Russian America (Russian: Русская Америка, Russkaya Amerika) was the name of Russian colonial possessions in the Americas from 1733 to 1867 that today is the U.S. state of Alaska and settlements farther south in California. Formal incorporation of the possessions did not take place until a ukase (a proclamation or decree of the tsar) in 1799, which established a monopoly for the Russian-American Company and also granted the Russian Orthodox Church certain rights in the new possessions.
Read more about Russian America: Russian Sighting of Alaska, Missionary Activity, Sale of Alaska To The United States
Famous quotes containing the words russian and/or america:
“To be born in a new country one has to die in the motherland.”
—Irina Mogilevskaya, Russian student. “Immigrating to the U.S.,” student paper in an English as a Second Language class, Hunter College, 1995.
“I sincerely hope that the incoming Congress will be alive, as it should be, to the importance of our foreign trade and of encouraging it in every way feasible. The possibility of increasing this trade in the Orient, in the Philippines, and in South America is known to everyone who has given the matter attention.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)