1804 painting: Harbour of St Paul on the Island of Cadiack, Russian sloop-of-war Neva.
It turns out that Antarctica was discovered due to the need to supply the Arctic.
By the middle of the 18th century, the route from Kamchatka to Alaska through the Aleutian Islands was well explored. Alaska then remained the last little-developed and almost unpopulated region of the Earth (with the exception of the polar deserts in the Arctic and Antarctic, of course). The Spanish were approaching Alaska from the south, the British and Americans from the east, and Russian explorers from the west.
The 1773 map of Alaska. The map was created by the Russian Academy of Sciences based on reports from persons who had participated in the Russian voyages of discovery.
In those years, the profitable trade of sea otters (Enhydra lutris) was actively developing. Sea otters have almost no subcutaneous fat, like other marine mammals. Instead of fat, they retain heat and buoyancy in sea water due to their unique waterproof fur with a very high density of villi.
Sea otter pelts (from which, by the way, the wealthy Eugene Onegin’s collar was made) were expensive and especially highly valued in China. Sea otter hunting became the reason for the Russian colonisation of Alaska and, in general, the entire northern coast of the Pacific Ocean from the mouth of the Amur to Kamchatka and from Alaska to California.
Sea ottter, one of the primary aims of Russian hunt in Alaska.
The Russian-American Company, created following the example of the Dutch East India Company, the British East India Company and the Hudson’s Bay Company, was one of the most expensive commercial companies in the world in the early 19th century, which happened only once in the history of Russia. It is no coincidence that the name Slavorossiya with the capital in the city of Slavorossiysk, which was eventually called Novorossiysk, was considered for Russian America. Alaska’s Novorossiysk existed for only 10 years and was destroyed by the Indians.
The development of Russian America was associated with great difficulties, primarily with the supply and export of prepared pelts. It was for these purpouses that the Russian-American Company began organising and sponsoring Russian round-the-world expeditions in the mid-18th century. Half of the first Russian circumnavigations, including the very first one in 1803–1806 under the command of Kruzenshtern and Lisyansky, were essentially the ‘Northern Delivery’ of the Russian-American Company back in the days.
The direct consequences of this activity were not only maritime trade with China, but also the consolidation of the Russian Empire on the Kuril Islands in the first half of the 19th century, attempts to establish trade relations with Japan in 1805, the discovery of numerous islands in the Pacific Ocean, and an attempt to establish a Russian protectorate over the Hawaiian Islands in 1816-1817.
Commerce gave impetus to geopolitics, the discovery of new territories and sea routes became an important task for the Russian Empire, and in the next circumnavigation of the globe by Bellingshausen and Lazarev in 1820, a new continent, Antarctica, was discovered. In the mid-19th century, the activities of the Russian-American Company began to gradually fade away due to the depletion of the sea otter population. The decisive factor in the sale of Alaska was the discovery of gold deposits on its territory and the subsequent influx of prospectors from the United States, which was impossible to control. Alaska was eventually sold for 7,200,000 USD in 1867.
AUTHORAlexander Osadchiev
Ocean Around Us
Leading Researcher, Shirshov Institute of Oceanology
Head of Arctic Oceanography Laboratory, Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology