Арктика и Север (Dec 2021)
About Russian Alaska and Its Ruler A.A. Baranov
Abstract
The purpose of this study is to analyze the present and past of the history of Alaska. Such a combination of times highlighted the most difficult problem of ambiguous attitude to the historical past in the USA from the standpoint of modernity. In the process of destroying monuments under the onslaught of the Black Lives Matter movement, the local Indian population accused the long-gone A.A. Baranov of racism, persecution of the indigenous population, enslavement of Tlingits and Aleuts for hunting fur-bearing animals. On July 14, 2020, the Sitka town and district assembly supported these accusations and decided to move his monument from the town square to the local museum. The review article reveals the objective conditions of the historical process during the period of A.A. Baranov's activity in Alaska in 1790–1818, using the methods of historicism, search and systematization of information, analysis and synthesis. The assessment of his personality is updated. The article shows the beginning of G.I. Shelikhov's and A.A. Baranov's activity in the North-Eastern Company, and then its transformation in 1799 into the Russian-American Company (RAC). The article examines the war with the Tlingit people of 1802–1804, the missionary work of Herman Alaskinskiy, three assessments of the nature of Russian colonization, N.P. Rezanov's plan for the modernization of RAC. The episode with Russia's sale of Alaska to the United States is also being clarified.
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