Kruzenshtern and the Russian Pacific Claims

1763

Russian fur traders, having crossed from Kamchatka, built permanent settlements on Kodiak and the Aleutians, squeezing sea otter populations and indigenous Alutiit peoples. They would found the Russian-American Company as a state-licensed monopoly in 1799, claiming a coast that Americans had never seen. Russia's Pacific empire stretched from Siberia to the forests above San Francisco Bay, a vast arc of fur and ambition that held until 1867.