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Full Description
This two-volume book is a documentary history of Russia's 19th-century settlement in California. It contains 492 documents (letters, reports, travel descriptions, censuses, ethnographic and geographical information), mostly translated from the Russian for the first time, very fully annotated, and with an extensive historical introduction, maps, and illustrations, many in colour. This broad range of primary sources provides a comprehensive and detailed history of the Russian Empire's most distant and most exotic outpost, one whose liquidation in 1841 presaged St Petersburg's abandonment of all of Russian America in 1867. Russia from the sixteenth century onwards had steadily expanded eastwards in search of profitable resources. This expansion was rapid, eased not only by the absence of foreign opposition and disunity of the native peoples but also by Siberia's river network and the North Pacific's convenient causeway of the Aleutian chain leading to Alaska. It was paid for largely by the 'soft gold' of Siberian sables and Pacific sea otters. By the end of the 1700s, however, on the Northwest Coast of North America the Russians met increasing opposition from the indigenous people (Tlingits) and foreign rivals (American and English fur-trading vessels).
Contents
Contentsto Spanish California, 1806-1812: Imperial Chamberlain Nikolay Rezanov, Governor Alexander Baranov, and Manager Ivan Kuskov. Part II The Formation of Russian California: The Ivan Kuskov Decade, 1812-21. Part III Russian California and Relations with Mexican California, 1822-1824: Governor Matvey Murav'yov, Agent Kirill Khlebnikov, and Manager Carl Schmidt. Volume II: Part IV Schemes for Bolstering, Expanding, and Delimiting Russian California, 1824-1825: Governor Matvey Murav'yov, the Decembrist Dmitry Zavalishin, and the Californios. Part V The Development of Russian California and Relations with Mexican California, 1825-1830: Governor Peter Chistyakov, Agent Kirill Khlebnikov, and Manager Paul Shelikhov. Part VI The Expansion of Russian California and Relations with Mexican California, 1830-1835: Governor Ferdinand Wrangell, Agent Kirill Khlebnikov, and Manager Peter Kostromitinov. Part VII. Attempts to Settle the Territorial Disagreement with Mexico over Russian California, 1833-1837: Governor Ferdinand Wrangell and the Russian and Mexican Governments. Part VIII The Final Efforts to Expand Russian California, 1836-1839: Governor Ivan Kupreyanov, Manager Peter Kostromitinov, and Agronomist Yegor Chernykh. Part IX The Sale of Ross Counter and the Problem of Payment, 1838-1860: Governors Ivan Kupreyanov, Arvid Etholen, and Michael Teben'kov, Managers Peter Kostromitinov and Alexander Rotchev, and Captain John Sutter. Addendum; Works consulted; Index.
