James R. Gibson offers a detailed study that is both an account of this chapter of Russian history and a full examination of the changing geography of the Okhotsk Seaboard and the Kamchatka Peninsula over the course of two centuries.
This work presents a trans-Siberian expedition to rediscover the peoples, cultures and riches of Russia's eastern frontiers. It addresses such questions as: who are the people of the region?; have they a distinct culture?; and does the area have a future as part of the Pacific Rim?
"The voyages of Cook and Vancouver heralded a vast influx of irrepressible white men.... They brought with them their morals, ideologies, knowledge, technology, plants and animals. They also brought diseases, rum and guns....powers to build and powers to destroy." Until the 1700's, the Northwest Coast of North America stood largely apart from the civilized world. Formidable mountain barriers and remoteness from Atlantic sea lanes kept the territory outside the orbit of emerging European empires. In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, however, Britain, Spain, France, Russsia, and the United States vied for control of this promising new frontier. Three of history's greatest mariners -- Sir Francis Drake, Captain James Cook, and Captain George Vancouver -- spearheaded British expeditions of discovery and trade to the Northwest coast. Despite competition from her European and American rivals, Britains ability to use and control the sea enabled her to establish by the late 1700's a "beachhead of empire" in the area now known as British Columbia.Gough shows how, by outmanoevring her Spanish rivals in a "skilful game of diplomatic chess," Britain concluded the Nootka Agreement. Thus she was able to exploit her trading partnership with the coast Indians and cement a lucrative sea-borne commerce with the Far East. The arrival overland of the Nor'westers and other fur-trading groups further strengthened Britain's financial and political interests in the area -- ending forever the isolation of Northwest America, and 'changing beyond measure the culture of its Indian peoples.' Distant Dominion is the first comprehensive survey to examine Britain's motives for expeditions to this most distant frontier of British maritime development. It is also the first to draw the history of the coast into the general realm of Pacific history, relating its development to events in Europe, the American eastern seaboard, Australia, the Falkland Islands, and China. This entertaining book offers fresh insight into an exciting chapter of North American history.
From the time of Cook, the British and their Canadian successors were drawn to the Northwest coast of North America by possibilities of trade in sea otter and the wish to find a 'northwest passage'. The studies collected here trace how, under the influences of the Royal Navy and British statecraft, the British came to dominate the area, with expeditions sent from London, Bombay and Macau, and the Canadian quest from overland. The North West Company came to control the trade of the Columbia River, despite American opposition, and British sloop diplomacy helped overcome Russian and Spanish resistance to British aspirations. Elsewhere in the Americas, the British promoted trans-Pacific trade with China, harvested British Columbia forests, conveyed specie from western Mexico, and established the South America naval station. The flag followed trade and vice versa; empire was both formal (at Vancouver Island) and informal (as in California or Mexico). This book features individuals such as James Cook, William Bolts, Peter Pond, and Sir Alexander Mackenzie. It is also an account of the pressure that corporations placed on the British state in shaping the emerging world of trade and colonization in that distant ocean and its shores, and of the importance of sea-power in the creation of modern Canada.
Bailey describes how the Sea of Okhotsk area became integrated into a world system of economic and cultural ties between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries. This happened primarily because of maritime explorations, travel, and trade, which led to increased connections with both Russia and Japan. Individual chapters of the book provide analyses of historical sources which describe cross-cultural encounters and changes in the Sea of Okhotsk area. This includes analyses of explorers and travelers who traversed the region for commerce, exploration, diplomacy, and possible colonization. Historical sources are explored from the different perspectives of Russians, Japanese, Indigenous peoples, and international observers from Western countries. Cross-cultural encounters in the region among these groups led to collaboration, syncretism, and resistance, sometimes violent and sometimes peaceful. The last chapter discusses how some international travelers and foreign residents of Hokkaidō described the area at the end of the nineteenth century. Their perspectives confirm that Hokkaidō had become a fully colonized space. An essential resource for students and scholars of cross-cultural studies, Russian history, Japanese history, and Ainu and Indigenous history.
The Russian Empire s American holding, Alaska, was governed by men who fought to bring trade as well as civilization and enlightenment to the colony. Many histories tell and retell that story, but there s another side. In 1829 the Russian-America Company decreed that women would be central to their civilizing mission. Any governor appointed after that date had to have a wife. Rabow-Edling s extraordinary scholarship (including primary research in English, Russian, Swedish, and German) sets the context for that RAC decision and explores the lives of three governor s wives: Elisabeth von Wrangell, Margaretha Etholen, and Anna Furuhjelm. Each woman left behind writing that reveals both personal and cultural struggles and insights while working to fulfill the mission that brought them to Novo-Archangel sk."
Using a wide range sources, this book explores the ways in which the Russians governed their empire in Siberia from 1598 to 1725. Paying particular attention to the role of the Siberian Cossaks, the author takes a thorough assessment of how the institutions of imperial government functioned in seventeenth century Russia. It raises important questions concerning the nature of the Russian autocracy in the early modern period, investigating the neglected relations of a vital part of the Empire with the metropolitan centre, and examines how the Russian authorities were able to control such a vast and distant frontier given the limited means at its disposal. It argues that despite this great physical distance, the representations of the Tsar’s rule in the symbols, texts and gestures that permeated Siberian institutions were close at hand, thus allowing the promotion of political stability and favourable terms of trade. Investigating the role of the Siberian Cossacks, the book explains how the institutions of empire facilitated their position as traders via the sharing of cultural practices, attitudes and expectations of behaviour across large distances among the members of organisations or personal networks.