Before President Donald Trump sits down with Russian President Vladimir Putin for a highly-anticipated summit in Alaska to discuss Moscow’s war on Ukraine, experts emphasize the historical significance of this meeting location, specifically how the United States purchased the land from Russia back in 1867.
“I think that what’s missing in a lot of our political conversations in the world right now is history, and there’s a history behind a lot of what’s happening not only in this Russian-American relationship, but also this war,” Lee Farrow, history professor and chair of the Department of History and World Cultures at Auburn University at Montgomery, told ABC News.
Prior to Alaska becoming the 49th state of the U.S., the territory was under the control of Russia after Czar Peter the Great sent explorer Vitus Bering to the Alaskan coast in 1725, according to the U.S. Department of State’s Office of the Historian. Afterward, “Russia had a keen interest in this region, which was rich in natural resources and lightly inhabited,” the office of the historian’s website said.
As the United States was expanding westward in the 1800s and Russia was dealing with a lack of financial resources and military presence in Alaska due to its involvement in the Crimean War, Czar Alexander the Second decided “perhaps it might be a good idea to go ahead and get rid of this faraway colony,” Farrow said.
“The stars kind of aligned at the right moment for this sale to occur,” Farrow told ABC News.
Russia officially offered to sell Alaska to the U.S. in 1859, “believing the United States would off-set the designs of Russia’s greatest rival in the Pacific, Great Britain,” the office of the historian said. But, Russia had to “beg” the U.S. to buy the colony, as the Americans were not initially interested in acquiring the land, Andrei Znamenski, history professor at the University of Memphis, told ABC News.
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“If we don’t do anything, England, which is our enemy, she will come and take it over. So they decided to beg the United States [to] please buy this ice box. Eventually, a few Congress people actually had to be bribed,” Znamenski said.
After a delay due to the American Civil War, then-Secretary of State William Seward agreed to a renewed proposal to pay $7.2 million in exchange for the land on March 30, 1867, the office of the historian said.
The Senate approved the treaty of purchase on April 9, President Andrew Jackson signed it on May 28 and Alaska was “formally transferred to the United States on Oct. 18, 1867,” the office of the historian said.
After the treaty was signed, people on Capitol Hill argued “whether or not this was a good purchase” or if it “was a wise move at that particular time,” with people later referring to the acquisition as “Seward’s Folly,” Farrow said. This perception changed once discoveries of gold, silver and other natural resources in Alaska were found, Farrow said.
“It was actually quite a very good deal for the United States,” Farrow said.
Only after the increase in discoveries of natural resources, the federal government began to take more interest in the land, with Alaska finally becoming a state on Jan. 3, 1959, Farrow said.
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“Americans turned out to be incredibly lucky by purchasing the so-called ice box, but little did they know that they would be so happy. It turned out to be the greatest investment in terms of territory,” Znamenski said.
Regardless of what comes out of the meeting between Trump and Putin on Friday, Farrow told ABC News it’s crucial for political leaders to remember the historical context when it comes to conflict and relationships between countries, since “it’s not just about things that have happened in the last 10 years.”
“The Russian-American relationship has been so fraught with ups and downs, and there’s always a way of looking at the past and focusing on the positive if we’re going to try and mediate a war between Russia and Ukraine and actually have any hope of achieving something,” Farrow said.
