Alaska: Saga of a Bold Land

by Walter R. Borneman

By the late 1850s, Russia’s enthusiasm for Alaska was clearly waning. Russian America had become an ever-increasing drain on the czarist government. In large part, this was because Russia’s devastation of the fur trade and its inability to diversify into other enterprises had resulted in dwindling economic returns. On its western front, Russia was worn out financially and emotionally by its losing efforts in the Crimean War. The ill-fated “Charge of the Light Brigade” notwithstanding, Great Britain and its allies had managed to keep the Black Sea from becoming a Russian lake. The last thing the czar wanted now was for Alaska to fall into British hands.