Wi Russia colonize california

Do you mean all of California or part of it? There was Fort Ross, so north California isn’t a stretch. If they somehow took over all of California without Britain or America stepping in, Alaska could make Russia very rich with gold and oil.
 
Do you mean all of California or part of it? There was Fort Ross, so north California isn’t a stretch. If they somehow took over all of California without Britain or America stepping in, Alaska could make Russia very rich with gold and oil.
Plus for them to be able to logically do it, Russia would need either to heavily settle Alaska, or win the Russo-Japanese war, simply to make getting to California easier
 
Plus for them to be able to logically do it, Russia would need either to heavily settle Alaska, or win the Russo-Japanese war, simply to make getting to California easier

Fort Ross was founded to be able to procure supplies for Alaska (Russian settlers there had been dying from starvation). The attempts to expand proved to be costly and after agreement regarding food supplies for Alaska was made with Hudson Bay Company (and most of the local otters had been exterminated) the settlement lost most of its practical sense.

The main problem with the whole idea was that to be at least theoretically feasible it requires a much earlier settlement of the Russian Far East with readjustment of the border along the modern lines. Even then, the reason for the schema is anything but clear: Russia did have Southern Siberia and Far East to settle (did not quite happen until early XX) and, except for the furs (sea otter was almost extinct by mid-XIX) there was nothing attractive in Alaska or California.

Anyway, formally, neither Alaska nor Ross Settlement were Russian colonies: they were territories administered by Russian-American Company, which was formally a private enterprise which was steadily losing money (it just “happened” that the imperial family was among the major shareholders, which helped with the issues of subsidies :)).
 
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