk: Izdatel'stvo Omskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta, 2004. ISBN 5777904297. The two books under review here explore the history of Russia's Pacific Rim. The two authors, Aleksandr Petrov and Anatolii Remnev, are both historians who have come of age as scholars in post-Soviet Russia. Each has an eminent mentor (Nikolai Bolkhovitinov in Petrov's case; Boris Anan'ich in Remnev's) but also an original turn of mind and an independent record of accomplishment. Each has a foot in Russia's scholarly tradition but also opportunities to engage in international debates. Despite these commonalities, their approaches are very different. In Rossiisko-amerikanskaia kompaniia: Deiatel'nost' na otechestvennom i zarubezhnom rynkakh, Petrov has produced a financial history of the Russian-American Company (aka the Company or the RAC) from its origin to its liquidation (1799–1867). In its detailed examination of the Company's balance sheets and business interactions within Russia and with the RAC's British, American, Spanish (later Mexican), and Chinese trading partners, this book is unparalleled.1 The author rightly points out that issues of finance play background roles at best in other studies of Russian America (10–11); in Petrov's book, they finally take center stage. Considering that the RAC was indeed a commercial (or at least a semi-commercial) venture dedicated to turning a profit, this book fills an important niche. Moreover, as the [End Page 463] Company held a unique place in the history of Russian business, the story of its financial accounts will be of interest to specialists in several fields. Petrov's source base is impressive in its depth. He has examined a trove of Company-produced literature, government reports, and a selection of the business and popular press. On top of the usual rounds of major St. Petersburg and Moscow archives, his work also draws on original archival research in Irkutsk, Vologda, Velikii Ustiug, Perm', and Arkhangel'sk. Outside of Russia, Petrov has done archival work in Ukraine, Estonia, and the United States. Petrov introduces fresh sources into circulation—lists of Company shareholders perhaps most significant among them (126–27). These lists, which will be essential to any scholar researching the Company's economic and political networks, are situated among the charts that he has put together in an appendix filling pages 276–315. Drawing on those lists, Petrov is able to convey the power of family connections within the RAC. His demonstration of the persistence (for a time) of the influence and power of the "Shelikhov clan" (133–39) is one of the important findings of the book.2 Among the other valuable data contained in the appendix: details on the fluctuation in the price of Company shares; an inventory of the Company's financial assets; selected data on the Company's yearly profits; estimates of the numbers of furs exported from Russian America. All these data, along with Petrov's analysis, give us a clearer picture of what the Russian-American Company was and how it operated. On the strength of its value as an empirical source base (as well as the Company's financial history), this book will surely maintain its place as an important reference work for years to come. One of the accomplishments of Petrov's book, as it traces the history of the Company's assets and debits, is to demonstrate the Company's relative financial well-being in the years prior to its...