Author: vgorbich

Ropes and Co. were establishing themselves as players in the trans-Atlantic trade, the Russian American Company had been established as both a commercial and colonial force in the Pacific. After several Russian explorations of the Alaskan coast b, private merchants in Russia pushed the government to grant an official charter for establishing regular trade. Of particular interest…

By 1825, the nature of Russian-American trade had begun to change. America was expanding and with expansion came economic diversification – not only in the variety of cash crops available for export, but with the number of countries that were willing to trade. While still an important source for iron and other building materials (especially in…

Despite the importance of the trade relationship, bilateral, relations were slow to get started. The burgeoning American nation made its first attempt at approaching Russia on a high level during the revolutionary war, when the US Continental Congress appointed Francis Dana as ambassador to Russia. Dana, the personal secretary of John Adams, was given two…