Loans and Debts in Russian America as a Socio-Economic Problem

The purpose of the article is to analyze such socio-economic phenomena as loans and debts in the former Russian colonies in Alaska (the second half of the 18th-1867). This topic has not yet been the object of special study in domestic and foreign historiography. At the same time, natural and financial loans and debt obligations played an exceptionally important role in the activities of various merchant companies engaged in the commercial development of the Aleutian Islands and Alaska from the middle of the 18th century. They acquired no less importance in the activities of the monopoly Russian-American Company (RAC), to which the tsarist government transferred control of its overseas possessions in 1799. Three forms of lending were practiced in Russian America: 1) in the form of commodity loans, 2) in the form of cash loans, 3) a mixed option. At the same time, the first form of lending was the only one in the relationship of Russians with the natives of Alaska. Without prior material subsidies and loans, the normal economic life of the Russian colonies would be completely paralyzed. However, loans and credits generated debts, and the debt problem for decades complicated the financial activities of the RAC and the socio-psychological atmosphere of colonial society, and attempts to resolve it were not successful. Moreover, one of the reasons for the difficult economic situation of the company in the 1860s was the exorbitant debt burden, which indirectly influenced the decision of the tsarist government to sell Russian America to the USA in 1867.