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Why did everybody hate Alaska so much? How did the US manage to buy 660,000 square miles and then insist on doing fuck-all with it for over 90 years?
Why did Seward have to bribe congressmen to keep them from mass voting against the sale? I heard it quoted that politicians argued they might as well "give Russia the 7 million to repay her for her part in the revolutionary war" rather than being paid to accept responsibility for a huge frozen wasteland.
And why did Russia hate Alaska so much as to sell her off? Furs, meat, and local trade didn't make Alaska a metropolis, but it was still a lucrative business, and a foothold in trading and a doorway into the North American markets was hardly something to be thrown away at a whim. Were they really that afraid of anglos trying to conquer their territories that they would just try to get it over with before a fight? Britain seemed to want the territory less than anyone.
And why the hell did the Americans try their hardest to ignore it? there were European-populated cities in Sitka and Kodiak before even Chicago and Salt Lake City, but the US went almost a century without even opening one fucking post office.
Is there something I'm missing? Alaska is fucking great.
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>>557785
Russia was about to lose Alaska to Japan so they got what they could for it by selling it to the United States at a bargain. There isn't any more to tell.
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>>557785
TLDR, Russia was in serious debt from the Crimean War, and they had no ability to defend Alaska from any enemies, specifically the UK. It was also not that profitable.
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>>557820
Canada
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>>557820
It was a far away backwater province.
It still is, even with all of its resources.
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Because this was before people realized that oil plus access to shipping routes is a really great thing to have, even if the land is mostly going to be settled by hicks.
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>>557820
And not just far away. How would you string up telephone wires there? You wouldn't. How would you travel there? By a sluggish steamer, or worse, a wooden watercraft, or worse, by wagon. It would be months of journeying just to get there and back with a telegram, I'd imagine. And all for what? It's not like there was oil discovered in Alaska during that early period, and you can only mine gold and silver for so long before you need to develop actual population centers, which Alaska never did until modernity.
This is about as remote an area as Antarctica, if not as cold.
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>>557787
>Russia was about to lose Alaska to Japan
>Japan was a threat to Russia before the Meiji restoration, before industrialization, before any military reforms, while the nation was still a bunch of backwards peasants and samurai
Am I being trolled
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>>557785
Maybe it was haunted?
Think about it.
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>>557864
Are there any Alaskan folk myths or spooky stories?
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>>557877
Bump for these
>Gib snow ghosts
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>>557785
Russia saw it as a way of making some easy money after Crimea and also to counter British influence in that part of the pacific.
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>>557877
There's the legend of Sarah Palin.
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>>557914
In all honesty though. Just look at Inuit mythology. It's pretty based. There's no heaven or hell.
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>>557857
All Russian forces was too far away from Japan, there were no Russian fleet at Pacific.
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>>557994
In retrospect, should have just sold it to britain
-Get money off britain
-They're responsible for alaska and have to invest in it
-Lose it promptly when canada is independent
-Better for USSR during the cold war
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