Merchant Kings

by Stephen R. Bown

  Things were good: he had kept his colony alive, and Baranov was proving to be all he had hoped for: sober, ambitious, enterprising and expansion-minded, and aware that he was not merely running a mercantile enterprise, but was also representing Russian culture. Now, if only the pesky competition could be eliminated so that the Russians could present a united front against the dangerous and potentially violent native peoples and interloping British and American traders.

  Shelikhov continued to work on gaining government support for his enterprise, or at the very least getting a restriction on other companies joining the competition—too many ships sailing to Alaska would drive the price of goods down in China.

  As luck would have it, he had a new supporter in the court of Catherine the Great—a distant relative, twenty-year-old Platon Zubov, Catherine’s most recent lover. Shamelessly indulging Zubov, Catherine allowed him to sell favours for his own enrichment. Through this avenue, Shelikhov secured a partial monopoly on his activities in Russian America: no competitor would be allowed to establish an outpost or settlement, or indeed even to trade, within 500 versts (about 530 kilometres) of his and Golikov’s operations. Shelikhov and his wife

  Natalia celebrated for a time, but were dismayed with the arrival of more of Zubov’s “good” news. Zubov had tirelessly lobbied for several other of Shelikhov’s past requests: ten missionaries, a supply of Siberian exiles to ease his labour shortage, and the right or privilege of buying Russian serfs as agricultural workers. In the past, Shelikhov had boasted of his need for missionaries to tend to the spiritual needs of the colonists and spread the Christian faith to the natives. Indeed, he had lied about already having built a church to house them, and promised to pay for their upkeep. He had of course expected government financial aid, but none was forthcoming, so the gifts of serfs and priests were more of a mixed blessing, and one wonders if that was indeed the intent.

  But Shelikhov and his wife rose to the occasion. They would be sending more than 150 new people across the Pacific to Alaska, and set to work acquiring the ships, arranging the financing and organizing for this influx of settlers and employees. With the limited government monopoly in place, the colonists and missionaries would be reliant on Shelikhov for all communication with Russia, something over which he had complete control. And he had the doughty Baranov to handle any complaints in Russian America. When the delegation of workers and missionaries arrived in Irkutsk in May 1794 , Shelikhov and Natalia met them with smiles and a warm welcome, particularly for the government official that had been sent from St. Petersburg to oversee the well-being of the priests and serfs and ensure that Shelikhov kept his promises.

  Nikolai Petrovich Rezanov was a young and handsome noble from a distinguished Russian family that had lost most of its ancestral wealth. Highly educated and urbane, Rezanov had been in the military before studying law and joining the Bureau of Petitions. He accepted an invitation to stay as an honoured guest of the Shelikhovs in their large home, where he was introduced to their attractive, energetic and adventurous daughter, Anna. So enamoured were they with each other that Anna joined the travelling party of around four hundred as they barged and rode their horses thousands of miles east to Okhotsk on a journey that lasted months. As they slowly wended their way over the mountains, Shelikhov regaled Rezanov with tales of the valuable lands in Russian America and of their value to Russia, of the need to prevent the British from claiming it all and of the great achievements of his colony, all done for the betterment of the empire, naturally.

  The rude, dirty and chaotic settlements Baranov was banging into shape across the distant waters were little more than rudimentary factories for the extraction of furs, populated with surly workers and potentially violent indentured natives. In Shelikhov’s telling, however, they were quaint European villages eager for priests, teachers and greater links with Russia.

  After the ships set off from Okhotsk, bringing to Baranov an unwelcome and entirely unexpected human cargo, Shelikhov, Rezanov and their small party worked their way back to Irkutsk.

  While awaiting the winter snows to make travel easier for the long journey east, Rezanov and Anna fell in love and were married in January 1796. They set off for a new life together in St.

  Petersburg. As part of Anna’s substantial dowry, Shelikhov and Natalia had settled upon her a significant number of the shares of the Shelikhov-Golikov Company, a clever move that ensured Rezanov would not forget his interest in Russian America once he was back in the capital. Six months later, Shelikhov was dead from a heart attack at the age of forty-eight.

  On Kodiak Island, Baranov was furious at being saddled with the responsibility for the priests and demanded to be relieved after his five-year contract so that he could return to Russia. Natalia at first delayed and then begged him to stay on, and then further delayed sending his replacement for years, citing the chaos that Shelikhov’s death had precipitated. She had taken over the management of the enterprise and was embroiled in legal squabbles with the merchants of Irkutsk. The charges eventually reached St. Petersburg, where she fortunately had an ally in her son-in-law, Rezanov. The merchants of Irkutsk trading with Russian America were resisting all of Natalia’s efforts to get them to join their resources for a common end, despite additional pressure from the Russian government to form the United American Company. They wanted their independence, and as a result they hated Natalia. Rezanov, who had assumed a position of power as a respected adviser under the new czar, Paul, persuaded him of the need for a colonial corporation in the mould of those created by other European powers: the Dutch East India Company, the English East India Company and the Hudson’s Bay Company. It was a tried-and-true model for success. This monopoly would serve “to soften the manners of the savages by bringing them into continuous contact with Russians . . . and the Russian way of looking at things,” Rezanov advised. Russian America, despite nearly half a century of unofficial occupation, still had no government. Rezanov proposed that the entity be called the Russian American Company.

  On July 8, 1799, Czar Paul i decided in favour of Rezanov and the new Russian American Company. All competing companies had one year to either be absorbed or wind up their operations. The czar also changed the long-standing ban on nobles engaging in commercial activity by allowing them to invest in, but not manage, the new monopoly. Natalia and her children were all ennobled for their role in promoting Russian culture in the wilds of America. Rezanov was appointed procurator general of the senate, and became the only official government representative on the board of the Russian American Company.

  Members of the aristocracy and senior government officials flocked to invest in the new company, as did merchants and traders. In 1800 the head office of the enterprise was moved from Irkutsk to St. Petersburg, to be closer to both the government and powerful investors. It was a good year to invest; in its first year, the value of company stock spiked nearly 300 per cent.

  Baranov owned a substantial number of shares, and when he heard the news he must have chuckled in satisfaction at his good fortune at not pressing for his resignation. Now he did not want to leave his new home, for it was also the home of his two children, Antipatr and Irina, and a wife with whom he had grown comfortable. With the monopoly in place, he would no longer be distracted dealing with pesky competitors and could devote himself solely to the task of expanding the Russian American Company’s trade network, spreading Russian culture and promoting Russia’s political dominance. He was elevated to the position of manager, or governor, in charge of the Russian American Company, which had monopoly jurisdiction, political and commercial, over all of Russian America.

  5

  THE POWERS OF THE RUSSIAN AMERICAN COMPANY were similar to those of the other famous trading monopolies of the era and included the right to maintain armed forces, make treaties and agreements with other nearby powers and, of course, conduct commercial activity as a monopoly. The company would own all the property within its jurisdiction, save the purely personal property of
its employees, and control all other activity. Its domain was to be enormous—from the Arctic as far south as the 55th parallel, and from Siberia east to the Pacific American coast and then inland to an as yet undefined distance.

  The company’s initial charter was to last for twenty years. It was to be a government within a government, and Baranov was to be the undisputed boss over what was basically a medium-sized kingdom. Although thousands of native people would laugh at the notion that Baranov was now their overlord, the company already had nine outposts other than Kodiak, which by now had about forty wooden buildings, including a church.

  Russian power in America increased after the formation of the Russian American Company because the various local peoples could no longer play off the competing Russian business enterprises against each other. “After 1799,” writes historian Lydia Black in Russians in Alaska, 1732–1867, “there was no room for maneuvering, and political independence in external affairs was lost to all nations within the immediate control of the Company.” The balance of power had shifted, and the company continued to expand its operations southward into the sea-otter-rich territory of the warlike Tlingit. When Baranov first visited Sitka Sound in 1797, he found it to be an ideal spot for a company base. The large, sheltered inlet was located among intricate, forest-lined fjords dotted with innumerable islands. The climate was rainy and the vegetation lush, made possible by mild ocean currents. Gargantuan stands of hemlock, spruce and cedar blanketed mighty mountains; the soil was rich for agriculture and the waters good for fishing. Most importantly, the region hosted a multitude of sea otters, which were becoming hard to find farther north. But this was, of course, not an empty wilderness: it was the heartland of the Tlingit. The beaches were lined with giant cedar longhouses situated behind rows of totem poles. Hector Chevigny writes: “Their civilization was definite, their arts developed to the point of formalism; they practiced democratic government yet upheld grades of aristocracy . . . Like piratical Vikings they put to sea in long, perfectly fashioned canoes, seating thirty warriors armed with helmets, breastplates, and shields. They wandered hundreds of miles from their bases, to Puget’s Sound and the Columbia River, up to the Aleutians and even along the Bering coast, in search of booty and slaves to labor in their villages or to offer as human sacrifices.” Invading this territory would certainly cause trouble, and had not been possible when Russian enterprises were competing with one another.

  Baranov feared that if he failed to push his operations farther south, the British would move in, claim the territory and dominate the trade; his intelligence reports suggested that a number of foreign ships were visiting the region every year to trade for valuable pelts. “It is safe to assume,” he wrote, “that in the last ten years the English and Americans have sent to that region ten ships annually and we may also assume each carried away an average of . . . two thousand skins . . . At the current Canton price of forty-five rubles apiece this amounts to four hundred and fifty thousand rubles . . . And such shipments to Canton have a very depressing effect on our own market . . . If we want to prevent the ruin of our own business by the English and Americans some such step must be taken. Above all, it is imperative that we move nearer them to watch their actions.”

  The British and American traders were also dealing in guns, and the raiding parties of Tlingit coming north were now far more dangerous. The Napoleonic War in Europe was weakening the British and Spanish, so it was time for the Russian American Company to reach south and establish control. Baranov set his eyes on Sitka Sound, where the company could establish a new base and settlement.

  In the winter of 1799 Baranov threw himself into the Herculean task of planning the advance, and in May 1800 his ships and hundreds of men set off on the company’s most ambitious expansion attempt into a new market. In total, Baranov commanded more than 1,100 men in small boats (about 100

  Russians, 700 Aleuts and 300 natives of various other tribal groups). Storms sank some small ships, and a Tlingit night raid killed perhaps thirty men before they even reached Sitka. When Baranov met with Skayutlelt, the ranking chief of Sitka Sound, he was given permission to build a company fort on a prime beach. But the deal did not meet the unanimous approval of the sound’s residents. The elderly chief was criticized by others of his clan for daring to let Russian invaders settle in the sound. While Baranov’s labourers worked to transform the giant trees into walls for the fort, native war parties patrolled nearby. Within months, the fort was complete. Its base was about twenty metres long by fifteen metres wide, with walls half a metre thick, topped by a second storey that extended outward from the first, and included watchtowers at two corners. The settlement had a smithy, a cookhouse, barracks and fields cleared for agriculture and domestic animals. Baranov called it Archangel.

  Weary from his exertions and the chilly weather, the fifty-two-year-old Baranov prepared to return north to Kodiak, leaving about thirty Russians and perhaps four hundred Aleuts to man the fort until he could return with reinforcements. On the voyage, nearly two hundred of his Aleut hunters perished from eating tainted shellfish. He faced a near-mutiny upon his return to Kodiak, one that was urged on by priests and some swaggering naval officers, abetted by the fact that they had not received supplies from Okhotsk in two years. Baranov subdued the mutineers just as the long-delayed news arrived of his appointment as head manager of the Russian American Company. Realizing that he was now quite wealthy due to the rise in value of his shares, he donated substantial sums to fund a school. He also received recognition for all his hard work for the company and the nation: a medal from the new czar, Alexander, “for faithful service in hardship and want and for unremitting loyalty.”

  His triumph, however, was soon tainted by news of tragedy. Later that summer he learned that his settlement and fort at Sitka had been attacked by Tlingit warriors, armed with American guns, and had been “reduced to ashes and the people annihilated.” There were only forty-two survivors out of hundreds of colonists he had left there only months before. The Tlingit had then plundered more than four thousand sea otter pelts from the storerooms. During the summer of 1800, Tlingit warriors also attacked other Russian American Company outposts along the coast, killing nearly six hundred people.

  The company’s losses were stupendous, as was the loss in lives, including those of men whom Baranov had known for years.

  And then there was the company’s loss of access to the best remaining sea otter habitat.

  Baranov was certainly buffeted by extremes of news. Just after learning of this devastating setback for the company, he heard that St. Petersburg had elevated his rank to that of collegiate councillor—equivalent to a colonel in the army, or a captain in the navy. If he so chose, he could demand to be addressed as “Excellency.” For a man of humble birth and education, it was an astonishing elevation that would make his job of governing Russian America significantly easier. To his board of directors he wrote, “I am a nobleman, but Sitka is destroyed.

  I cannot live under the burden, so I am going forth either to restore the possessions of my august benefactor or to die in the attempt.”

  Vowing revenge on the Tlingit, Baranov promised to retake Sitka and keep it with the same obsessive determination that had propelled him to carve a profitable business enterprise out of a collection of malcontents, under-supported by a head office on a distant continent and plagued with internal disputes and power struggles. He schemed with British sea captain Joseph O’Cain to acquire arms and ammunition, and worked tirelessly to get the money he needed for wages and equipment by sending hundreds of Aleuts south to California with O’Cain in a bizarre profit-sharing scheme that surely would not have passed muster among his board of directors in St. Petersburg. The furs would be captured with Russian American Company personnel; O’Cain’s large ship would then transport them across the Pacific Ocean, and O’Cain would sell them in Canton, under the American flag (Russia was forbidden to trade there). O’Cain would then provide all the Russian American Company profi
t to Baranov in guns, ammunition and other equipment needed for his conquest of the Tlingit homeland. By September 1804 Baranov had amassed his corporate invasion force and began sailing south in a great fleet that consisted of two sloops, two schooners and three hundred smaller boats. By good fortune, a 450-ton Russian frigate, the Neva, commanded by Captain Lieutenant Urey Lisianski, was in the region and agreed to aid Baranov’s assault.

  When the imposing force entered Sitka Sound, Baranov sent a messenger demanding that the Tlingit surrender and leave the region: he would build his next fort and settlement on the very beach where the Tlingit village now stood, he vowed. But the Tlingit remained defiant. There was a bloody battle as Baranov’s forces assaulted the Tlingit village, but the Russians were repulsed. Baranov was blasted in the arm before he called on the mighty Neva to bombard the Tlingit town with its cannons. They fired on the village for days before the Tlingit surrendered and fled. Later that fall, during formal peace negotiations with the Tlingit, Baranov gained the right to a new location for a Russian American Company settlement, exactly where he had vowed to put it. The Tlingit would remain an independent people from the company and retain their own laws and customs, but they were to be brought increasingly within the economic orbit of the company’s operations.

  Intermarriage became more common, and the Russian Orthodox Church became more influential. At the new company base, which Baranov called New Archangel and established as his head office, he built a shipyard and announced that it would be open as an international port. For many years, New Archangel was the only free port in Pacific America for shipbuilding, repairs and reprovisioning. The town, which became known as Sitka, was to serve as the capital of Russian America until 1867.