Glorious Misadventures, by Owen Mathews – review

So: Russia’s imperial possessions on the Pacific North West of America. Remember those? No. Me neither. Something vague about the Russians flogging a bit of Alaska to the United States in the middle of the 19th century perhaps. But until I’d read this book I didn’t know that at one point

Continental Russian America, not counting the Aleutian Islands, stretched 1,400 miles from its Eastern Tip (today called Cape Prince of Wales, by little Diomede Island in the Bering Strait) to its southwestern boundary near Sitka. If laid on top of the Continental United States, the territory — which closely corresponds to the modern state of Alaska — would stretch from California to Florida.

Nor did I know that serious and not wholly implausible plans were entertained of the Tsar ruling California and Hawaii from St Petersburg. The man who most entertained them — and who we meet in medias res in 1806 as a widower of 42 getting engaged to the daughter of the Spanish Governor of San Francisco — was Nikolai Rezanov.