How big can Russian America get?

Perhaps then, the best bet is to have Peter I live a little longer, and latch on to the idea of Russian America as one of of his crazes, and invest in it in the early 18th century, so that by the late 19th, it is a viable and useful colony covering most of the Pacific Northwest. If the west coast is explored by Russia well in advance of Britain, it might get a jump on colonization. By selling the natives guns in exchange for furs, French and British settlement could be further slowed. This might allow for a colony made up mostly of semi-independent natives, loyal to the Russian crown.
 
I'm surprised that there has been no mention of Fort Ross on the Sonoma coast in California, only about 70 or 80 miles north of San Francisco.
 
I concur with Abdul and Tapirus, that substantial gains Russian colonies would likely depend on an early point of divergence, be it gold-up or Tsar-down. This has been something I've often wondered about, but I must admit my own interests stray more to something later. Being curious how it would play out in recognizable circumstances, that limits things to Fort Ross.

I've already gone on about the troubles of Fort Ross, which by and large was the perfect 17th century colony, with the misfortune to be set up in the 19th.

Now, just up the coast is the Willamette Valley, containing some of the world's best cool-weather farmland. Had an early Russian explorer found the place, that would have been the obvious spot to build, even for the agricultural illiterates involved. It wouldn't be easy to find, IIRC, due to the passage of the Columbia River mouth, but it's possible.

They were trying to build in a location where they would also have access to sea otter, which does make a Portland settlement a problem. However, it's one easily solved. We take as point of divergence a wealthy Russian adventurer Mikhail Ulyanov. Fleeing scandal and possible litigation in Moscow, he hurriedly liquidates his assets to finance an expedition to the New World. Ulyanov arrives in Alaska in 1809 just as the first expedition to California returns from scouting out Bodega Bay laden with sea otter pelts. He manages to cut a deal with local officials to use their facilities in exchange for a cut.

He sails down the coast in the one rather ramshackle ship he could afford. A near fatal storm off Washington forces him to put in near the mouth of the Columbia to make repairs. In the two months these take, the crew purges the local beaver and sea otter population while their fearless leader explores the interior. When he finds the Willamette, he sees a gold mine.

This is a Russian nobleman we're dealing with, not the sort of hunter-trapper-sailor that composes his crew. He's actually put in hard work on a farm (albeit beating his peasants for disrespect). It doesn't mean he could grow more than a beard unaided, but he can recognize good soil. Ripe with fantasies of an estate beyond any potential prosecution, Ulyanov briefly returns to Sitka, only to sail out once more. The following two years is spent working up seed money. He leap-frogs along the coast, collecting pelts around such convenient berths as he can find.

In 1811, OTL's Kuskov expedition to Bodega Bay by the Russian-American Company ends in failure as in OTL. Knowing another is planned for the following year, Ulyanov attempts to nominate himself as the leader of a colony at his alternate location. His efforts are to no avail. With the excuse of a fur shipment to the Russian Far East, Young Mikhail scours Asia's Pacific Coast for experienced farmers with little enough backbone to make a good peasant. Being on the wrong side of Siberia, he settles for experience. With a dozen men and some draft animals in tow, he heads back to Alaska, intent on founding his colony.

He is disappointed.

In our timeline 1812 saw Kuskov's second attempt to settle Bodega Bay, which had been judged an excellent prospective site. This was partially a matter of the natural harbor (vanishingly rare on the Californian coast), but primarily the result of an especially abundant sea otter population identified in the 1809 expedition. On arrival three years later, the Russians managed to be surprised at the scarcity of the animals, despite having taken the time to empty the Bay of them on their previous visit. As it happened, sea otters were just one of those species - too profitable to harvest, too slow-breeding to survive the process. By 1817, in fact, the combination of American, British, Russian, and Spanish efforts had so thoroughly depleted sea otter populations that shipping costs could no longer justify intensive harvesting. This was one of the major reasons for the stagnation and disappearance of Fort Ross in OTL, as it had used otter pelts as a crutch to support its weak agricultural production. Ironically, this may actually have saved the Californian sea otter, as remnant populations stabilized where larger populations to the north eventually went extinct.

So. In this TL, Kuskov still finds Bodega Bay otterless, and still sails north to OTL's Fort Ross. In this TL, however, Fort Ross was one of the locations Mikhail Ulyanov used, and is similarly depleted. Given that it's only advantage over Bodega Bay was its otter population, Fort Ross is disqualified. A brief debate ensues on whether to continue north to what appeared to be a marginal site in our Oregon or return to Bodega Bay, with the former eventually winning out. The third site looked good from the sea, but manages to be a colder Fort Ross and - looking just as good to the Ulyanov Expedition - has fewer otters than hoped for.

With growing discontent about the repeated changes, Kuskov redirects the expedition to near the site of our TL's Portland, coopting the site recommended by Ulyanov. An initial landing base at OTL's Astoria is fortified and then abandoned for want of men to defend two such distant positions. Defense is a real concern here. Portland is too far up too violent a river to be easily relieved by sea and the native populations remain relatively large. As such, when Ulyanov arrives in 1813 with a new batch of armed settlers he and his little cadre of "experts" are given a hefty stake in the colony, much to the disgust of Kuskov's bunch.
 
Quick question:

What's wrong with the Puget Sound area from the point of view of crop-land hungry Russian explorers? It's so much closer to the main Alaskan area of operations, isn't the land thereabouts quite as good as the Williamette valley? And with much more ready access to the sea.

In particular, what about Vancouver Island? Obviously they'd have to get there sooner than Cook did! Or not long after anyway.

But given a Tsar or two who wanted to solidify his hold on the American continent, early enough in the 18th century, why not?:confused:

Obviously, you wouldn't try to hold a distant territory bordering on ever-more-attractive land already claimed by rivals relying on convicts; at least some of the settlements, particularly the agricultural "anchor" need to have more or less loyal locals--but Russian peasants were not unadventurous; Siberia was largely settled by Russian families that went east looking for new lands and a freer hand. So if we have a Tsar who wants a solid footing on the northwest American coast, he can offer to selected families the settlement of say Vancouver as an adventure from which they and their descendants can hope to profit as first settlers, perhaps even hold out a path to eventual ennoblement. Once the colony is going on a solid basis, then might be a time to exile prisoners there as forced labor maybe.
 
In my Chaos TL, Russia's population is higher, and there's a Siberia-centered Russian state, which both helps. But even then, there's the problem that the Rockies and the deserts are in the way of expansion. Anyone who settles North America from the East has a natural advantage. I wrote more about that in one of the stories from said TL.
 
Quick question:

What's wrong with the Puget Sound area from the point of view of crop-land hungry Russian explorers? It's so much closer to the main Alaskan area of operations, isn't the land thereabouts quite as good as the Williamette valley? And with much more ready access to the sea.

The Oregon Trail and the York Factory Express.

Settling Portland is harder in that it requires you to go upriver, but once you have the place you control the Willamette, Columbia, and Snake. Essentially Oregon, eastern Washington, and southern Idaho are yours to lose. Since nobody can really get to Puget Sound except through you, the only risk of is that the British sail in and set up a colony. If you're established in Portland, though, the overland route to the sound means that such a colony would probably be in the location preferred by early explorers in OTL: Vancouver Island.

If you take Puget Sound instead, you do have the advantage that Portland is less vulnerable to a quick outside grab than is the Seattle region. In theory you can eventually move south into the Willamette as well as north to OTL Vancouver. Practice is far different. Unless you assume a totally different set of circumstances, Puget Sound is already being visited by men from the Hudson's Bay Company. Just 12 years after the founding of Krepost Ross, the company built Fort Vancouver directly across the Columbia from OTL Portland. You can't very well shift the British of all nations while operating from an isolated coastal enclave, so the only question left is how the British and Americans resolve the issue when the latters' settlers arrive.

As for land quality, the best soil around the Sound is on par with the Willamette, to the best of my knowledge. The trouble is there's less of it and it's scattered in dribs and draps all over the place. The weather, though, is simply incomparable. Seattle averages 13 inches of snow a year, where Portland typically does not have a measurable snowfall. That makes things like winter wheat possible in the valley. Translation: a natural potential for grain surpluses.

In particular, what about Vancouver Island? Obviously they'd have to get there sooner than Cook did! Or not long after anyway.

Rocky, heavily, forested, middling soil. And you're not expanding east from it, because it's limited potential for growth means that by the time you a fair population, the Pacific Northwest is full of Anglophones. Plus there's always the opportunity to take it on later on - the British didn't bother with a settlement until 1843.

Actually, though, it is fairly well placed to be retained by the Russians in the long haul. That would be fairly cool - two little Russian outposts across the Pacific. It's just you can't do much with it but get lucky and hold on.... unless you have the mainland already.

But given a Tsar or two who wanted to solidify his hold on the American continent, early enough in the 18th century, why not?:confused:

Obviously, you wouldn't try to hold a distant territory bordering on ever-more-attractive land already claimed by rivals relying on convicts; at least some of the settlements, particularly the agricultural "anchor" need to have more or less loyal locals--but Russian peasants were not unadventurous; Siberia was largely settled by Russian families that went east looking for new lands and a freer hand. So if we have a Tsar who wants a solid footing on the northwest American coast, he can offer to selected families the settlement of say Vancouver as an adventure from which they and their descendants can hope to profit as first settlers, perhaps even hold out a path to eventual ennoblement. Once the colony is going on a solid basis, then might be a time to exile prisoners there as forced labor maybe.

Yeah.... but most of southwestern Siberia wasn't even settled yet. The center and east were little more developed than Alaska or the Hudson's Bay. Unless you get that seriously enthusiastic Tsar, nothing will happen. If you can get that in the 1700s, granted you have a real opportunity.
 
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Yeah.... but most of southwestern Siberia wasn't even settled yet.

There was a pretty continuous series of forts from the Urals to Kamchatka and actually already a few towns over a thousand. It was definitely more settled than any HBC territory.

Unless you get that seriously enthusiastic Tsar, nothing will happen. If you can get that in the 1700s, granted you have a real opportunity.

That is really the big problem. After Peter there was nary a proper Imperialist on the throne until Catherine II - and that's the key moment to act.

Even better would be to have Alexei or Feodor make a deal with...say...the Dutch or some minor German maritime power to start colonising and trading from the Pacific in his name, but far less likely.
 
There is a bit of a problem with boosting up Russian America by having it discover gold; it's not just the Russians who would take more interest in Russian America then. If Britain and/or Spain and/or the US decide that they would like all that gold for themselves, Russia can't project enough power into the Americas to really stop anyone from taking their colonies.
 
Forgive my ignorance; I see the problem now. Peter's reign ended with his death in 1725; the first Russians we are sure went to North America and came back to record their findings were in 1741.

I'd think that with a Tsar interested in staking a claim on the Americas reigning in the 1740s, they might have had a chance to establish something solid long before the British showed up. But admittedly it would have to be a deliberate effort, for the glory of it; it would have to be understood that the fur trade alone wouldn't cover the costs for some time, until those costs were reduced by the establishment of an agricultural settler colony and that colony would have to feed itself, feed the fur traders, and feed sufficient military presence to fend off other European claimants, notably the Spanish and (once word got out) the English. All of this effort has to be carried out at the far end of a staggeringly long supply line. Much of the advantage the Russians enjoyed OTL came from operating the whole venture on a shoestring, involving recruiting Native Americans into their system--if you send a bunch of Russian peasant settlers, that tends to upset that applecart. Of course a Tsar would want to know how he's going to make sure this bunch of Russians at the far end of the world from St Petersburg are going to continue to be his loyal subjects and not wander off on their own hook or negotiate advantageous terms for themselves to switch sides to one of the other European powers (or eventually the Americans). That implies a promise to the settlers they won't just be left there neglected, that more and more Russians would come to join them thus maintaining ties to the motherland--more trouble with Indians therefore, and more attention being drawn to the region.

I was thinking, first of all they need an earlier start, but I suppose there were good reasons no Russian expedition set out until the 1740s, so that's probably about as early as damn possible. Second, that they would systematically look for good cropland--good by Russian standards; they might greatly admire land where a winter crop can be brought in but they'd hardly expect to find it; decent land with one good growing season would seem normal to them. And that they'd grab the first, closest place they found, which I figured would be Puget Sound. If they were there early enough in enough force, presumably they'd find the Columbia mouth before the British or the Spanish were in a position to pre-empt them. But I more fully understand now why these are such big "ifs," even if Peter had been succeeded by a string of Tsars with systematic expansionist and Westernizing notions in his example.

And just one transoceanic imperialist reign, even if decently long (Peter's own was over 40 years) would not cut it. Even if gifted with ASB foresight that filled such a Tsar with conviction that a Greater Alaska would pay off handsomely for Russia eventually, and therefore organizing a systematic effort over decades of his (or her, heck if we are imagining a super-Tsar why not a Tsarina in the English Elizabeth mode?) reign, if their immediate successor did not see things that way and the venture was not already yielding growing dividends already more than covering the costs of the ongoing project, that Tsar would presumably find plenty of other pressing concerns much closer to home and either terminate the project or cut it back to a self-sustaining level--that means leaving the colonists already out there largely in the lurch, becoming disgruntled and exactly the sort of thing a Tsar might lose sleep over. Or not; until one day he wakes up and finds they'd gone over to the Spanish or the Mexicans or invited in the British or Yankees.

Russia simply didn't need Alaska and wouldn't therefore invest too much in it, and write it off easily if it ever became in any way inconvenient. That much is clear. And without a succession of Peters, they didn't really have the means of getting there much sooner than their better-positioned rivals.

So--barring serious Russia-wank, the answer to the OP is, "not much bigger than it did, certainly not a much denser settlement and a deeper commitment." Avoiding unnecessary commitment pretty well describes the prevailing wisdom running the whole effort OTL and without time-traveling angels whispering prophecies of rich gold mines and strange dreams of liquid black gold, that was not unreasonable.
 
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