Alaska: Saga of a Bold Land

by Walter R. Borneman

The years of cordiality between Russia and Great Britain in Alaska came to an end with the outbreak of the Crimean War in 1854. Precipitated by Russia’s designs over the Black Sea, the war was fought in Europe, but it would have lasting ramifications for Alaska. Both the Hudson’s Bay Company and the Russian-American Company pleaded with their respective governments to declare Alaska a neutral zone. Both parties agreed to this. Doubtless Great Britain could have easily seized Sitka and other key points during the conflict, but to do so would have raised the ire of the United States at a time when Britain was summarily occupied elsewhere. So an uneasy truce hung over Alaska’s islands like a fog, but the bitterness that remained between the two rivals kindled Russian hopes that the United States, and not the more geographically logical choice of Great Britain, would someday acquire Alaska from the exhausted Russian Empire.27