Russia Sold Alaska for 2 Cents an Acre. Was It a Mistake?

In 1867 Russia sold Alaska to the United States for $7.2 million, about two cents an acre. A century later, Alaska took in 125 times that price in a single oil auction. So was it the worst deal in history? Not quite. The check wasn't even made out to Russia. A slice of the money vanished in Washington. And most of the rest never reached Russia as money at all. It came back as railway equipment. Chapters 0:00 The $7.2 million question 0:51 A colony nobody could hold 2:14 The scare 3:42 A deal at four in the morning 5:27 Where did the money go? 6:57 Follow the big money 8:26 What America got 10:02 Seward's Folly? 10:54 So, was Russia robbed? Sources: Gustafson, "The Alaska Purchase Check", Prologue Magazine (U.S. National Archives), Winter 1994 Office of the Historian, U.S. Department of State, "Purchase of Alaska, 1867" A. Yu. Petrov & I. Savelev, Rodina No. 4 (2017): Russian Finance Ministry ledger of 1868 (RGIA f. 565) Library of Congress, "Today in History: March 30" Richard E. Welch Jr., "American Public Opinion and the Purchase of Russian America" (1958) Alaska Permanent Fund Corporation; Alaska Department of Revenue (2026 dividend) History, told through money and maps. Map imagery: NASA Blue Marble. Borders: Natural Earth. Archival images: U.S. National Archives, Library of Congress. Bering Strait and Pribilof Islands imagery: EOxCloudless https://cloudless.eox.at by EOX IT Services GmbH (Contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data 2016), CC BY 4.0. Big Diomede photo: Ansgar Walk, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0. Stock footage: Pexels. Music: Mixkit. #history #alaska #russia #economics #maps