Russian America and Alaska Purchase

Russian America developed around the maritime fur trade and the Russian-American Company, chartered in 1799. New Archangel, later Sitka, became the principal colonial centre, linking Russian, Indigenous and international trading networks across the North Pacific.

The colony depended heavily on sea transport and on complicated relations with Tlingit, Aleut and other Indigenous communities. Russian authority remained thin outside key settlements, while British and American traders increasingly competed for access to the region’s resources and markets.

In 1867 the Russian Empire sold Alaska to the United States in an agreement negotiated for the United States by Secretary of State William H. Seward. Russian-held Alaska and the 1867 transfer form a distinct setting from later twentieth-century Alaska.