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From Cooperation to Confrontation? Reflections on the Russian-American Encounter on the Pacific1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 April 2010

Extract

Towards the end of his lengthy study of the United States, De la démocratic en Amérique, the early nineteenth-century French liberal Alexis de Tocque-ville wrote:

Il y a aujourd'hui sur la terre deux grands peuples qui […] semblent s'avancer vers le même but: ce sont les Russes et les Anglo-Américains. Leur point de départ est différent, leurs voies sont diverses; néamoins, chacun d'eux semble appelé pas un dessein secret de la Providence à tenir un jour dans ses mains les destinées de la moitié du monde.

Type
The American Experience in Asia
Copyright
Copyright © Research Institute for History, Leiden University 1998

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References

Notes

2 Tocqueville, Alexis de, De la démocratic en Amérique I (Paris 1981) 540541.Google Scholar ‘There are now two great nations in the world […] which seem to be advancing toward the same end: They are the Russians and the Anglo-Americans […] Their starting points are different, as are their paths; nevertheless, each seems marked out by a secret design of Providence one day to sway the destiny of half the world.’

3 Traditional accounts include Williams, William Appleman, American-Russian Relations 1781-1947 (New York 1952);Google ScholarZabriskie, Edward H., American-Russian Rivalry in the Far East (Philadelphia 1946). More recent surveys of Russo-American relations have somewhat modified this interpretation. SeeCrossRefGoogle ScholarGaddis, John Lewis, Russia, the Soviet Union, and the United States: An Interpretive History (New York 1989);Google ScholarLaFeber, Walter, The American Age: United States Foreign Policy at Home and Abroad since 1750 (New York 1989)Google Scholar.

4 For a recent Russian account see Ponomarev, Valerii Nikolaevich, Krymskaia voina I Russko-Amerikanskie otnosheniia (Moscow 1993). A briefer English-language version is given by the same author inGoogle Scholar‘Russian Policy and the United States during the Crimean War’ in: Ragsdale, Hugh ed., Imperial Russian Foreign Policy (Cambridge 1993) 173192. See alsoGoogle ScholarGolder, Frank A., ‘Russian-American Relations During the Crimean War’, American Historical Review 31 (1926) 462471CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 Golder, Frank A., ‘The Russian Fleet and the American Civil War’, American Historical Review 20 (1915) 801812;CrossRefGoogle ScholarGolder, Frank A., ‘The American Civil War Through the Eyes of a Russian Diplomat’, American Historical Review 26 (1921) 454463CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 M.N. Muravev to A.P. Cassini, instructions, 10-2-1898 in: Zabriskie, , American-Russian Rivalry, 201.Google Scholar

7 Zabriskie, , American-Russian Rivalry, 5 n24.Google Scholar

8 Kennan, George, Siberia and the Exile System (London 1891).Google Scholar

9 Williams, William Appleman, American Russian Relations 1781-1947 (New York 1971) 4.Google Scholar

10 Khvostov, Vladimir Mikhailovich, ‘Zavershenie borby za razdel mira I pervye voiny za eg o peredel’ in: Potemkin, V.P. ed., Istoriia Diplomatii 2 (Moscow 1945) 143.Google Scholar

11 These are in fund 143, inventory 491 (‘Kitaiskii Stol’), Arkhiv Vneshnei Politiki Rossiiskoi Imperiii.

12 Two English-language biographies are Braeman, John, Albert Beueridge: American Nationalist (Chicago 1971) andGoogle ScholarBrowers, Claude G., Beveridgeand the Progressive Era (New York 1932)Google Scholar.

13 Beveridge, AlbertJ., ‘March of the Flag’ in: Depew, Chauncey M. ed., The Library of Oratory 14 (New York 1902) 426449.Google Scholar

14 United States, Congress, Congressional Record, 56 Congress, I Session, 704.

15 Braeman, John, AlbertJ. Beveridge: American Nationalist (Chicago 1971) 61.Google Scholar

16 Ibid., 61-62; Bowers, Beveridge, 146-157; Saul, Norman E., Concord and Conflict: The United States and Russia 1867-1914 (Lawrence 1996) 456457Google Scholar.

17 Beveridge, Albert J., The Russian Advance (New York 1904).Google Scholar

18 Ibid., 108.

19 Ibid., 41.

20 Ibid., 31.

21 Ibid., 16.

22 Skrynnikov, R.G., SibirskaiaekspeditsiiaErmaka (Novosibirsk 1982)Google Scholar; Baddeley, John F., Russia, Mongolia, China: Being Some Record of the Relations Between Them From the Beginning of the XVIIth Century to the Death of Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich I (London 1919) lxix–lxxiiiGoogle Scholar.

23 On the importance of furs to the medieval Russian economy, see Martin, Janet, Treasure of the Land of Darkness (Cambridge 1986) 1511661, and more generallyCrossRefGoogle ScholarFischer, Raymond H., The Russian Fur Trade, 1550-1700 (Berkeley 1943)Google Scholar.

24 Treadgold, Donald W., ‘Russian Expansio n in the Light of Turner' s Study of the American Frontier’, Agricultural History, 149.Google Scholar

25 Turner, Frederick Jackson, The Significance of the Frontier in American History (New York 1963) 27.Google Scholar

26 Lincoln, W. Bruce, The Conquest ofa Continent: Siberia and the Russians (New York 1994) 164.Google Scholar

27 Adapted from translation in Bassin, Mark, ‘Inventing Siberia: Visions of the Russian East in the Early Nineteenth Century’, American Historical Review 92 (1991) 774.Google Scholar

28 Ibid., 776.

29 Ibid., 777.

30 Bassin, Mark, A Russian Mississippi? A Political-Geographical Inquiry into the Vision of Russia on the Pacific 1840-1865 (PhD Dissertation: University of California at Berkeley 1983) 55.Google Scholar A revised version is forthcoming in 1999 from Cambridge University Press.

31 Rasputin, Valentin, Siberia, Siberia (Evanston 1996) 50.Google Scholar