Hello, friends. Now we will talk, oddly enough, not about the sale (donation, lease) of Alaska. This information has recently appeared very rapidly in the media space, and with a lot of spoilers, exactly the opposite. Where is the truth here and where is not, it is very difficult to figure out. Everything comes from the words of historians, as a rule, without any documentary evidence. Therefore, let's probably take as a basis only documents that are in large numbers in foreign archives. Oddly enough, anyone knows about Russian America, but not the Russians themselves. Let's fill this gap as much as possible.
So what do we know about Russian America? Very little. The school taught that this was the only overseas colony of the Russian Empire, and all other colonies were on its outskirts. Let's not argue with teachers who are subject to communist ideology (I wonder what they are teaching now), but let's look at the primary sources. So, Russian America.
Approximately such maps of the late 19th century are present in many sources. It can be seen that Russian America is concentrated in the southern part of modern Alaska. Let's not go into details, maybe to the north it was just uninhabited. The official history of Alaska is here. The motive for its transmission was that the Crimean War showed the complete insecurity of the eastern borders of the Russian Empire. The Crimean War is a separate story, in Western sources it is called a world war and I will write about it some other time. And what actually happened before the Crimean War? How was Alaska reflected in official sources?
No way. Large white spot. And California is an island. The map is quite official, there are two versions of the comments about the white spot. The first is the difficult accessibility for ships. A very incomprehensible version. The seagoing vessels had all the technical capabilities to reach the Bering Strait from the south. It doesn't matter from which side they came there - from the west or east. Colonies of all European powers at that time were along the entire Pacific coast, including the Asian coast. Doesn't sound very convincing. The second version is more from the category of conspiracy theories - the Great Tartary, which still existed at that time, did not allow other people's ships into its maritime possessions. But technically this is only possible now. Radar equipment for detecting ships appeared relatively recently. How could she keep out? It's another matter if foreign sailors knewwhat awaits them in Tartary, and they were simply afraid to go there. It looks more like the truth, but still there were daredevils at all times and in any countries. Not convincing either. And what was really there? Let's raise old cards.
This map is from the foreign edition "Exploration du territoire de l'Orégon, des Californies et de la mer Vermeille exécutée pendant les années 1840, 1841", i.e. studies were carried out in 1840. Most likely, this is only the field part of the research. It can be seen that there are at least three territorial entities in Alaska, and there are also cities with distorted Slavic place names. Previously, this often happened when words in the Cyrillic spelling were left and transcribed into the Latin alphabet without translation. The resulting cities are Ragul, Salboy and Sibiryak. All along the same river. And Alaska was called Anian. Now in toponymy there is not a single such name.
Promotional video:
This is an extension of the same map to the east, the southern shore of Hudson Bay. Again Slavic place names in the names of cities.
This is an undefined year card. For some reason, all of North America is called Mexico. There are all those lands that were listed on the previous maps. On the west coast, there is already the English colony of New Albion, which, according to official data, was formed in 1559 and flourished mainly thanks to trade with Japan. With Japan (!?), Which never had minerals, forests, and other resources of interest to the British. As you can see, New Albion was an autonomous entity and had no communication with the colonies of England on the Atlantic coast. A small detail - the thriving colony of England does not have the full outline of the western coast of North America on the maps, as mentioned above, until the second half of the 19th century. It seems to be absurd. But it turns out that these cards are.
Oops … How many interesting things. First of all, the outlines of the coast of North America are not at all the same as they are now. And on the map is 1757. On the site of the Aleutian Islands there is land, there is the Gulf of Alaska (Valyaska), and the mainland itself is crossed by large lakes and straits. The color indicates the river basin for each ocean. And it would be fine this card is one, but there are several. And they clearly show that North America has three islands in the northwestern part, separated by wide straits, and they even have a name.
All this is very strange, considering that such geographic objects simply disappeared in the period 1760-1840, almost nowhere. On the top map, the cartographer overlays Hudson Bay in uncertainty, obviously, the section to it from these three islands has not been explored. What is there now?
There is not even any hint that there was a Gulf of Alaska, and also there were once three islands. But if you look closely, you can see that in the places of the former straits there are low-lying wetlands. What could it be? Obviously, as elsewhere, a huge mudslide passed. A very large amount of land was washed away from the north and covered all the northwestern lands. Accordingly, only bare rocks remained in the northern territories. The same picture actually exists from Scandinavia to Chukotka. The water of giant waves, leaving back, went through the Bering Strait and washed away all the lands in the Aleutian Islands. And a large, densely populated country went down in history.
Who lived there? If in 1741 these were Russian lands, then for sure it was as it is now. Now the main Russian nation lives in relative harmony with the Bashkirs, Caucasians, Buryats and other small peoples on one common territory. This is a historical national tradition, not to violate the culture of small peoples and not to carry out forcible Russification, unlike, for example, England. This was most likely the case there. And the bulk of the Slavic population lived together with other ethnic groups that historically found themselves in these places. Other ethnic groups were of Mongoloid origin, this is not surprising. If the climate in those places before the catastrophe was suitable for habitation (which is most likely), these territories were a continuation of huge Asia, despite the fact that formally it was already another continent.
If the cartographers were not mistaken, then the Bering Strait at that time did not represent a big obstacle for migration. In one edition I found a portrait of an indigenous inhabitant of the northwestern lands of North America of those times through the eyes of Europeans.
I was once in the Crimea, in Bakhchisarai, and there almost everyone is like that. It is completely different from the portrait type of those Indians about whom a lot of books have been written. No wonder, this is a portrait of a typical inhabitant of Tartary, their descendants now live throughout Russia. It has been scientifically proven that four main peoples have their origin in the Mongoloid race on the territory of Russia - Kalmyks, Bashkirs, Buryats, Tuvans. Small peoples living in the northern or eastern territories are descended from the first three, except for an admixture from peoples who historically lived in other territories - the Chinese or Koreans. All other indigenous inhabitants of those places are Slavs, who for historical reasons adopted the culture of other peoples, this has already been scientifically proven by geneticists. It turns out that the same ethnic groups lived in Tartary and Russian America,as in the European part, well, maybe only with a slightly different culture. And they lived from time immemorial, and not after their discovery by Bering.
But let's say the northern part of Russian America was destroyed by a catastrophe. But what happened to the more southern American lands? There is an even more interesting map.
It turns out that the entire current state of Oregon was Russian America back in 1841, and it was officially called that. I do not pretend to be the authorship of this discovery, it has already been argued for a long time, but I saw the cartographic material for the first time. And it turns out that the English territory of New Albion is nothing more than a territory squeezed out or redeemed from the then inhabitants of those territories of Slavic origin. And this territory developed only thanks to trade with the local population. You can also talk about Fort Ross or Hawaii, but this was most likely a small part of the general history of Russian America.
From the beginning of the 19th century, something happened that has already been described many times in many alternative sources. After a man-made disaster that destroyed Tartary and Russian America in the northern part, these lands became empty. That is why, since that time, a white spot appeared on the maps in that place, since no one knew what the earth had become there. The question of further ownership of these lands arose reasonably, and all strong contenders of that time began to fight for it. The activity of the historical character Vitus Bering is very doubtful. If he really carried out his voyage in those years that official history attributes to him (1728-1733), then the conclusion suggests itself that he was sent by the court of the Romanovs (or whatever they were) to explore what was left of those lands in general. At that time, apparently they knew very wellwhat lands were there before the man-made disaster. But most likely, knowing the tendency of Russian historians to shift the chronological scale, his voyage was about a hundred years later. The House of Romanovs almost legally began to claim these lands as a legal successor. But besides him, there were many more interested persons from the leading countries of Europe.
Further, as many sources say, the Russian Empire decided to finish off Tartary from the west, starting from Muscovy, and, having united with the forces of Europe, organized Napoleon's invasion of Moscow. For two years a war has been going on, ending with the expulsion of the enemy to Paris. This event is described in many sources, but nevertheless, it is still one of the biggest blank spots in Russian history. But few people know that at the same time the then US starts a war of independence with England, attacking Canada, and this war also ends at the same time. This war is also a big blind spot in history. Who were the Americans attacking? Military operations were conducted in the Great Lakes region. And the Indian revolt is mentioned, which was suppressed. Which Indians? Maybe there were some who live in Mexico nowbut most likely there was the seizure of the first lands inhabited by the Russian population. Oregon and the western lands still remain independent, and clashes between the United States and England (?) Continued there until 1846, when this state officially entered the United States. Well, actually, now let's look at the map. Comments are probably unnecessary.
The Russian empire begins to develop Alaska virtually anew, building ports at the confluence of large rivers into the oceans and seas. But the Crimean War begins. Kamchatka is one of the fronts of this war. Obviously, the combined troops decided to strike at the main military forces of the Russian Empire in that region, so that later they could freely occupy all territories, including Alaska. But they were defeated. This fact is little known in Russian history, to put it mildly. But apparently, having suffered defeat in the war, diplomacy was used. It is difficult to establish what was actually there, but we came to what we came to. There is information that up to 1920 there were practically no Americans in Alaska, and she still lived her life in direct connection with the mainland.
Well, in fact, the conclusion is that today's sluggish inclinations in the Donbass, figuratively speaking, have a completely different scale than the events in America had a little over a hundred years ago. There is another huge distortion of history.
All the best, see you again.
Author: tech-dancer