- Email: [email protected]
Imperial Russia in frontier America
380
REVIEWS
In conclusion, it should be noted that the author is at his best in his photographs, in his second chapter where he describes the architect’s conception of a city, and in an eloquent three-page epilogue summarizing the Maya’s achievements. Dartmouth College
VINCENT H. MALMSTROM
JAMESR. GIBSON,Imperial Russia in Frontier America (New York: Oxford University
Press, Andrew H. Clark Series in the Historical Geography of North America, 1976. Pp. x+257. $1040 and $640 softback) Seven years ago, in Feeding the Russian Fur Trade, James Gibson gave us a detailed description and analysis of the operations of Russian enterprise in the Okhotsk Seaboard and Kamchatka, one of the most remote and difficult areas of the habitable world. His latest book is a logical historical and geographical extension of that study. Russian America, as defined by the fur companies, included the Aleutian, Commander and Pribilof islands, Alaska, outposts in California and the Hawaiian Islands, and also the Kuriles and Sakhalin. The main impetus to acquisition and the main source of wealth was the sea otter. The chronic problem was to procure adequate provisions for the scattering of tiny settlements which arose to serve that trade. The book is divided into four parts. The first is an overview of occupancy, dealing with four phases of settlement, with patterns of economic activities, including attempts at diversification, and with the general problems of supply. The remaining parts deal with the three sources of provisionment, with chapters on the transport of goods from Siberia and from Russia, on local agriculture in Alaska, California and Hawaii and on foreign trade with Americans, Mexicans, the British and the Hawaiians. This sequence of chapters reflects a shift in emphasis over time in the continuing search for reliable sustenance in the Russian colonies. Gibson’s theme provides a valuable complement to the more common histories of imperial rivalries in the North Pacific. He demonstrates in detail how shortages and low quality of supplies and of manpower dogged Russian efforts in every district at every stage. Shipments from Siberia and by sea from the Baltic were attended by enormous difficulties, delays and losses en route. Local agriculture was only marginally successful in the best of the localities, Foreign trade became the main source of sustenance, but was always erratic and beyond Russian control. The agreement of 1839 with the Hudson’s Bay Company, by which Alaska and the Aleutians were to be supplied from Oregon, allowed the Russian American Company to withdraw from their posts in California (which had not proved very productive), but this best of the various arrangements was disrupted by the American occupation of the Willamette Valley and Puget Sound a few years later. Even at the peak of activities, Russian America was a marginal province thinly occupied. New Archangel (Sitka), the headquarters, probably never had more than a thousand Russian and Creole residents; and all the districts from the Aleutians eastwards had no more than a total of ten or eleven thousand, mostly Native Americans. Gibson’s book makes the sale of Alaska entirely plausible. The Russians felt over-extended and heavily in debt after the Crimean War, their American holdings were by then very unprofitable and seemingly indefensible, Russian imperial attention was focused on the Amur Valley and Central Asia, and sale to the United States would create a broad buffer between British America and Siberia. There is much detail in this small book, which has been drawn from several archives in Moscow and Leningrad as well as from those in Europe and North America. The text is augmented by numerous tables, attractive contemporary sketches of settlements and six maps. It would have been useful if more maps had been included to show the articulation of this Russian system with the several North American systems. And although the book is a well-written, balanced coverage of its topic, a reader primarily interested in America cannot but wish that the author had gone one step further and made use of American documents to define just what legacy we received from the Russians. What was permanently implanted? What materials did the Americans have to
REVIEWS
381
build in between 1867 and the gold rushes thirty years later? Perhaps Professor Gibson will define that for us in a sequel. However, now that this fine Canadian scholar has, with this book, brought the eastward Russian movement into direct articulation with the westward British and American movements, we should most hope that he will go on to write comparative historical geography of boreal imperial expansions. Syracuse University
D. W. MEINIG
D. W. MOODIE and A. J. W. CATCHPOLE,Environmental Data from Historical Documents by Content Analysis: Freeze-up and Break-up of Estuaries on Hudson Bay, 1714-1871 (Winnipeg: Department of Geography, University of Manitoba, Manitoba Geographical Studies, 1975. Pp. xviii + 119. $4.00)
Content analysis is a method whereby non-quantitative materials are made to yield quantitative data, usually through frequency tabulations of the occurrence of key words or terms. The technique is particularly amenable for usage in the measurement of past environmental factors where lexical materials are available, but numerical data are not. In the light of current interest in climatic change during historical times, and with a growing number of college courses dealing with the relationship of environment and man through history, the method is worthy of thorough appraisal. In the present study, content analysis is used to yield, from the unscientific writings of personnel of the Hudson’s Bay Company, the dates of freeze-up and break-up of the river estuaries of Hudson Bay during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Through the use of frequency analysis and statistical techniques, the dates are revealed to the analyst through objective procedures rather than from subjective judgements. The ultimate objective of content analysis is that all analysts applying the techniques should arrive independently at the same quantitative values. The actual freeze-up and break-up dates, presented in an appendix, are secondary to the main thrust of the book. This is to present a detailed sequential outline of the techniques of content analysis as they may be applied to past environmental problems. As the authors assert, the application of content analysis has been hampered by the formulation of an excessive disciplinary jargon and the utilization of multiple techniques. Their own study is not immune from this impediment, and an annoying use of jargon obfuscates the rather straightforward and logical steps necessary for the derivation of the dates. The book treads laboriously through these steps which include: the establishment of historical and contemporary definitions of “freeze-up” and “break-up”; the establishment of categories into which the key words and terms must be placed; the actual placing of these terms into categories (coding); testing the reliability of coders; derivation of results; and testing the validity of these results. Despite its stylistic defects, the book contains a very valuable message. It is a cookbookish guide for the application of content analysis to past environmental problems. The steps unfold in careful and logical fashion, and can be utilized in the solution of a large range of past environmental problems where lexical materials are available but quantitative data are lacking. All students of historical geography and environmental history should become familiar with content analysis. Environmental Data from Historical Documents by Content AnaI_ysis is invaluable in revealing the utility of the techniques and explaining their application to historical environmental problems. It is difficult reading, but well worth the effort. Western Michigan University
VAL L. EICHENLAUB
ALDEN T. VAUGHAN,
American Genesis: Captain John Smith and the Founding of Virginia (Boston and Toronto: Little, Brown and Company, 1975. Pp. xvi+207. $2.95)
The founding of Virginia, the subject of Alden Vaughan’s eclectic and graceful little book, has preoccupied some of the best American historians, and for good reason. All
REVIEWS
In conclusion, it should be noted that the author is at his best in his photographs, in his second chapter where he describes the architect’s conception of a city, and in an eloquent three-page epilogue summarizing the Maya’s achievements. Dartmouth College
VINCENT H. MALMSTROM
JAMESR. GIBSON,Imperial Russia in Frontier America (New York: Oxford University
Press, Andrew H. Clark Series in the Historical Geography of North America, 1976. Pp. x+257. $1040 and $640 softback) Seven years ago, in Feeding the Russian Fur Trade, James Gibson gave us a detailed description and analysis of the operations of Russian enterprise in the Okhotsk Seaboard and Kamchatka, one of the most remote and difficult areas of the habitable world. His latest book is a logical historical and geographical extension of that study. Russian America, as defined by the fur companies, included the Aleutian, Commander and Pribilof islands, Alaska, outposts in California and the Hawaiian Islands, and also the Kuriles and Sakhalin. The main impetus to acquisition and the main source of wealth was the sea otter. The chronic problem was to procure adequate provisions for the scattering of tiny settlements which arose to serve that trade. The book is divided into four parts. The first is an overview of occupancy, dealing with four phases of settlement, with patterns of economic activities, including attempts at diversification, and with the general problems of supply. The remaining parts deal with the three sources of provisionment, with chapters on the transport of goods from Siberia and from Russia, on local agriculture in Alaska, California and Hawaii and on foreign trade with Americans, Mexicans, the British and the Hawaiians. This sequence of chapters reflects a shift in emphasis over time in the continuing search for reliable sustenance in the Russian colonies. Gibson’s theme provides a valuable complement to the more common histories of imperial rivalries in the North Pacific. He demonstrates in detail how shortages and low quality of supplies and of manpower dogged Russian efforts in every district at every stage. Shipments from Siberia and by sea from the Baltic were attended by enormous difficulties, delays and losses en route. Local agriculture was only marginally successful in the best of the localities, Foreign trade became the main source of sustenance, but was always erratic and beyond Russian control. The agreement of 1839 with the Hudson’s Bay Company, by which Alaska and the Aleutians were to be supplied from Oregon, allowed the Russian American Company to withdraw from their posts in California (which had not proved very productive), but this best of the various arrangements was disrupted by the American occupation of the Willamette Valley and Puget Sound a few years later. Even at the peak of activities, Russian America was a marginal province thinly occupied. New Archangel (Sitka), the headquarters, probably never had more than a thousand Russian and Creole residents; and all the districts from the Aleutians eastwards had no more than a total of ten or eleven thousand, mostly Native Americans. Gibson’s book makes the sale of Alaska entirely plausible. The Russians felt over-extended and heavily in debt after the Crimean War, their American holdings were by then very unprofitable and seemingly indefensible, Russian imperial attention was focused on the Amur Valley and Central Asia, and sale to the United States would create a broad buffer between British America and Siberia. There is much detail in this small book, which has been drawn from several archives in Moscow and Leningrad as well as from those in Europe and North America. The text is augmented by numerous tables, attractive contemporary sketches of settlements and six maps. It would have been useful if more maps had been included to show the articulation of this Russian system with the several North American systems. And although the book is a well-written, balanced coverage of its topic, a reader primarily interested in America cannot but wish that the author had gone one step further and made use of American documents to define just what legacy we received from the Russians. What was permanently implanted? What materials did the Americans have to
REVIEWS
381
build in between 1867 and the gold rushes thirty years later? Perhaps Professor Gibson will define that for us in a sequel. However, now that this fine Canadian scholar has, with this book, brought the eastward Russian movement into direct articulation with the westward British and American movements, we should most hope that he will go on to write comparative historical geography of boreal imperial expansions. Syracuse University
D. W. MEINIG
D. W. MOODIE and A. J. W. CATCHPOLE,Environmental Data from Historical Documents by Content Analysis: Freeze-up and Break-up of Estuaries on Hudson Bay, 1714-1871 (Winnipeg: Department of Geography, University of Manitoba, Manitoba Geographical Studies, 1975. Pp. xviii + 119. $4.00)
Content analysis is a method whereby non-quantitative materials are made to yield quantitative data, usually through frequency tabulations of the occurrence of key words or terms. The technique is particularly amenable for usage in the measurement of past environmental factors where lexical materials are available, but numerical data are not. In the light of current interest in climatic change during historical times, and with a growing number of college courses dealing with the relationship of environment and man through history, the method is worthy of thorough appraisal. In the present study, content analysis is used to yield, from the unscientific writings of personnel of the Hudson’s Bay Company, the dates of freeze-up and break-up of the river estuaries of Hudson Bay during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Through the use of frequency analysis and statistical techniques, the dates are revealed to the analyst through objective procedures rather than from subjective judgements. The ultimate objective of content analysis is that all analysts applying the techniques should arrive independently at the same quantitative values. The actual freeze-up and break-up dates, presented in an appendix, are secondary to the main thrust of the book. This is to present a detailed sequential outline of the techniques of content analysis as they may be applied to past environmental problems. As the authors assert, the application of content analysis has been hampered by the formulation of an excessive disciplinary jargon and the utilization of multiple techniques. Their own study is not immune from this impediment, and an annoying use of jargon obfuscates the rather straightforward and logical steps necessary for the derivation of the dates. The book treads laboriously through these steps which include: the establishment of historical and contemporary definitions of “freeze-up” and “break-up”; the establishment of categories into which the key words and terms must be placed; the actual placing of these terms into categories (coding); testing the reliability of coders; derivation of results; and testing the validity of these results. Despite its stylistic defects, the book contains a very valuable message. It is a cookbookish guide for the application of content analysis to past environmental problems. The steps unfold in careful and logical fashion, and can be utilized in the solution of a large range of past environmental problems where lexical materials are available but quantitative data are lacking. All students of historical geography and environmental history should become familiar with content analysis. Environmental Data from Historical Documents by Content AnaI_ysis is invaluable in revealing the utility of the techniques and explaining their application to historical environmental problems. It is difficult reading, but well worth the effort. Western Michigan University
VAL L. EICHENLAUB
ALDEN T. VAUGHAN,
American Genesis: Captain John Smith and the Founding of Virginia (Boston and Toronto: Little, Brown and Company, 1975. Pp. xvi+207. $2.95)
The founding of Virginia, the subject of Alden Vaughan’s eclectic and graceful little book, has preoccupied some of the best American historians, and for good reason. All