The Beginnings Of Russian American Relations, 1775 - 1815 PDF
Preview The Beginnings Of Russian American Relations, 1775 - 1815
The Beginnings ofRussian-American Relations The Beginnings of Russian-American Relations 1775-1815 Nikolai N. Bolkhovitinov translated by Elena Levin Harvard University Press Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, England 1975 Copyright © 1975 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College All rights reserved Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 75-5233 ISBN 0-674-06455-0 Printed in the United States of America Contents PREFACE vü INTRODUCTION by L. H. Butterfield xi Part One: Russia and the War of Independence in North America... 1 I Russian Diplomacy and the War of 1775-1783 3 II The Attitüde of Russian Society to the American Revolution ... 30 ni Russians in the United States and Americans in Russia at the End of the Eighteenth Century 56 Part Two: Russian-American Relations during the Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries 79 IV Trade Connections Between Russia and the United States 91 V The Development of Scientific, Cultural, and Socio- Political Connections 116 VI Russian Colonization of the Northwest 146 Part Three: Russian-American Rapprochement 1802-1812 187 VII The Establishment of Diplomatie Relations 195 VIII The Expansion of Trade Contacts 218 IX Relations in the Northwest and the Agreement of 20 April 1812 255 PartFour: The War of 1812 and Tsarist Russia 279 X The War of 1812 and Its Evaluations by Russian Diplomats 283 XI Russia's Attempted Peace Mediation 304 XII Cultural Contacts and American Attitudes toward the Russian War of 1812 334 CONCLUSION 349 APPENDIX: Writings and Sources on Early Russian-American Relations 357 NOTES 387 INDEX 473 PREFACE The present study was first published in Moscow by the Nauka Press in 1966. Since that time important changes have taken place in the world and especially in the relations between the United States and the Soviet Union. Long years of the cold war, more than once threatening to develop into a new thermonuclear catastrophe, gave way to a detente, constructive negotiations and businesslike Cooperation. The Cuban crisis of the autumn of 1962, and the winter of 1%5 when the escalation of the long tragedy of the Vietnam war began, were succeeded by May 1972 and the summer of 1973. A new period has begun in the history of relations between our two countries. Ahhough the period reviewed in this book is separated by some two centuries from the present time, the analysis of the events of that time has proved instructive. It was in those distant years that the first contacts between Russia and America were established. Friendly and mutually beneficial ties were formed and developed despite great geographica! distances and social, political, and ideological barriers. The experience and the history of these contacts, as I see it, deserve dose attention and study. This work not only deals with diplomatic relations between Russia and the United States but also investigates their trade, social, political, scientific, and cultural ties as well as the history of Russian America and the development of business contacts between Russian settlers and American traders and navigators in the North Pacific. In the past historians of international relations rarely turned to the study of social-political, scientific, and cultural ties. Their attention was focused on inter-state, especially, diplomatic relations, on the activity of vii PREFACE outstanding political figures and statesmen, famous generals and diplo- mats, tsars and presidents. Thus, the principal dement, the people, as represented by the finest, most educated, and active spokesmen—scien- tists, public figures, writers, and journalists—dropped out of the history of international relations. Again and again historians recounted well- known documents and entertaining episodes of diplomatic struggle, almost completely ignoring the contacts between distinguished repre- sentatives of science and culture and also between social-political, scientific, and cultural institutions. Yet the history of Russian-American relations opens with the direct and indirect contacts between Benjamin Franklin and other American scholars, and their Petersburg colleagues —M. V. Lomonosov, G. W. Richmann, F. U. Epinus in the middle of the eighteenth Century. Probably the most original parts of the book are the investigation of the American theme as refiected in the pages of Russian Journals and magazines, and its analysis of the attitude of advanced representatives of the Russian society—N. I. Novikov, F. V. Karzhavin, A. N. Radishchev—toward the American Revolution and the Constitution of 1787, as well as its concrete study of the development of trade and cultural ties in the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries. Though the content and conclusions of the 1966 publication have remained basically unchanged, some corrections and additions have been made in the original text and especially in the notes on the basis of recent studies, documentary publications, and archive sources with which I became acquainted during my visit to the United States in 1968. Some new materials found refiection in my research articles and reviews pub- lished in Soviet periodicals (see page 472). At last, in the spring of 1975, the second volume of the history of relations between Russia and the United States, coveringthe period from 1815 to the 1830's, was published in Moscow (N. N. Bolkhovitinov, Russko-amerikanskie otnosheniia, 1815-1832 [Moscow, 1975].) Of course, even taking into account these new publications, I cannot lay claim to an exhaustive study of the long- standing and many-sided ties between the United States and Russia. However, I would be gratified if my work stimulated further studies and promoted, if only to a small degree, understanding between the Soviet and American peoples and the strengthening and broadening of the Coopera- tion between our two countries. Nearly twenty years have passed since I came for the first time to a comfortable reading room in an old Moscow house on Bolshaya Serpuk- hovskaya Street, where the Archive of the Foreign Policy of Russia is vUi PREFACE located. Since that time I have worked in at least twenty different Soviet and American archives. Everywhere I have met with unfailing attention, kind Cooperation, and valuable assistance. The number of persons who at different times and in different ways helped me in my work is too great to enumerate here without defeating the purpose of this preface. I cannot, however, refrain from mentioning my dose colleagues in the American sector of the Institute of General History of the US SR Academy of Sciences and the staff of the Archive of the Foreign Policy of Russia. It was their benevolent attitude, support, and help that in many ways promoted the consummation of the present work. For a number of years valuable advice was offered to the author by Academicians M. P. Alekseev, A. A. Guber, E. 1. and N. M. Druzhinin, A. L. Narochnitskii, and Correspond- ing Member of the USSR Academy of Sciences A. V. Efimov. I recall with deep gratitude the attention and help given to me by Professors Richard B. Morris, Oscar Handlin, Dexter Perkins, Assistant Librarian of Congress Elizabeth Hamer Kegan, Director of the Oregon Historical Society Thomas Vaughan, as well as Drs. Robert V. Allen, Whitfield J. Bell, Jr., David M. Griffiths, Patricia Kennedy Grimsted, Daniel Clarke Waugh, and many other American historians. My special acknowledgments are due to everyone connected with the English edition of this book; first of all, to the Editor in Chief of the Adams Papers L. H. Butterfield, the translator Elena Levin, and my editor at the Harvard University Press, Ann Louise McLaughlin, who spent a great deal of time and energy in order to give the American reader an opportunity of becoming acquainted with the work in its present form. At last, the exceptional patience and kind-heartedness of my wife, L. A. Bolkhovitinova, created the genial atmosphere which enabled me to fmish this long work. N.N.B Moscow, August 1975 ix
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