The countries that almost were : Alyaska

So, why "the countries that almost were" ?

This TL is part of a project on a series of focuses on countries that could never existed but could have. Alaska is the first one, and should success be met, I would then follow on by one of a Dutch Formosa.

My objective is to bring these countries under your eyes from the POD to the modern day.

For this TL on Alyaska, the outline is roughly complete, albeit with some holes (some periods are full of details, other are uneventful or still to fill). If you want some teaser and discussing the TL, you can read the outline of an early version, no longer actual since reworked but still close to the current version, on this link: https://www.alternatehistory.com/Discussion/showpost.php?p=9978191&postcount=23 .

When I began, I wanted to focus on the history of Alaska in a world that doesn't change much from OTL, excepted over Alaska, to make its world familiar to any reader, to make him thinking that it looks like if that country actually existed in our reality.
The way I use is not properly to speak of totally ignoring butterfly effect, of which I admit no being a big fan, but a trick: the surface of things looks like OTL, but if we look deeper, differences accumulate.
This is what I call the ''Inertia Effect'', a phenomenon that competes with Butterfly Effect to keep things close to OTL.
Thus, while the epicenter of the TL is Alaska, we would see the different evolution of bordering region, a difference becoming noticeable during the Prohibition era and will have important cultural consequences such as Bandy becoming a popular sport on the West Coast and in western Canada.

I've not yet fixed the form of chapters, so they could change, but I think following a chronological succession of periods with incursions into other periods for related topics.

As summer holidays will begin for me within a week or two, I should be able to update regularly.
The first update would be a kind of prelude with the point of divergence explained.

Read and enjoy.​

... The office of Secretary of State had become vacant after William Henry Seward expired his last breath in the night of 14 to 15 April 1865.

Filling the vacant office was one of the first priorities presented to the just sworn in President Andrew Johnson in the morning of April 15. Contrary to the use , Johnson didn't appoint Attorney General James Speed as Acting Secretary of State but William Hunter instead, since the man had already served twice in that office, under Pierce and Buchanan, and had great experience of the State Department [1]. This was however only to give President Johnson the time to select a proper Secretary of State.

Although Senator Charles Sumner, chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations, was quick to make his ambition known, his Radical standing was much disliked by the new President and the choice was settled on Charles Francis Adams who after almost four years as Minister to the Court of St James had got foreign policy credentials worth Sumner's. The matter of his confirmation by the Senate lasted well into May due to delays in transatlantic crossings and the lobbying from Sumner frustrated partisans. Adams was back in Washington DC by 4 May and confirmed on 8 May...​

... In 1859, Baron Eduard de Stoeckl, ambassador of Russia, got from St Petersburg the approval to begin negotiations over a possible sale of Russian American territories to the United States, of which he was a great proponent. However, at this time, US government had other more pressing concerns and by the outbreak of American Civil War, the perspective of the sale disappeared. It would not be until after the Civil War's end, in late 1866, that Tsar Alexander II did authorize new negotiations.

Indeed, if the sale had some favor in political circles, it wasn't a great concern in Russian political circles and the imperial government considered it more as an opportunity than as an objective. Even if Russian finances were in dire straits after the Crimean War and the Emancipation Reform, Finance Minister Reutern expressed doubts over economic advantages. Also, Foreign Minister Gorchakov was concerned over further antagonizing the British as Russia progressed in its conquest of Turkestan and, without opposing the project, he urged for caution in its realization.

Also, on the American side, situation was not as favorable as Baron de Stoeckl had hoped. In the aftermath of the Civil War, the more pressing matter was Reconstruction, a source of much trouble between President Johnson and the Congress and for now, foreign policy was a secondary concern. Worse, the Fenian Raids in 1866 had did much to exacerbate tensions between Washington and London, and Secretary of State Adams was advocating a policy of appeasement towards the United Kingdom against the expansionist line pushed forward by Senator Sumner and his fellow Radicals for whom the acquisition of Russian America was part of a larger scheme to expand all the way to Arctic along the Pacific Coast, including British Columbia.

By early 1867, Sumner began to actively lobby in favor of the purchase and brought the subject to public arena, but this publicity ultimately backfired on Radicals. The press campaign ended in a total failure, and to the opposite of what was expected, public opinion quickly turned against the sale, sticking to the expression of the ''frozen wilderness'' coined by Secretary Adams [2]. As the British came to voice their concern over the purchase, the Tsar decided to formally withdraw the offer to avoid further embarrassment.​

The issue was further discarded in 1868 as it became a subject of derision during the presidential elections. Then, in 1869, Baron de Stoeckl resigned because of health concerns; he had for long been a proponent of the sale of Alaska and hoped the new administration would be more friendly to the idea, but was soon disillusioned. His successor, Konstantin Katakazi, did much to antagonize the US government by the invasive behavior he displayed, one inherited from his time in the Balkans.

Also, as Secretary of State Hamilton Fish didn't prove much more convinced than Adams of the usefulness of buying Alyaska, Sumner's ousting from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairmanship in 1871 achieved to make any American interest in the purchase disappearing.
It would not be until significant gold deposits were discovered that United States would again show interest, only to be rebuffed by Russians.
​

... In its modern use, the name "Alyaska" has its roots in the last stages of the Russian Civil War with the appearance of Alyaska Krai as a de facto independent entity but has found its true meaning after the Revolution of 1964 which marked the advent of a new generation to power, a generation which had begun to take distance from its Russian roots, to feel more ''Alyaskan'' than Russian.

But historically speaking, the first recorded instance of Alyaska being used to refer to the whole land was in a speech given by Senator Charles Sumner in 1867 to defend the purchase by the United States of that territory: ''The name should come from the country itself [...] Happily such a name exists, as proper in sound as in origin'' he said, although that was the English version ''Alaska'' he referred to. Formally, the name ''Alyaska'' would appear only with the reorganization of the Russian-American Company holdings into the Alyaska Krai ...​

… A marking event of that winter, you surely noticed, was the first season conclusion of acclaimed TV show 'Amerikan Tsar', one that couldn't find a less important echoe in our world than today, while the Los Angeles Monarchs are going to meet the Yakornaya Bears [1], promising us a high point in this season of the Smirnov Cup. This name is from a man who shaped the visage of half a continent, a man few people really know of beyond pages of some school history books, but the Amerikan Tsar brings us to the roots of his legacy.

While people know Vladimir Smirnov much through that yearly bandy contest that he created and promoted, few people do really know how important he actually is, and that's precisely one of the points put forward by Amerikan Tsar. When one actually thinks of Alyaska, the ''Switzerland of the Arctic Circle'', he looks at the legacy left by Smirnov. For initiates, his figure remains controversial, at the border between corporate absolutism, corruption and organized crime, with an empire spanning at his highest from the shores of the Arctic Sea to the hills of Los Angeles.
After the Revolution of 1964, although the Smirnov family retained large amount of influence in politics and economy, Vladimir Smirnov memory remained for long tarnished by his controversial role in the Junta years, even if today historians tend to review his involvement under a more favorable light. The time we are interested in matches the golden years of Smirnov from his rise in the ashes of the Russian civil war to his role in the Coup of 1938 at the dawn of his reign, a story covering as much politics as economy and culture…

… The story of Vladimir Smirnov and his ‘Amerikan’ empire begins well before the Russian civil war happened.

Vladimir Petrovich Smirnov was born on 7 November 1875 at Moscow, son to Pyotr Arsenievich Smirnov, king of the Russian vodka industry. The father’s death happened while Alyaska was on the verge of being overwhelmed by hordes of people seeking fortune in the Klondike and soon on the beaches of Nome in Russian Alyaska. In the minds of Pyotr’s sons, these were people who could want vodka to drink. That was with this idea that Vladimir Smirnov arrived to Vancouver in March 1900…

… By the time of the Gold Rush, the vodka supply of Alyaska was limited by the distances involved. The few vodka arriving in Alexandrovsk[2] and Sitka were sent fom Vladivostok after a lengthy travel through Siberia. The construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway allowed to lower importation costs, but it did remain less competitive than alcohol drinks brought from Vancouver, Seattle or San Francisco and its consumption was for long restricted to celebrations. Situation didn’t change until the Gold Rush happened and the market proved sufficiently attractive for the Smirnov family to build a distillery in the region in order to lower prices and flood the market. The choice of Vancouver to set up a vodka distillery was dictated by the need of an easy access to grain, here the Canadian Pacific Railway, and to have a port well situated to distribute vodka in the region...

...Despite a difficult start, by the fall of 1901, vodka had become a popular hard alcohol in the region, and its popularity even spread beyond as prospectors returned to their home; at the eve of the Great War, vodka was not an uncommon sight in San Francisco bars…

I'm sorry for this big delay, but I had big problems over the angle to attack this TL even if inspiration didn't lack (I have lot of material and advanced outline to work on).
So begins the proper TL.

Smirnov is a real character and surely most among you know of his brand (i don't know if you prefer Polish, Swedish or Russian vodka ). Most of informations I could have found on him are in russian, but I managed to work through them with google translate. Still, there is one page I found but I couldn't copy-paste; I would appreciate help for a translation so I can make additions or corrections to my scenario: http://auto-skiers.msk.ru/text/Smirnov.htm .
Like this chapter says, he is to be one of the more important characters in this TL, but don't worry, there would be many other of equivalent importance ...
The picture of Smirnov is one of the only two I could get of him on the net.
The picture of the vodka distillery I used here is actually a distillery in Varsaw in early 20th century, or so it seemed.​