Dividing the Northern World: The Arctic and the Alaska Purchase

“Probably this treaty stands alone in the history of diplomacy, as an important treaty conceived, initiated, prosecuted and completed, without being preceded or attended by protocols or despatches,” declared U.S. Secretary of State William Henry Seward after he arranged the purchase of Russian America (Alaska).1 The treaty had indeed been negotiated in a highly unconventional manner. Seward and the Russian minister in Washington, Eduard Stoeckl, worked out the terms swiftly and almost alone.2 Stoeckl’s written instructions from his government were only a few pages long. Seward, who received no formal directive at all, merely consulted briefly with U.S. President Andrew Johnson before going ahead.3 No detailed records were kept by either side. Despite this lack of primary source material on the negotiation itself, historians have been able to analyze most of the issues involved, particularly the two key questions: why Russian Tsar Alexander II and his advisers wanted to dispose of the territory and why the United States decided to acquire it.4 The broad consensus is that the Russians were increasingly anxious to be rid of their only overseas colony, seeing it as more of a geopolitical and economic liability than an asset, while Seward viewed acquisition as a way to strengthen his country’s position on the Pacific coast. Both sides wanted to discomfit their mutual adversary, the United Kingdom, by placing the colony of British Columbia between two large stretches of U.S. soil. Seward, who was bent on further expansion, hoped that the purchase would induce the colonists to join the United States.5