Pale of Settlement....to Alaska?

I've been toying with an idea for a long time.

In 1791, Catherine the Great created the Pale within the Russian territories claimed from Poland-Lithuania and extended it to her border with Germany and Austria. This was the only place within Russia that Jews were allowed to live and work.

What if, in 1791, instead of sending the Jews to Poland, it was rumored that the fur trade in Alaska was becoming a major rival to the other trades in the New World and instead of screwing up the Alaska Company like she and her descendants did IOTL, the Alaska Company actually gets the support it needs and manages to succeed, and the Jews are all sent to settle in Alaska?

My thinking here is that the Jews would replace the Aleut and Inuit populations that were pretty much driven to the brink by Russia's inability to treat them humanely, and the Jews would face similar prospects to those they faced under Hitler. Obviously, Russia's policy of conversion would continue in regards to Jews, and upward mobility might appear in the colony's social strata in regards to Jewish-to-Orthodox converts and their children. Alternately, or rather, at the same time, the political situation in Alaska takes on a mode similar to that between the UK and her colonies possibly leading to an Alaskan republic, no matter how short lived, in the 19th or 20th centuries.

Thoughts?

Seryozha1987 said:

I've been toying with an idea for a long time.

In 1791, Catherine the Great created the Pale within the Russian territories claimed from Poland-Lithuania and extended it to her border with Germany and Austria. This was the only place within Russia that Jews were allowed to live and work.

What if, in 1791, instead of sending the Jews to Poland, it was rumored that the fur trade in Alaska was becoming a major rival to the other trades in the New World and instead of screwing up the Alaska Company like she and her descendants did IOTL, the Alaska Company actually gets the support it needs and manages to succeed, and the Jews are all sent to settle in Alaska?

My thinking here is that the Jews would replace the Aleut and Inuit populations that were pretty much driven to the brink by Russia's inability to treat them humanely, and the Jews would face similar prospects to those they faced under Hitler. Obviously, Russia's policy of conversion would continue in regards to Jews, and upward mobility might appear in the colony's social strata in regards to Jewish-to-Orthodox converts and their children. Alternately, or rather, at the same time, the political situation in Alaska takes on a mode similar to that between the UK and her colonies possibly leading to an Alaskan republic, no matter how short lived, in the 19th or 20th centuries.

Thoughts?

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Hmm it sounds sound. What better place then to send people you don't want then exile/export to then Alaska? CoughPalinCough

The Russians certainly expulged the Jews more then once in their historym so this is very plausable in my view.

Well, how well did Birobidzhan work?

Although that's a multifactor problem.

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One issue I can see is that Alaska was kind of doomed and stunted for two reasons:

1. Run as a corporation
2. No agricultural product source since Rezanov didn't live to get what he wanted (i.e. California)

Even if the Jews were transported there (at great expense to the state) who would feed them after they were?

RGB said:

Even if the Jews were transported there (at great expense to the state) who would feed them after they were?

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Wait, Tsarist Russia would actually care about that?

RGB said:

Well, how well did Birobidzhan work?

Although that's a multifactor problem.

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One issue I can see is that Alaska was kind of doomed and stunted for two reasons:

1. Run as a corporation
2. No agricultural product source since Rezanov didn't live to get what he wanted (i.e. California)

Even if the Jews were transported there (at great expense to the state) who would feed them after they were?

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Given that they weren't exactly the most fondly viewed members of Russian society perhaps the government doesn't consider that an issue and assumes they will "Make do with what is available". It could become something of an all Jewish katorga.

Orioes said:

Given that they weren't exactly the most fondly viewed members of Russian society perhaps the government doesn't consider that an issue and assumes they will "Make do with what is available". It could become something of an all Jewish katorga.

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So who would pay for the prison guards? The company or the State?

There were maybe 800 or so service people in Alaska at any given time, the rest of the population were natives. That would create a situation where the service people simply could not control their prisoners.

And as for the Jew hate - sure they did, but at that kinda cost? Because they would lost the revenues Jewish villages provided as well, wouldn't they?

Russia was always short on people, serfs were more valuable than land. Gaining land within the pale of settlement at the expense of uprooting and moving the Jews sounds un-economic. Given how weak the Imperial interest was in the Pacific (Rezanov, the Russian-American Company, Schaeffer all had plans and schemes that basically needed permission and political support and not much else, but the government refused every time)...it's doubtful.

What would be a slightly better approach than insanely expensive katorga would be to get the Russian-American company interested in sponsoring Jews to migrate to Alaska permanently.

With enough population perhaps they could exert pressure on other claimants on the West Coast to make space for an agricultural colony.

Except of course chances are the bigots in the government would shut the idea down.

Still, I think top-down this is unlikely to even have occured to them...although I agree that the concept itself is really cool.

RGB said:

So who would pay for the prison guards? The company or the State?

There were maybe 800 or so service people in Alaska at any given time, the rest of the population were natives. That would create a situation where the service people simply could not control their prisoners.

And as for the Jew hate - sure they did, but at that kinda cost? Because they would lost the revenues Jewish villages provided as well, wouldn't they?

Russia was always short on people, serfs were more valuable than land. Gaining land within the pale of settlement at the expense of uprooting and moving the Jews sounds un-economic. Given how weak the Imperial interest was in the Pacific (Rezanov, the Russian-American Company, Schaeffer all had plans and schemes that basically needed permission and political support and not much else, but the government refused every time)...it's doubtful.

What would be a slightly better approach than insanely expensive katorga would be to get the Russian-American company interested in sponsoring Jews to migrate to Alaska permanently.

With enough population perhaps they could exert pressure on other claimants on the West Coast to make space for an agricultural colony.

Except of course chances are the bigots in the government would shut the idea down.

Still, I think top-down this is unlikely to even have occured to them...although I agree that the concept itself is really cool.

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Well the way to deal with paying and maintaining the guards is basically you don't have them. You use the fact that they are hundreds or thousands of miles from places they could escape to as the "walls" of the prison. You force compliance with the company's production requirements by saying if you are short X beaver hides the next supply ship is short X+2 Blankets. I don't think though that a mass relocation of the Jews will be a primarily economically motivated project. It seems that more likely the Tsar will survive one too many assassination attempts or the Government may suffer one too many uprisings and decide that these problem causing Jews (Who of course must be behind all of it) are too dangerous to keep around and when it comes time to decide what to do with them someone suggests sending them to Alaska and the Russian Far East.

Orioes said:

Well the way to deal with paying and maintaining the guards is basically you don't have them. You use the fact that they are hundreds or thousands of miles from places they could escape to as the "walls" of the prison.

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THIS GUY escaped, didn't he?

Not to mention that they might invite the Americans in if they gain enough clout within the colony.

one question - are sirenians kosher? because the Steller Sea Cow didn't go extinct until the late 1800s I think.

This isn't terribly plausible. There are a HUGE number of Jews in the Russian Empire at this time - how would you get them all to Alaska, and what would they do there? The Jewish population of Russia was considerably greater than the entire population of Alaska today. With 18th c technology and infrastructure, by doing this you are essentially committing the Holocaust 150 years early.

Keenir said:

one question - are sirenians kosher? because the Steller Sea Cow didn't go extinct until the late 1800s I think.

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No to be Kosher it would have to have split hooves and chew its cud or have fins and scales.

RGB said:

THIS GUY escaped, didn't he?

Not to mention that they might invite the Americans in if they gain enough clout within the colony.

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True the adventurer-polymaths of the group will escape but not every Jew is Edward Israel/Morris Cohen/Sidney Reilly/Sinan. Most are going to say " Oy Vey their trying to kill us again" and try and build something out of the hand they have been dealt. Eventually they will either get annoyed enough to actually do something about it or the Americans will show up and buy/conquer the place. But I think this will happen regardless of how you get the Jews there. Not many people like living under an autocracy that despises them.

Russia at the time was still benefitting from the massive revenue increases of Peter the Great, and Catherine's own investment was creating more revenue. The resettlement of the Jews into the original Pale was equally expensive and unreasonable to most modern economists. Build the Trans-Siberian railroad with Jewish labor so that a large contingent of them are already in the Russian Far East, and then use the rest to build the cars with which they'll be taken to Vladivostok.

Catherine had great plans for Russia and wanted to fill the massive shadow her mother-in-law left behind. If we could get her annoyance with the "unintelligable" and "uneducated" nobility down a notch, we could get some government support for pushing claims further South on the Pacific coast of the Americas. Jews are sent to establish agricultural settlements further down (let's say Washington state area being the absolute most southern push possible at the time) and the American Pacific Northwest is opened up alongside the fur trade and new agricultural venues.

With enough investiture in Russian infrastructure (to get the Jews Eastward) Catherine would also be investing in Russia's ability to get the colony's exports back West and opening up Japanese and Chinese markets on the way. This would, in turn, get large returns after a while and Catherine the Great would be remembered as Catherine the Very Great. Or at least Greater than She Was IOTL.

I admit it takes some tweaking with Catherine's mentality to get this to work, and her domestic investiture in the peasants would be stunted, but I don't think it's too implausible an idea.

The only other major problem I see is that one of the reasons Catherine assigned the Pale to her new Polish possessions (via the various partitions that went on at the time) was that she needed some "Russian" element to settle and force the Poles into submission. Perhaps in light of this she would take a more lenient attitude towards the Poles and create autonomous Oblasts out of her new territories instead of prison-like Gubernyi.