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Russian-American Company
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Russian-American Company was a semi-official colonial trading company started by Grigory Shelikhov and Nikolai Rezanov and chartered by Tsar Paul I in 1799.[1]
The 20-year revolving charter granted the company monopoly over trade in Russian America, which included the Aleutian Islands, Alaska, and the territory down to 55° N latitude. A second charter, in 1821, extended its domain to 51° N latitude. Under the charter, one-third of all profits were to go to the emperor.
Under Alexandr Baranov, who governed the region between 1790 and 1818, a permanent settlement was established in 1804 at Novo-Arkhangelsk (today's Sitka, Alaska), and a thriving fur trade was organized.
The company constructed forts in what is today Alaska and California. Fort Ross, on the California coast just north of San Francisco, was the southernmost outpost of Russian America, and is now reconstructed and an open air museum. Russian Fort Elizabeth was built in Hawaii by an agent of the company.
But from the 1820s onwards the profits from the fur trade began to decline. Already in 1818 the Russian government had taken control of the Russian-American Company from the merchants who held the charter. The explorer and government official Ferdinand Petrovich von Wrangel, who had been administrator of Russian government interests in Russian America a decade before, was the first president of the company during the government period. The company ceased its commercial activities in 1867, when the Alaska Purchase transferred control of Alaska to the United States and the commercial interests of the Russian American Company were sold to Hutchinson, Kohl & Company of San Francisco, California who then renamed their company to the Alaska Commercial Company.
Below is a list of the governors/general managers of the Russian-American Company. Many of their names occur as place names in Southeast Alaska. Note that the English spelling of the names varies between sources.