Description

In 1799, Emperor Paul I of Russia granted a charter to establish the Russian-American Company. The company was an outgrowth of the Shelikhov-Golikov Company, a fur-trading venture founded in 1783 by Grigorii Ivanovich Shelikhov (1747–95) and Ivan Larionovich Golikov, and of several other companies. In 1784, Shelikhov founded the first permanent Russian settlement in Alaska, at Three Saints Bay on Kodiak Island. Although primarily a commercial entity, the Russian-American Company took on the responsibilities of Russian colonial government and became an outpost in the Pacific for the Imperial Court ...