Fort Ross, Russian Colony in California
Early 19th-Century Outpost Marked Limit of Russian Empire
Oct 15, 2009
In the late 1500s and early 1600s, while Spain, France, and England were expanding their empires westward into the Americas, Russia was doing the same to the east, reaching the Pacific by 1639. A century later, Russian explorers crossed (and named) the Bering Strait and claimed Alaska for the Russian Empire.
The China Trade
By the early 1800s, there were Russian settlements extending from Siberia to what is now the southern boundary of Alaska. Like the first English settlements in Virginia, they were primarily commercial ventures; but whereas the chief commodity of the English was tobacco, for the Russians it was fur. The pelts of sea otters and other marine mammals were highly valued in the China trade, and the Alaskan settlements contributed significantly to the Russian imperial treasury.
Russian Expansion into California
As the population of sea otters began to dwindle in Alaskan waters, the Russians sailed further and further south, fishing the coasts well into Spanish territory, even as far as Baja California. Needing a base closer to the fishing grounds, the Russians in 1812 established a village a few miles north of Bodega Bay. The site was called Metini by the native Kashaya people, but the Russians called their settlement “Ross” – evoking the name of their homeland, Rossiia.
Life at the Ross Colony
Ross, though an imperial Russian colony, was run as a commercial operation by the Russian-American Fur Company. The settlement consisted primarily of a stockade, with blockhouses for cannons at two corners. Within the stockade were the manager’s house, other officials’ quarters, barracks for the soldiers, some artisans’ workshops, and a chapel. Outside the stockade there was a windmill, a cattle yard, a bakery, and various outbuildings. At the mouth of the stream below the stockade was a shipyard, a forge, a tannery, and storage sheds. The population consisted of up to a hundred Russians, at least as many native Alaskans, and a varying number of Kashaya depending on the season. There were some women, mostly among the native population, and a fair number of children, mostly of mixed ancestry.
By the end of the 1830s, Russia had decided to sell off the Ross colony. The fur trade was nearly depleted, the Mexican government was encouraging greater settlement in northern California, and the area was seeing an increasing influx of American settlers as well. The colony’s last manager, Alexander Rotchev, offered the British, the French, and the Mexican governments, successively, the opportunity to purchase the colony, but all declined. The eventual buyer was a Swiss-born private Mexican citizen named John Sutter, on whose property near Sacramento gold would be discovered in 1848. On January 1, 1842, the Russian-American Company flag was lowered at the Ross colony, and the Russian presence in California came to an end. Today, a restored Fort Ross is a California State Park.
Source:
Watrous, Stephen. Outpost of an Empire: Russian Expansion to America. Jenner, CA: Fort Ross Interpretive Association, 2001. (Accessed October 8, 2009)
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