Our Arctic province

by Henry Wood Elliott

The management of this great organization was vested in an administrative council, composed of its stockholders in St. Petersburg, with a head general office at Irkutsk, Siberia—a chief manager, who was to reside in Alaska, and was styled “The Governor,” and whose selection was ordered from the officers of the Imperial navy not lower in rank than post-captain. That high official and Alaskan autocrat had an assistant, also a naval officer, and each received pay from the Russian Company, in addition to their regular governmental salaries, which were continued to them by the Crown.

In cases of mutiny or revolt the powers of the governor were absolute. He had also the fullest jurisdiction at all times over offenders and criminals, with the nominal exception of capital crimes. Such culprits were supposed to have a preliminary trial, then were to be forwarded to the nearest court of justice in Siberia. Something usually “happened” to save them the tedious journey, however. The Russian servants of the company—its numerous retinue of post-traders, factors, and traders, and laborers of every class around the posts—were engaged for a certain term of years, duly indentured. When the time expired the company was bound to furnish them free transportation back to their homes, unless the unfortunate individuals were indebted to it; then they could be retained by the employer until the debt was paid. It is needless to state in this connection that an incredibly small number of Russians were ever homeward bound from Alaska during these long years of Muscovitic control and operation. This provision of debtor vs. creditor was one which enabled the creditor company to retain in its service any and all men among the humbler classes whose services were desirable, because the scanty remuneration, the wretched pittance in lieu of wages, allowed them, made it a matter of utter impossibility to keep out of debt to the company’s store. Even among the higher officials it is surprising to scan the long list of those who, after serving one period of seven years after another, never seemed to succeed in clearing themselves from the iron grasp of indebtedness to the great corporation which employed them.

As long as the Russian Company maintained a military or naval force in the Alaskan territory, at its own expense, these forces were entirely at the disposal of its governor, who passed most of his time in elegant leisure at Sitka, where the finest which the markets and the vineyards of the world afforded were regularly drawn upon to supply his table. No set of men ever lived in more epicurean comfort and abundance than did those courtly chief magistrates of Alaska who succeeded the plain Baranov in 1818, and who established and maintained the vice-regal comfort of their physical existence uninterruptedly until it was surrendered, with the cession of their calling, in 1867.

The charter of the Russian American Company was first granted for a period of twenty years, dating at the outset from January 1, 1799. It also had the right to hoist its own colors, to employ naval officers to command its vessels, and to subscribe itself, in its proclamation or petition, “Under the highest protection of his Imperial Majesty, the Russian American Company.” It began at once to attract much attention in Russia, especially among moneyed men in St. Petersburg and Moscow. Nobles and high officials of the Government eagerly sought shares of its stock, and even the Emperor and members of his family invested in them, the latter making their advances in this direction under the pretext of donating their portions to schools and to charitable institutions. It was the first enterprise of the kind which had ever originated in the Russian Empire, and, favored in this manner by the Crown, it rose rapidly into public confidence. A future of the most glowing prosperity and stability was prophesied for it by its supporters—a prosperity and power as great as ever that of the British East India Company—while many indulged dreams of Japanese annexation and portions of China, together with the whole American coast, including California.

But that clause in the charter of the company, which ordered that the chief manager of its affairs in Alaska should be selected from the officers of the Imperial navy, had a most unfortunate effect upon the successful conduct of the business, as it was prosecuted throughout Russian America. After Baranov’s suspension and departure, in the autumn of 1818, not a single practical merchant or business man succeeded him. The rigid personal scrutiny and keen trading instinct which were so characteristic of him, were followed immediately by the very reverse; hence the dividends began to diminish every year, while the official writing, on the other hand, became suddenly more voluminous, graphic, and declared a steady increase of prosperity. Each succeeding chief manager, or governor, vied with the reports of his predecessors in making a record of great display in the line of continued explorations, erection of buildings, construction of ships of all sizes, and the establishment of divers new industries and manufactories, agriculture, etc.

The second term of the Russian American Company’s charter expired in 1841, and the directors and shareholders labored most industriously for another renewal; the Crown took much time in consideration, but in 1844 the new grant was confirmed, and rather increased the rights and privileges of the company, if anything; still matters did not mend financially, the affairs of the large corporation were continued in the same reckless management by one governor after the other—with the same extravagant vice-regal display and costly living—with useless and abortive experiments in agriculture, in mining and in ship-building, so that by the approach of the lapsing of the third term of twenty years’ control, in 1864, the company was deeply in debt, and though desirous of continuing the business, it now endeavored to transfer the cost of maintaining its authority in Alaska to the home Government; to this the Imperial Cabinet was both unwilling and unable to accede, for Russia had just emerged from a disastrous and expensive war, and was in no state of mind to incur a single extra ruble of indebtedness which she could avoid. In the meantime, pending these domestic difficulties between the Crown and the company, the charter expired; the Government refused to renew it, and sought, by sending out commissioners to Sitka, for a solution of the vexed problem.

Now, if the reader will mark it, right at this time and at this juncture, arose the opportunity which was quickly used by Seward, as Secretary of State, to the ultimate and speedy acquisition of Russian America by the American Union. Those difficulties which the situation revealed in respect to the affairs of the Russian Company conflicting with the desire of the Imperial Government, made much stir in all interested financial circles. A small number of San Francisco capitalists had been for many years passive stockholders in what was termed by courtesy the American Russian Ice Company—it being nothing more than a name really, inasmuch as very little ever was or has been done in the way of shipping ice to California from Alaska. Nevertheless these gentlemen quickly conceived the idea of taking the charter of the Russian Company themselves, and offered a sum far in excess of what had accrued to the Imperial treasury at any time during the last forty years’ tenure of the old contract. The negotiations were briskly proceeding, and were in a fair way to a successful ending, when it informally became known to Secretary Seward, who at once had his interest excited in the subject, and speedily arrived at the conclusion that if it was worth paying $5,000,000 by a handful of American merchants for a twenty years’ lease of Alaska, it was well worthy the cost of buying it out and out in behalf of the United States; inasmuch as leasing it, as the Russians intended to, was a virtual surrender of it absolutely for the period named. In this spirit the politic Seward approached the Russian Government, and the final consummation of Alaska’s purchase was easily effected,[5] May, 1867, and formally transferred to our flag on the 18th of October following.

If the Russian Government had not been in an exceedingly friendly state of mind with regard to the American Union, this somewhat abrupt determination on its part to make such a virtual gift of its vast Alaskan domain would never have been thought of in St. Petersburg for a moment. Still, it should be well understood from the Muscovitic view, that in presenting Russian America to us, no loss to the glory or the power of the Czar’s Crown resulted; no surrender of smiling hamlets, towns or cities, no mines or mining, no fish or fishing, no mills, factories or commerce—nothing but her good will and title to a few thousand poor and simple natives, and a large wilderness of mountain, tundra-moor and island-archipelago wholly untouched, unreclaimed by the hand of civilized man. Russia then, as now, suffered and still suffers, from an embarrassment of just such natural wealth as that which we so hopefully claim as our own Alaska.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Bering’s Island—he was wrecked on the east coast, at a point under steep bluffs now known as “Kommandor.” Scarcely a vestige of this shipwreck now remains there.