Talk:Russian-American Company

HBC-RAC agreement of 1839 re Panhandle trading rights

For the interest of anyone contributing to this page, I have copied into a sandbox page a passage in the British Columbia Chronicle 1778-1846 Adventures by Sea and Land by Helen B. and G.P.V. Akrigg a few pages concerning the HBC-RAC agreement of 1839 in regard to the RAC leasing the mainland of the Panhandle to the HBC in return for a supply of foodstuffs and other considerations. Please see the relevant section on my BC & Pacific Northwest resources sandbox.Skookum1 23:33, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

1867 NY Times article on fur posts

This pdf is from the NY Times archives online and is a Department of State document describing the known fur posts of the Russian American Company". Seems useful in terms of expanding/adding/creating articles and a Category:Russian-American Company posts category.Skookum1 (talk) 17:13, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

Wiki Page "Ernest Sipes" Contains Additional Material on the Russian American Company

There's a link to an article Sipes wrote that was published in England in History Today magazine

Name

The Russian name (Под высочаиший Его Императорского Величества Покровительство Российский-Американский Компаний) is the pure rubbish. Almost like "All your base are belong to us". Do anyone have the cited book "The Russian-American Company" of Richard A.Pierce (1984) for fact checking? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.114.236.145 (talk) 06:00, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

This name is a mistranslation from English into Russian. I removed it.21:13, 7 March 2010 (UTC) UeArtemis (talk)

The above information is incorrect. The Russian name (Под высочаиший Его Императорского Величества Покровительство Российский-Американский Компаний) comes directly from the Company's Great Seal which was kept at the Company's headquarters in St.Petersburg and was distributed to all posts for use within Russian-America. A pictoral example can be found on the reverse of the various denominations of the Company's bank notes with the wording in abbreviated form.(please see http://www.numismondo.com/pm/aka/) Please refer to "The Russian-America Company", page 32,and "The Destiny of Russian America" by A.I.Alekseev (The Limestone Press, 1990) page 116. If you do not have access to these volumes, do not refer to their contents as "pure rubbish". I have re-instated the correct name for the Company.Ltkizhi (talk) 22:07, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

Men, you don't know Russian ^_^ "Под Высочайшим Его Императорского Величества Покровительством Российская Американская Компания" is the right name. "Под высочаиший Его Императорского Величества Покровительство Российский-Американский Компаний" is a real pure rubbish like "All your base are belong to us".UeArtemis (talk) 09:19, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for the correction of the Russian grammar. In return I will correct your English: "Under His Highest Imperial Majesty's Protection Russian-American Company" I have edited it so in the article. Ltkizhi (talk) 21:00, 11 March 2010 (UTC) OK, but I made a mistake. it is the "Highest Protection", not the "Highest His Imperial Majesty". I will fix it. UeArtemis (talk) 22:38, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Flag of the Russian-American Company

The flag illustrated by nuclearvacum is incorrect, or at least has no basis in historic reference. A better illustration would be the original painting of the flag from the decree of 1806 establishing the flag by Imperial decree: An image can be found in a fairly exhaustive article on the flag's history at:http://www.fortrossinterpretive.org/.../History%20of%20the%20RAC%20flag%20coloroptimized.pdf - ```` — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ltkizhi (talk • contribs) 01:30, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

I have replaced nuclearvacum's illustration with an historic flag taken from the Imperial Russian Government's "Album of Standards, Flags and Pennants, used in the Russian Empire. 1835 (Флаг Российско-Американской Компании. Источник: "Собрание Штандартов, Флагов и Вымпелов, употребляемых в Российской империи". 1835)"

I have replaced nuclearvacum's flag again, and will continue to do so, as the continued insertion of his design in preference to an original, historic illustration from the time period (1806) amounts to "vandalism". His version is more than incorrect; it is wrong. The spelling of the Company's name is wrong, details (poorly rendered) on crowns and in the design are wrong, and the overall effect of modern computer rendering is incompatable with an historic flag when an original illustration is available. It would be a service to Wikipedia readers to remove all references to nuclearvacum's design(Ltkizhi (talk) 15:24, 26 March 2015 (UTC))

Battle of Sitka?

Here to do some other fixes, and while reading realized there's no mention of the initial destruction of Sitka by the Tlingit in ... 1802? Maybe I missed it, but it's a "signal event" and should be here for sure.Skookum1 (talk) 09:39, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

"the lease"

A later lease to the Hudson's Bay Company of the southeastern sector of what is now the Alaska Panhandle, as far north as 56° 30' N, followed in 1838 as part of a damages settlement due to treaty violations by the Company's governor, Baron Ferdinand von Wrangel, in 1833.

Pretty sure yesterday I read in one of the things I was browsing that the lease, at least in its original form, when to Icy Strait/Cross Sound... the 56-30 line (roughly the mouth of the Stikine) echoes the Canning/Bagot reading of the 1825 treaty where the marine boundary should have gone, according to the wording of the treaty, north to 56 before hitting the mainland, instead Americans maintained it went east even though the head of the Portland Canal is nowhere near 56 N. I was looking for the lease itself, but only came across passing mentions of its terms; I was hoping to find the contract itself; you'd think it would be out there somewhere on-line. Probably in BC Archives but only indexed, not online...under what name who knows? Or in HBC Archives in Winnipeg, maybe.Skookum1 (talk) 09:44, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

British spelling??

Wondering about the various '-ised' endings I'm seeing; even the "British" sources here (British Columbian that is) use the North American -ized......and certainly the American cites do. Not sure about any translated versions of the Russian materials, such as there are. No reason to use {{Canadian English}} template here, but its US equivalent seems appropriate, rather than so-called "global usage" UK English.Skookum1 (talk) 09:45, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

Just how I write, if you find it to be an issue change it. Voltaire's Vaquero (talk) 06:54, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

Pacific Northwest vs. Oregon Country

I'm not going to get into an edit war over this matter. It seems redundant to refer to the spotty interest in the Columbia/Puget Sound as specifically Pacific Northwest. Oregon Country is the only generic regional name I am aware of, though you seem to take offense at it Skookum. I wont accept PNW though, given that Alaska is obvious a part of that region. I'm open to something besides Oregon Country, but PNW is simply silly. Voltaire's Vaquero (talk) 07:02, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

Part of Alaska is in the Pacific Northwest; just as only part of Montana is, and part of California. Skagway, Juneau, Wrangell are, Anchorage is not. Or does it identify itself as such? (I haven't looked at local sources). The North Slope, Yukon basin and Alaska Peninsula and Aleutians are all Alaska too, like Anchorage; but that doesn't make them part of the Pacific Northwest.

The issue with using "Oregon Country" before that term was current is anachronistic language; and did the Russians use it? No, I'm assuming. Due to the American associations/preference it, it may occur more in modern sources; but in the terms of the time a more explicit wording is called for, even if using it "the region under dispute by the US and Britain known as the Oregon Country (known to the British as the Columbia Department". Qualification is needed; due to the dual names found in the respective POVs (and sources); to the Spanish it was all California as far as Mount St Elias; I don't know if the Russians gave any names to other parts of the coast, the way Vancouver coined New Georgia, New Hanover, New Bremen and others. It's problematic that the US economic claims (mostly fur) at the time on the area were in an era when the name itself hadn't even been coined yet. Also why in many articles I write "in what is now British Columbia", as that name did not exist until 1858.Skookum1 (talk) 09:10, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

So then what is to be used? Maybe I'm being crazy, but I tend to imagine "Pacific Northwest" as "The Northern Pacific Coast of North America". Voltaire's Vaquero (talk) 12:38, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

As indeed it is - the Pacific Coast of the northwestern part of the continent (there being Bering Strait and Arctic Ocean coasts also). The "Pacific" part was appended to "the Northwest (Coast)" to distinguish the region from the Great Northwest, i.e. MI, MN, WI. As per adjustments and comments on the Pacific Northwest page, the 'Cascadia' concept is a branding campaign; I don't know about American historical usages but what lay beyond the continental divide in Canadian/BC history was/is "the Pacific Slope". But in the one context re the Russian America article the wording that went "north to the limit of Spanish possession at the 42nd parallel north" is far preferable to using the Oregon Country term, which has various baggage as explained. Best to put it how the source does; though as noted latter-day American sources might use Oregon Country (or even Oregon Territory) without that being how their sources described things; in the c.1840 context that might be find, but not for e.g. the era of Rezanov, in other words before the phrase "Oregon Country" ever existed, and even before the word "Oregon" itself was ever coined....just doesn't sound right, and prejudices the descriptions using it to the "American side" of the dispute; or rather that whole area was, as I think you realize, not even a "condominium of interests" but an area of mutual access with both sides deferring the question of title for a certain period of years; I've seen some content/sources that even say "jointly governed by" which is anything but what the situation was.Skookum1 (talk) 16:28, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

Why are you focused on a term I already said I have minimal preference for? I changed the section names to avoid using Oregon Country. The absolute lack of any Russian colonies south of Sitka (outside Ross) until after the '24 and '25 treaties to me means the article doesn't need fret over a potential misunderstanding. Russian America in this context of before the US/UK territorial treaties can mean merely what is now Alaska, rather than the claimed border that was placed to the south. If you have an issue with this, please offer alternative suggestions. I do plan on making a section on the RAC operations in the Kuriles, thus the change for the general section as well. As a side note, Oregon as a term existed since the 1700s, though Rezanov usually just referred to the Columbia River. Voltaire's Vaquero (talk) 00:50, 16 December 2014 (UTC)

per Oregon (toponym) it was coined in the 18th C for the Columbia River NOT for the region; the provenance of the term "Oregon Country" is not until after Rezanov etc. What Russian term there may have been for what lay between 54-40 after that line was withdrawn to (from 45-50 then from 51) is debatable; in their mind the limits of the Ukases would define what is Russian America. As note, the term "California" applied in the Spanish context to include OR/WA/BC and SE Alaska. I'm wary of the OC term due in part to its POV overtones and partisan origin, and also because seeing it used for times before the term for the region got circulated widely (1830s, I believe) just does not make any sense. And sounds odd.Skookum1 (talk) 05:02, 16 December 2014 (UTC)

In the same sense the border of Russian America may have at one point been claimed a large expanse south of Alaska, California could have been claimed by the Spanish areas well beyond what they colonised. Given that they barely made any colonies in San Francisco Bay, let alone anywhere north other than Vancouver Is. and Neah Bay, I don't see why it should be an issue to use "Californias". Case closed in my mind. Voltaire's Vaquero (talk) 18:57, 16 December 2014 (UTC)

New Bremen, New Hanover et al didn't "take" either, point is that from the Russian or Spanish contexts - from any era before the treaty of 1818 and the arrangements of 1819, which were before the term "Oregon Country" was coined and made the "brand" for the US (deferred) claim in the area only after that; California I mention only by comparing terminology to that of the Russians, or what the Russian usage might have been for those regions; per the ukase of 1825, particularly its original 45-50 line, to them that would be Russian America. To the British (and coined by the fur company traders/explorers, "the Pacific Slope" rather than Columbia Department, which was the "wing" of the HBC in the region; the term Columbia District is more territorial in nature and until the creation of Fts Victoria and Langley (which were part of Columbia Dept operations) was not used for other than the Columbia basin fur district. Names are slidey and slippery in the Pacific Northwest; "New Caledonia", by the mid 1850s, had come into use for all of what was left of British territory on the mainland, including even Fort Langley; at the time of the partition, it had only meant the northern forts focussed around Ft St James. Re all this, they had no name for the coast, other than the transient "New Bremen", "New Hanover" series of names coined by Vancouver. When writing here, I try to use terms suitable for the time as well as the place; when mentioning a subject delineated along Russian and Spanish lines, describing the northward limit of Spanish territory by its latitude is pretty straightforward; in lieu of using a term from a later period; might as well just say "Oregon" if anachronistic terms are used instead. And the Spanish, until the Nootka Conventions, did claim the Alaskan shore as part of their "Spanish lake", though somewhere along the way I remember a meeting or exchange of papers making Mt St Elias the division point or rather the end of Spanish interests; Nootka didn't end them either, which is why 1818 could happen; they did not surrender their claim, only withdrew and the terms of the convention left it open, as did the 1819 arrangement between the British and Americans, open to other powers; had the Russians settled the Columbia, or the Spanish remained at Nootka Sound and wound up garrisoning the Strait of Juan de Fuca, it would be a very different world indeed; Vancouver had proposed a transportation colony (prison colony) for Puget Sound and the Columbia; all such then-possibilities were shoved aside by the Napoleonic Wars, which changed not just Europe but the evolution of empire elsewhere...(or in the Spanish case, self-immolation per Mexico et al) .

My main issue here is that care should be used when using any term with complications on it; "the boundary with the region that later came to be known as the Oregon Country" is much preferable, encyclopaedically if not in brevity, to "the boundary of the Oregon Country". 1840, fine.....but not decades before that; same as with referring to the Fraser goldfields as being in Canada, for a time when that name was for only on the other side of the Great Lakes. Names matter.Skookum1 (talk) 06:46, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

Question about flag-map of the Russian-American Company

Is this flag-map historical? It is in Wikimedia Commons from 2012, but now only 3 userboxes use it:

• ru:user:Alex1986rus, from 29 August 2015
• ru:user:Илья Драконов, from 26 August 2015
• uk:user:Илья Драконов, today, 09:42

Perhaps, it be useful for this article? Or, on contrary, it is globally harmful?

— Yuriy Dzyаdyk (t•c), 16:59, 5 January 2016 (UTC).

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