Fort Ross

In researching for another post to be published shortly, I came across information on Fort Ross, the Russian settlement founded in California in 1814. This is interesting enough that it deserves its own post.

It is hard to fully appreciate how far Russian imperial power in the 19th truly spread without looking at Fort Ross. When newly independent America was fighting for the swamps of Florida and Mexico was still a colony of Spain, the Russian Empire was diligently exploiting the North American west for fur-trading and supplying the Alaska colony with sufficient food resources. That Russia had a north American outpost as early 1814 makes the worry-warts of the Victorian Age (i.e. Younghusband and Curzon!) seem even more rational in their fears that the Tsar was expanding its sphere of influence and control over Central Asia, Japan or Tibet, all places much closer to the Russian motherland.

Fort Ross owes its existed to the Russian-American Company, chartered by Tsar Paul I in 1799, and which granted the company a monopoly over trade in Russian America. At the end of the 18th century that already included the Aleutian Islands, Alaska, and the territory down to 55° N latitude, later expanded to the 51° N latitude.

Fort Ross, which operated from 1814-1841 on the California coast just north of today’s San Francisco, was the southernmost outpost of Russian America. It was the site of California’s first windmillsm, first shipbuilding ports, the first scientific records of California’s cultural and natural history, and the first manufacture of glass windows. Like 19th century Russia Proper, the population was diverse and included not just Russians, but also Poles, North Pacific Natives and Aleut laborers, including Kashaya and Creoles. Its mandate was to provide sufficient food supplies to the Russian colony in Alaska.

As agricultural production in the Fort Ross region declined, a formal trade agreement was signed between the Russian-American Company and the Hudson Bay Company at Fort Vancouver under which British Columbia would provide food to Alaska. And as the fur-trade also dropped as the animal populations surrounding Fort Ross declined, the Russian-American Company thereafter abandoned the settlement, and it was sold to John Sutter, a Californian entrepreneur of German-Swiss-French origin. It was passed on to the state of California as early as 1906 for preservation and restoration as a historic monument. Colonial buildings, some reconstructed after earthquakes, a large orchard, and original roads remain at the location which is today an open air museum.

I have often heard people try and imagine how different the Cold War would have been if Russia had kept Alaska, with its strategic importance and vast reserves of oil and other natural resources. Equally, we can only imagine how North American history would be different if Fort Ross had survived as an independent Russia trading outpost ala Hong Kong or Macau in China.