Category: Stories

Before ARCCoM there was ARCC- The American Russian Commercial Company. Founded in 1853 by Peter Kostromitanov, an agent of the Russian American Company (who later became Russian Consul in San Francisco) and a handful of San Francisco business owners, ARCC was initially chartered with one unique purpose: the import of Alaskan ice for distribution in…

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…