Why Russia gave up Alaska, America's gateway to the Arctic
- Written by William L. Iggiagruk Hensley, Visiting Distinguished Professor, University of Alaska Anchorage
One hundred and fifty years ago, on March 30, 1867, U.S. Secretary of State William H. Seward and Russian envoy Baron Edouard de Stoeckl signed the Treaty of Cession. With a stroke of a pen, Tsar Alexander II had ceded Alaska, his country’s last remaining foothold in North America, to the United States for US$7.2 million.
That sum, amounting...
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