Russian California
- Thread starter scourge
- Start date
Since they didn't put a whole lot of effort into Alaska, splitting that effort may mean they keep neither, rather than managing to keep California.
I was reading they abandoned Fort Ross because they felt Alaska was the better investment since they were making a killing the fur trade due to sea otter fur.
This could be done as a consequence of the long term Russian fixation on the Far East instead of Europe.
Something like this:
1) IRL Ming - Russian relations had one interesting interaction, if I remember in 16th cent. Ming considered Muscovy/Russia as a subordinate inside their tributary system. Let's say that from that instance on, driven along with the traumas given by the Mongols they start to view China as a primary threat more than Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and Ottomans. Settlements in the Siberia became far more intensive since that time onward, almost 250 years before.
2) Then there was an instance of 2 Japanese fishermen that were stranded on the russian coast during the reign of Peter the Great. They were brought to him in St. Petersburg where they shared their knowledge about Japan. Let's say Russians are impressed by the stories and supposed riches.
3) Chinese concessions of Amur basin and the founding of Vladivostok comes at least 100 years earlier.
4) Alaska as the next colony immediately turns into profit, because they not only start to hunt furs but they discover gold deposits, which prompts a gold rush of the impoverished serfs from the now heavily populated Siberia.
5) Next step - Guberniya of Alaska
and Russian - American Company intensify trade with Mexico as the time passes. Settlements are founded along the Californian coast and there is enough of manpower to fill them.
6) Remember the plot from Zorro with Banderas where the dons have discovered the gold in California and wanted to use it to buy off the independence of California from Santa Ana? Let's move the date of its discovery right before Mexican independence, some 20 years earlier.
Stated gold + chaos during independence of Mexico from Spain + russian heavy coastal presence = eventual Russian California.
Something like this:
1) IRL Ming - Russian relations had one interesting interaction, if I remember in 16th cent. Ming considered Muscovy/Russia as a subordinate inside their tributary system. Let's say that from that instance on, driven along with the traumas given by the Mongols they start to view China as a primary threat more than Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and Ottomans. Settlements in the Siberia became far more intensive since that time onward, almost 250 years before.
2) Then there was an instance of 2 Japanese fishermen that were stranded on the russian coast during the reign of Peter the Great. They were brought to him in St. Petersburg where they shared their knowledge about Japan. Let's say Russians are impressed by the stories and supposed riches.
3) Chinese concessions of Amur basin and the founding of Vladivostok comes at least 100 years earlier.
4) Alaska as the next colony immediately turns into profit, because they not only start to hunt furs but they discover gold deposits, which prompts a gold rush of the impoverished serfs from the now heavily populated Siberia.
5) Next step - Guberniya of Alaska
and Russian - American Company intensify trade with Mexico as the time passes. Settlements are founded along the Californian coast and there is enough of manpower to fill them. 6) Remember the plot from Zorro with Banderas where the dons have discovered the gold in California and wanted to use it to buy off the independence of California from Santa Ana? Let's move the date of its discovery right before Mexican independence, some 20 years earlier.
Stated gold + chaos during independence of Mexico from Spain + russian heavy coastal presence = eventual Russian California.
MarshalBraginsky
Banned
You need to develop Arctic sailing techniques a lot earlier if Russian expansion into North America can be achieved. With Russia's focus on the Far East, they will be in a prime position to even take a few colonies in the Pacific.
katchen
Banned
Easy. Semyon Dezhnev in OTL discovered the Bering Strait and rounded it , but OTL, his discovery was forgotten because the Chkchis were hostile and there was no money in trading with them. ITTL, Dezhnev's party misses the Bering Strait because of fog, sea ice and adverse currents and goes on to sail along the North Shore of Alaska's Seward Peninsula to the Kobuk River, There, he discovers Innuits who will trade with him and gets furs and Walrus and Narwahl tusks. Going further up the Kobuk River to it's head of navigation, he portages to the Koyakuk River, travels down the Koyakuk to the Yukon and follows the Yukon South to the Pacific. He then follows the coast North to where hit is familiar and then back along the Chukchi Coast of Asia, this time discovering the Anadyr river and a faster wa rive route back to Yakutsk.
Subsequent explorations over the next 50 years follow the Yukon to it's sources and portage to the Deh Cho River which ITTL would be known as the Mackenzie River, finally reaching the West shore of Hudson's Bay at Chesterfield Inlet in 1705. This is well North of the furthest North Hudson's Bay Company post at Chruchill. Well before this (1660), the Chilkoot Pass has been discovered to the Inside Passage, which is readily traveled by small boat all the way to the head of Puget Sound. Russian posts follow by 1700 all the way to Puget Sound and by 1720 uthrough the Columbia Basin, accessed by portage from Puget Sound and the Rocky Mountain Trench from the Yukon and the Deh Cho Basins.
And small boats can travel the Pacific Coast all the way down to San Diego Bay, so that by the time Peter the Great is thinking of a pacific navy for Russia, Russia already has aan arc of outposts along the Pacific Coast and deep into North America, trancollecting and transporting furs, as well as Eastern nOrthodox missionaries. ITTL, somewhere along the line, they would bump into the Spanish, French and English. But the Russians would have a clear run from 1554 at what stayed unexplored territory until the 1789s ITTL.
Subsequent explorations over the next 50 years follow the Yukon to it's sources and portage to the Deh Cho River which ITTL would be known as the Mackenzie River, finally reaching the West shore of Hudson's Bay at Chesterfield Inlet in 1705. This is well North of the furthest North Hudson's Bay Company post at Chruchill. Well before this (1660), the Chilkoot Pass has been discovered to the Inside Passage, which is readily traveled by small boat all the way to the head of Puget Sound. Russian posts follow by 1700 all the way to Puget Sound and by 1720 uthrough the Columbia Basin, accessed by portage from Puget Sound and the Rocky Mountain Trench from the Yukon and the Deh Cho Basins.
And small boats can travel the Pacific Coast all the way down to San Diego Bay, so that by the time Peter the Great is thinking of a pacific navy for Russia, Russia already has aan arc of outposts along the Pacific Coast and deep into North America, trancollecting and transporting furs, as well as Eastern nOrthodox missionaries. ITTL, somewhere along the line, they would bump into the Spanish, French and English. But the Russians would have a clear run from 1554 at what stayed unexplored territory until the 1789s ITTL.
Getting there before America, Mexico or Great Britain will be tough. Maybe have more Russian settlers come to California and eventually turn it into an essential Russian colony. Then the Russian Californians help the Americans take Texas in exchange for being recognized as being Russian? Or is this too ASB?
Fort Ross was abandoned because of two reasons:
1. Russian government blocked (yes you read that right) importation of farmers into California by the RAC and
2. The HBC at Fort Langley offered to sell food to the RAC, negating the necessity of investing into Fort Ross.
The whole point was supplying Alaska with food so that settlement could grow. Sea Otter trade was declining and the RAC knew it. They did try to diversify but never had the manpower.
The Spanish position was very weak. The Russians could literally have claimed it with a single frigate in the early 19th c. (they had no legal right to such shenanigans, of course).
But the Russian government strongly disapproved of colonial adventurism in general, and knew how precarious its own projection power was compared to Britain. In large part it's because of concerns about Britain nothing happened.
Finally, there's the Americans. They had manpower and they had ships and they were very active and they didn't respect borders or diplomacy that much, being mostly private captains. The RAC and even HBC couldn't cope with them in the long run. Spain and Mexico couldn't deal with them either. The Hawaiian Kingdom also couldn't.
Americans are a huge factor.