The Worst Deal in History? Why Russia Sold Alaska

In 1867, Russia sold America a piece of land more than twice the size of Texas, for about two cents an acre. Within a few decades it was pouring out gold. Then oil. So why on earth did Russia sell it? In this video I open the ledger of the Alaska Purchase: a war Russia lost, a debt it couldn't carry, a colony it couldn't defend, and a deal signed at four o'clock in the morning. Plus the story of the flag that got stuck at Sitka, the myth of "Seward's Folly", where the $7.2 million actually went, and the people who were never asked. WHAT YOU'LL LEARN How Russia ended up owning Alaska (Vitus Bering, sea otter furs, the Russian-American Company) Why the Crimean War changed Russia's math in the Pacific Why Russia wanted to sell to the United States and not to Britain How Seward and Stoeckl signed the treaty overnight, March 29–30, 1867 Whether Americans really laughed at "Seward's Folly" What Alaska paid back: gold, World War II, the Cold War, oil Why America, in a way, paid for Alaska twice CHAPTERS 0:00 Two cents an acre 0:28 I. Russian America 1:59 II. The War That Changed the Math 3:04 III. The Enemy of My Enemy 4:07 IV. The 4 A.M. Deal 4:54 V. "Seward's Folly"? 5:50 VI. The Flag at Sitka 6:24 VII. Follow the Money 7:02 VIII. The Payout 8:22 IX. The Verdict SOURCES U.S. National Archives: Treaty with Russia for the Purchase of Alaska; Treasury warrant for $7,200,000 (August 1, 1868) Library of Congress, Today in History: March 30 (Seward's Folly) U.S. Senate: Alaska statehood timeline U.S. Department of State, Office of the Historian: Purchase of Alaska, 1867 Richard E. Welch Jr., "American Public Opinion and the Purchase of Russian America" (1958) Frederick W. Seward, "Seward at Washington" (1891) Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (1971) Numbers like "two cents an acre" (about $7.2M for roughly 375 million acres) and "roughly $150 million in today's money" are approximate. ARCHIVAL MEDIA Photographs, paintings, maps and documents are public domain (U.S. National Archives, Library of Congress, Wikimedia Commons): Eadweard Muybridge (Sitka, 1868), Mathew Brady, Alexander Gardner, Emanuel Leutze, Roger Fenton, Alexey Bogolyubov, Mikhail Tikhanov, Eric A. Hegg, Wilhelm Hester, Edward S. Curtis, U.S. Army Signal Corps, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, National Park Service. Used under CC BY 2.0: "Trans-Alaska Pipeline segment 1" by Arthur T. LaBar "Margerie Glacier calving video" and "Sea otter. Enhydra lutris video" by gails_pictures on Flickr (flickr.com/photos/gails_pictures) Public-domain footage: NASA Scientific Visualization Studio (aurora time-lapse), U.S. National Park Service (Glacier Bay aurora). Alaska Day photo: Sgt. David Bedard, U.S. Army (public domain). Maps drawn from Natural Earth data (public domain). Music composed for this channel. WATCH NEXT How America Accidentally Destroyed the King of France: [paste link] If you were the Tsar in 1867, broke, just out of a lost war, with the Royal Navy next door, would you have sold? Tell me in the comments. #Alaska #History #Russia