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Russian America ((ロシア語:Русская Америка), ''Russkaya Amerika'') was the name of the Russian colonial possessions in the Americas from 1733 to 1867. Settlements spanned parts of what are now the US states of California, Alaska, and two ports in Hawaii. Formal incorporation of the possessions by Russia did not take place until the Ukase of 1799 which established a monopoly for the Russian-American Company and also granted the Russian Orthodox Church certain rights in the new possessions. Many of its possessions were abandoned in the nineteenth century. In 1867 Russia sold its last remaining possessions to the United States for $7.2 million ($120 million in 2013 dollars). ==Russian sighting of Alaska== The earliest written accounts indicate that the first Europeans to reach Alaska came from Russia. In 1648 Semyon Dezhnev sailed from the mouth of the Kolyma River through the Arctic Ocean and around the eastern tip of Asia to the Anadyr River. One legend holds that some of his boats were carried off course and reached Alaska. However, no evidence of settlement survives. Dezhnev's discovery was never forwarded to the central government, leaving open the question of whether or not Siberia was connected to North America. In 1725, Tsar Peter I of Russia called for another expedition. As a part of the 1733-1743 second Kamchatka expedition, the ''Sv. Petr'' under the Dane Vitus Bering and the ''Sv. Pavel'' under the Russian Alexei Chirikov set sail from the Kamchatkan port of Petropavlovsk in June 1741. They were soon separated, but each continued sailing east. On July 15, Chirikov sighted land, probably the west side of Prince of Wales Island in southeast Alaska.〔(【引用サイトリンク】 url=http://www.calacademy.org/exhibits/science_under_sail/people.html )〕 He sent a group of men ashore in a longboat, making them the first Europeans to land on the northwestern coast of North America. On roughly July 16, Bering and the crew of ''Sv. Petr'' sighted Mount Saint Elias on the Alaskan mainland; they turned westward toward Russia soon afterward. Meanwhile, Chirikov and the ''Sv. Pavel'' headed back to Russia in October with news of the land they had found. In November Bering's ship was wrecked on Bering Island. There Bering fell ill and died, and high winds dashed the ''Sv. Petr'' to pieces. After the stranded crew wintered on the island, the survivors built a boat from the wreckage and set sail for Russia in August 1742. Bering's crew reached the shore of Kamchatka in 1742, carrying word of the expedition. The high quality of the sea-otter pelts they brought sparked Russian settlement in Alaska. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Russian America」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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