Is it possible to have not only Alaska, but also Oregon and California, be settled and/or conquered by Russia?
Russian California?
- Thread starter Alternate History Geek
- Start date
If by some chance Spain doesn't drive them out and they manage to settle the land in any serious numbers, they will have to contend with the USA. Going on actual history, the US was cleary willing to start wars over territory in its early years and people were calling for an invasion of Canada over the Pacific Northwest. With a remote and most likely weakly defended outpost in the way of the pacific, it would be impossible to resist. Various justifications could be made, from preventing British encroachment to plain old manifest destiny. Russia would lose their territory and the US could have a region with a distinctly Russian character.
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Its most likely fate is something similar to Texas's, especially if gold is discovered. There's no way the Russians will be able to pump settlers in at the same rate the US can, and eventually these US settlers will demand independence/annexation to the US.
To get this, you'd have to somehow speed up the Russian conquest and settlement of Siberia. Alaska, and any Russian colonies in California, were mostly supplied from the Russian Pacific, IIRC, across the Pacific Ocean, which is in turn thousands of miles overland away from the main centers of the Russian state. If the Pacific is conquered earlier, then the Russians have more time to expand their presence in North America until the Spanish can't dislodge them. Assuming that this doesn't butterfly away the US, the Russians are still likely to lose it once the Americans begin moving west in serious numbers. A gold rush would probably acelerate this process, as far more Americans are going to go to California than Russians.
To get this, you'd have to somehow speed up the Russian conquest and settlement of Siberia. Alaska, and any Russian colonies in California, were mostly supplied from the Russian Pacific, IIRC, across the Pacific Ocean, which is in turn thousands of miles overland away from the main centers of the Russian state. If the Pacific is conquered earlier, then the Russians have more time to expand their presence in North America until the Spanish can't dislodge them. Assuming that this doesn't butterfly away the US, the Russians are still likely to lose it once the Americans begin moving west in serious numbers. A gold rush would probably acelerate this process, as far more Americans are going to go to California than Russians.
Russia in the 17-1800's has little to no real infrastructure in its Siberian territories. Without railways stretching across its Asian territories to the Pacific, the Russians would have a very hard task in transporting so many troops and supplies to their Pacific ports. The most practical assembly and mobilization regions would in Europe, either from their Baltic or Black Sea ports, but even then, the Russians would have many long months to ship their armies all the south through the Atlantic, past Cape Horn, and weeks voyaging up the Pacific coasts of South and North America. Even if Russia can claim and settle California, there is no way they could properly defend it from the Americans or Mexicans if they wanted to.
The Russians in the 1800s don't need large amounts of troops to defend from Mexico, they simply need to bring a couple of warships and do whatever the hell they want in the area. Mexico has no answer to that. I think people don't realise how provincial, poor and disorganised Mexico's northern provinces were.
Defending against American settlers is a completely, completely different matter.
Finally in terms of why Russian California (North of the Bay) happened and how it could stick around: it was meant to be a source of food for Alaska, which was meant to slowly transition from furs to mining and otherwise diversify.
The Mexicans responded with building more presidia, and then only mostly after the Russians showed no great energy at expanding. The Mexicans aren't the problem here.
What you need is, in some ideal world:
1. No contract for food with HBC at Fort Langley. This made Californian settlement unnecessary.
2. Russian government authorising the sale of peasants for Californian settlement; they historically blocked attempts at relocating serf populations.
3. Russian government willing to keep a frigate+ on station somewhere in the Bay.
They never did that, really, but they did the equally expensive continuous-visits-of-Sitka-by-warships instead. Sitka however was known to sort of make money, California was a loss maker.
In the end though, I don't think it matters. USA can pull a Texas almost anywhere, and American borderline-pirates/entrepreneurs have so many ships in the area no colony can comfortably grow. Especially once the Gold Rush starts in both colonies.
Defending against American settlers is a completely, completely different matter.
Finally in terms of why Russian California (North of the Bay) happened and how it could stick around: it was meant to be a source of food for Alaska, which was meant to slowly transition from furs to mining and otherwise diversify.
The Mexicans responded with building more presidia, and then only mostly after the Russians showed no great energy at expanding. The Mexicans aren't the problem here.
What you need is, in some ideal world:
1. No contract for food with HBC at Fort Langley. This made Californian settlement unnecessary.
2. Russian government authorising the sale of peasants for Californian settlement; they historically blocked attempts at relocating serf populations.
3. Russian government willing to keep a frigate+ on station somewhere in the Bay.
They never did that, really, but they did the equally expensive continuous-visits-of-Sitka-by-warships instead. Sitka however was known to sort of make money, California was a loss maker.
In the end though, I don't think it matters. USA can pull a Texas almost anywhere, and American borderline-pirates/entrepreneurs have so many ships in the area no colony can comfortably grow. Especially once the Gold Rush starts in both colonies.
Alaska was not settled by Russia, their was a very small settler population living in a single place, but Alaska was'nt settled until it became American Territory.
You'd need to have a way for Russia to get settlers to California, and since Siberia is not a reliable option, they would have to risk going through unfriendly Japanese territory and sail across the Pacific to get there, where they'll just have to compete with the Americans, the British and the Spanish/Mexicans
There were several forts in key locations; total Russian population excluding visiting ships was about 800, most of whom were RAC employees. If you count native converts/creole population, it's in the low thousands.
Alaska had completely different growth patterns from Siberia for several reasons:
1. Many of Siberian settlers were farmers, almost no RAC employees were farmers by the time things really got going.
2. Fur and fishing in Siberia can be done in winter, farming in summer. Alaska, both have to be done in summer because Sea Otter, and river fishing the Russians are good at is quite different on the West Coast (they didn't have too many people with native Kamchatkan experience yet).
3. Siberian tribes took hostages from each other and paid tribute regularly. The Russians came in as the most muscular tribe and took over existing structures, only meeting serious clashes from populations too settled (Daurians) or not familiar with the Steppe/Forest tribute system at all (Chukchi).
Aleutians did not practice hostage taking, the Californians did not practice hostage taking. The Tlingit and a few others were slavers rather than tribute takers. There was no local model the Russians could co-opt.
As a result, it took a very long time (several decades) before the Russians figured out to how to exploit the locals most efficiently with the least damage to the locals, with a lot of casualties in the meanwhile.
If anything, Alaska is a terrible stepping stone, because it breaks the very successful Siberian pattern. But it's also the only stepping stone available unless the Russian government invests in a shipyard on the Pacific (Avachinsk Bay at Petropavlovsk is a good location, and was even used as a naval base and a penal colony....but never really as a shipyard. Most RAC-built ships were built in Alaska, poor quality with poor local materials. I don't quite know why).
You could have Britain curbstomp the US in the War of 1812 and take Louisiana. That halts US expansion to the Pacific.
That'd be pretty much the case, even if many of Mexico's northern lands weren't as well defended as the south(which was the case IOTL).
That would be a really cool scenario. It would tend to make the Americans as chesty as all get out--we beat a real life European Great Power, yeaarrrghg!--never mind the extraordinary logistics disadvantages.
Since in the 19th Century Russian autocracy was the American gold-standard for tyranny, I imagine this war would be extremely popular and would probably increase America's liberationist impulses.
America probably gets into the Great Power game sooner here. Russia will be unfriendly and will probably continue to maintain a fleet on the Pacific, so American trading interests in the Pacific plus the simple defense of all this valuable new territory mean that America is going to have go have a larger fleet and get more involved in diplomacy and politics, especially in the Far East.
The Russian presence in California means that Russian exiles may end up in San Francisco (it will have a different name, obviously) which means that it could be even more of a cultural center than OTL.
I remember reading somewhere that some Czar actually wanted to send alot of Cossacks and whatnot to california/alaska. But, like what others have said, he just couldnt get them there.
I don't know what Czar that was, most of them were strictly not in favour of spending any resources on the Pacific unless they could be combined with other purposes (oceanographic studies, embassies to Japan, things like that), even in cases where private adventurers created openings to exploit (like Schaeffer in Hawaii, and of course Rezanov himself).
If the Russians could sail naval ships around the world, they could certainly get a ship's worth of colonists to California. They didn't have those colonists easily available, though, and they probably played it safe with Spain and Britain by design so they never let anyone else organise this properly on their behalf.
Even with the gold rush and all, California can never be as valuable as passage through the Straits or the Baltic trade, both of which depended on British goodwill. We might have had this exact discussion a year or so ago on this forum, I can't remember now.
