Trump-Putin summit: Why Russia sold Alaska to the US in 1867

United States President Donald Trump is set to meet Russia’s Vladimir Putin in Alaska on Friday (August 15). In a gaffe earlier this week, the American leader said on television that the high-stakes summit between him and Putin will be “in Russia”.

He would have been right if only it were over a century and a half back, when the Russian empire held Alaska. Russia sold the territory to the US in 1867.

But why? We will explain.

Russia seizes Alaska

In the mid-18th century, Siberian merchants and adventurers crossed the Bering Sea to arrive in Alaska for sea otter pelts. The fur traders set up hubs in Sitka, formerly known as New Archangel, and on Kodiak Island.

A merchant called Alexander Baranov strengthened Russia’s hold on the region in the late 18th century. He expanded settlements and brutally suppressed resistance, including from the native Tlingit, who gave him the nickname “No Heart”, as per The Guardian.

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Later, Russian Orthodox priests reached Alaska, establishing missions and churches. Missionaries baptised an estimated 18,000 Alaska Natives, reported Associated Press (AP).

Russian settlers forced Alaska Natives to harvest sea otters and other marine mammals for their pelts, Ian Hartman, a University of Alaska Anchorage history professor, told the American news agency.

“It was a relationship that the Russians made clear quite early on was not really about kind of a longer-term pattern of settlement, but it was much more about a short-term pattern of extraction,” Hartman said.

The Russian population in Alaska was less than 400 permanent settlers, as per the Office of the Historian of the US State Department.

Why Russia sold Alaska to the US

Alaska became an expensive outpost for the Russian empire by the mid-19th century, which it could no longer afford. By 1867, the otters had been hunted nearly to extinction, taking a toll on the profitability of the colony.

Russia’s defeat in the Crimean War to Britain, France, and Turkey had left it broke. The Russian tsar did not want to negotiate with Great Britain or for Alaska to be taken over by an enemy.

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Amid its changing economic prospects and geopolitical concerns, Russia decided to sell its colony. It then sought the only other potential buyer, the United States. They came together by a mutual hostility toward Great Britain and similar stances on most foreign policy issues, according to a Library of Congress article.

Russia first made the offer to sell Alaska, then called Russian America, in 1859. However, the sale was delayed by the American Civil War, as per the US state department website.

The US was interested in buying Alaska as it was looking to expand. In the 1840s, it took Oregon, Texas and California as its own territory.

The Americans finally bought the Russian territory in 1867 for $7.2 million.

What Russia-US thought of the deal

In St Petersburg, the deal was criticised by some, who believed the price for the colony was insultingly low.

The liberal paper Golos described the cheap sale as “deeply angering all true Russians”.

“Is the nation’s sense of pride truly so unworthy of attention that it can be sacrificed for a mere six or seven million dollar[s],” the paper wrote.

In a letter to a friend in July 1867, Eduard de Stoeckl, the Russian envoy in Washington and chief negotiator of the sale, acknowledged: “My treaty has met with strong opposition … but this stems from the fact that no one at home has any idea of the true condition of our colonies. It was simply a matter of selling them, or watching them being taken from.”

The purchase of Alaska was viewed as ‘Seward’s Folly’ in the US. American Secretary of State, William H Seward, who negotiated the treaty, was mocked for spending the sum on a frozen wilderness.

The New-York Daily Tribune dismissed the purchase as “the nominal possession of impassable deserts of snow”.

“We may make a treaty with Russia, but we cannot make a treaty with the North Wind or the Snow King,” its editorial read.

The US saw Alaska’s worth in the late 1890s. Gold was discovered in the territory in 1896. Alaska became a state in 1959. In the 1950s and ’60s, large oil reserves were found there. With this, it became one of US’s most resource-rich territories.

Upset with the cheap sale, some fringe nationalists in Russia still call for reclaiming Alaska.

With inputs from agencies