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The Alaska Purchase was a large land transaction which was carried out in 1867 whereby the government of the United States of America purchased what is now the state of Alaska from the Russian Empire for $7.2 million USD. This is at least $150 million USD as of late 2025. The Russians has begun exploring parts of North America in the middle of the eighteenth century and eventually set up fur trapping stations and other trading outposts along the western seaboard of the continent, even as far south as California. Alaska was their main focus though. Russian settlement here was minimal even by the mid-nineteenth century. It made sense for the Russian government to sell the colony, given that so much of Asian Russia itself, the great expanse we usually call Siberia, was in need of colonization anyway. The US had a long tradition of buying rather than conquering territory, from the Louisiana Purchase of 1803 to the Gadsden Purchase of 1854. Therefore Alaska was added to the territory of the US. It only became a federal state in 1959. Today approximately three-quarters of a million people live in Alaska. Thousands of these are believed to be of Russian descent.[1]
Alaska Purchase chronology of eventsAlaska Purchase chronology of events
The Russian state had begun expanding out of the Volga River region west of the Ural Mountains in the second half of the sixteenth century. By the dawn of the seventeenth century several important colonies had been founded east of the Urals like Tobolsk in what we now call the vast amorphous region of Siberia in Asian Russia. Russian explorers continued to fan out and explore ever further east, eventually reaching the eastern extremity of the continent in 1639. Thereafter they began founding colonies around Siberia and more fully charted the land. Fur was always central to this activity. In Europe in the seventeenth century, hats, coats and gowns made from the fur of animals like bears, otters, minks and beavers had become prized commodities and many of these animals were abundant in the frozen tundra regions of Siberia.[2]
From the mid-eighteenth century onwards the Russians were exploring around and charting the Bering Sea and Straits and the North Pacific Ocean with a view to potentially expanding their presence even further east into North America. This activity really took off from 1799 following the establishment of the Russian-America Company (RAC), although the first permanent Russian colony in Alaska had actually been founded at Pavlovskaya Harbour on Kodiak Island off the coast of Alaska in 1784. Later Russian activity in North America and the North Pacific would even extend to brief forays into colonizing California and Hawaii.[3]
Russian Alaska was centered a number of key sites. The most important was the modern-day town of Sitka. The Russians initially established this as Fort Mikhailovksy, though it subsequently became known as Novo-Arkhangelsk after the White Sea port in north-western Russia. This was the administrative capital of Russian Alaska and was supplemented by other trading and trapping stations at places like Fort St. George in Kasilof, Fort Nikolaevskaia in Kenai, and New Russia in Yakutat. From these locations the Russians developed an extensive trade in various furs and other commodities offered by Alaska.[4] It was owing to these resources that the US Secretary of State, William H. Seward, began displaying an interest on behalf of the United States after the American Civil War ended in 1865 in buying Alaska from the Russian government.[5]
The idea of the United States buying Alaska from the Russian government was hardly that novel. The US had expanded dramatically from the country that was founded in 1776, in large part through large land purchases such as the Louisiana Purchase of 1803 and the Gadsden Purchase of 1854.[6] Moreover, by the 1860s the Russians were willing sellers. Over-exploitation of the sources of fur in the region had depleted the profits that were coming in from Alaska and the Russian government was switching its attention anyway to developing Siberia, an enterprise symbolized in the subsequent development of the Trans-Siberian Railway. Thus, when the American government made an offer of $7.2 million USD, it was accepted in 1867 and Congress ratified the Alaska Purchase.[7]
Extent of migration before and after the Alaska PurchaseExtent of migration before and after the Alaska Purchase
The exact scale of Russian migration to Alaska during its colonial era was limited, although over a period of approximately 80 years it did involve thousands of Russians. Many of these intermarried with the Aleuts and other native people and a substantial Creole population emerged over time. Thus, the foremost study of the population of Russian Alaska has suggested a combined Russian, Creole and native population of upwards of 10,000 people within the Russian colonies by the time of the Alaska Purchase.[8] Slow but steady migration continued after the US became the colonial power. There were over 33,000 people recorded here in 1880 when Alaska was covered in a US federal census for the first time. Later gold rushes in the broader region, like the Klondike Gold Rush, led to a sharper influx in the 1890s and 1900s.[9]
Demographic impact of the Alaska PurchaseDemographic impact of the Alaska Purchase
In the long term the demographic impact of the Alaska Purchase was considerable. Migration to the Russian colonies was very minimal, whereas it increased substantially over time under American rule. By the middle of the twentieth century the population had expanded to around 135,000 and it continued to grow at speed in the decades thereafter. This notably meant that the white, western component of the population began to surge past the native element in terms of their proportion of the whole. Today there are nearly three-quarters of a million people living in Alaska. It is hard to see that this kind of population growth would have occurred had the Alaska Purchase not occurred in 1867. As such, many people will owe their genealogical origins in Alaska to the impact of the Purchase.[10]
See alsoSee also
Explore more about the Alaska PurchaseExplore more about the Alaska Purchase
- Alaska Vital Records records collection on MyHeritage
- Names & Stories in Newspapers from OldNews.com (Alaska) records collection on MyHeritage
- 1880 United States Federal Census records collection on MyHeritage
- 1900 United States Federal Census records collection on MyHeritage
- 1950 United States Federal Census records collection on MyHeritage
- U.S. City Directories records collection on MyHeritage
References
- ↑ https://www.loc.gov/collections/meeting-of-frontiers/articles-and-essays/alaska/the-alaska-purchase/
- ↑ https://www.loc.gov/collections/meeting-of-frontiers/articles-and-essays/exploration/russian-discovery-of-siberia/
- ↑ https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/history/russian-america-1799-1867
- ↑ Victor J. Farrar, ‘The Background of the Purchase of Alaska’, in The Washington Historical Quarterly, Vol. 13, No. 2 (April, 1922), pp. 93–104.
- ↑ https://www.npr.org/2025/08/11/nx-s1-5498412/alaska-was-once-a-full-fledged-russian-colony-now-it-will-host-a-u-s-russia-summit
- ↑ https://history.state.gov/milestones/1801-1829/louisiana-purchase
- ↑ https://www.loc.gov/collections/meeting-of-frontiers/articles-and-essays/alaska/the-alaska-purchase/
- ↑ Svetlana G. Fedorova, The Population of Russian America (1799–1867) (Fairbanks, Alaska, 1973).
- ↑ https://live.laborstats.alaska.gov/cen/histpdfs/1880census.PDF
- ↑ https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/decennial/1960/population-volume-1/vol-01-03-c.pdf