REMEMBERING RUSSIA-AMERICA DEAL ON ALASKA, 150 YEARS AFTER
Abstract
Abstract
Many may have forgotten or may not have known, abinitio, that the present day State of Alaska in the United States of America was a territory of the Russian Empire until it was bought by USA in 1867. Alaska became was a US “territory” until May 1957 when it was made a state. On January 3, 1959, President Dwight D. Eisenhower of the United States signed a proclamation admitting the Territory of Alaska in the Union as the 49th State. The land added 586,412 square miles (1,518,800km) of new territory to the United States, which is one-fifth the size of the rest of the United States. The sale and possession of Alaska attracted mixed reactions among Americans at the initial stage. Critics dubbed the deal “Seward Folly” after U.S. Secretary of State, William Seward who arranged the purchase of the land from Russia. They believed that the land had nothing to offer, until the discovery of gold in the 1890s created a stampede of prospectors and settlers. Supporters of the deal praised it as a means of weakening both the UK and Russia as rivals to American commercial expansion in the Pacific Region. In this piece, efforts are made to determine the true beneficiary of the deal 150 years after: Russia or America. To achieve this, a vivid historical account of the sale and purchase of the territory of Alaska and reactions of many Americans to the deal is thoroughly analyzed with findings that America is the real beneficiary of the deal.
Keywords: Alaska, Russian Empire, USA, Sale and Purchase.
