Furs and Empire: a Study of Russian-American Company Colonization in the North Pacific: 1799-1825

The fur trade played an important role in Tsarist Russia's external expansion in modern times. Fur traders, Cossacks, and the Russian government gradually came together in this process. Russian and American companies are a typical example of the combination of commercial power and state power. From 1799 to 1825, the Russian-American Company successively conducted exploration and colonization in Guangzhou, Sakhalin, and the Heilongjiang River Basin in China, Nagasaki and the Southern Kuril Islands in Japan, Alaska, the Aleutian Islands, Oregon, California, and the Hawaiian Islands, building a Russian fur empire in the North Pacific. However, with the changes in the international situation in the Americas and Pacific region, especially the intensification of the contradiction between Tsarist Russia's commercial interests and national strategy, the foreign exploration and colonization of Russian and American companies gradually came to an end. This book attempts to analyze the cooperation and conflicts between Russian and American companies and the fur trade and political strategies within the Tsarist Russian government, providing a new perspective for interpreting Tsarist Russia's colonial expansion in the North Pacific in modern times.