Talk:Russian America

Clean-up, Re-write?

The article makes it sound as if all Russians disappeared from Alasaka. Anyone visiting Sitka knows this ain't true.

The article no longer reads that way. Balon Greyjoy (talk) 12:20, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

Alaska purchase in modern terms

Which is it then - 123 million or 1.76 billion dollars? Two conflicting conversions to modern day values of the original 7.2 million dollar purchase are given in this article. cheers Geopersona (talk) 05:17, 19 July 2017 (UTC)

Contradictory numbers for max Russians in Alaska

Under "Missionary Activity," para 3: "(The number of ethnic Russian settlers had always been less than the record 812, almost all concentrated in Sitka and Kodiak)."

Under "Sale of Alaska to the US," para 3: "At the height of Russian America, the Russian population had reached 700."

Unless I'm wrong, these need to be reconciled.

Pldean (talk) 20:04, 12 September 2019 (UTC)

There were much more Russians.

812 is the EMPLOYEES AND PROPERTY OF THE CORPORATION !!! According to the corporate report tabel RAC 1855.

However, not only the Corporation’s employees lived on these lands. The Russians began to penetrate during the time of Semyon Dezhnyov. Semyon Dezhnev himself was already sailing along the compiled Pomors map. She was very inaccurate and no one knew the exact road to Okhotsk. It was he who was looking for her.

But the Russians began to penetrate Alaska before him. These were singles vessels of the Koch type, which the Norwegians called the Cog.

They did this in the 18th century, long before the founding of the RAC. And the corporation was not responsible for their activity.

She was responsible only for corporate settlers and company personnel. Then in Russia there was serfdom - and corporate settlers were the property of the corporation. Yes reminds dystopia. But it is so. However, the corporation was quite good about its property.

But Promyslovik and free settlers were not part of the staff, not the property of the corporation. And no one knows how many there were exactly. Since most of them were mixed with local peoples. And they stayed in Alaska and in California and Southern Oregon. They became American citizens and only the Orthodox religion remained from their self-identification.

The number 700 is completely false and not based on sources. 46.183.4.70 (talk) 07:03, 11 December 2019 (UTC)

re Russian loanwords from Mayan (!)

Good grief, we had this passage in the first paragraph of the body text:

According to Yuri Knorozov, the Russian language retained some borrowings from the Aztec language: толк (value, from Nahuatl Tzolk — score).

And two sources are given:

• Кнорозов Ю.В. (1960). "Об изучении фасцинации // Вопросы языкознания".
• Кнорозов Ю.В. (1955). "Письменность древних майя: (опыт расшифровки) // Советская этнография".

The first has no URL, and second mentions no such thing. And although Yuri Knorozov was very expert on Maya, he was also a Soviet citizen, and the Soviets were infamous for claiming a lot of things they didn't do -- invention of radio, television, the lightbulb and so forth -- and claiming expeditions to southern Mexico would fit in with this you'd think. His article describes his most famous paper with "Upon the publication of this work from a then hardly known scholar, Knorozov and his thesis came under some severe and at times dismissive criticism... The situation was further complicated by Knorozov's paper appearing during the height of the Cold War, and many were able to dismiss his paper as being founded on misguided Marxist-Leninist ideology and polemic...." although it does finish with "However, despite claims to the contrary by several of Knorozov's detractors, Knorozov himself never did include such polemic in his writings." And that's even if he did say any such thing as claimed, for which I haven't seen evidence.

And I mean, besides all that, it's arrant nonsense. I'm pretty sure the Russians not get to southern Mexico, let alone hang around long enough to pick up loanwords into their general language. Even accepting that толк ("tolk") and "tzolk" sound alike, so what -- a single instance can be explained by random chance, which is seen rarely but not never. Finally, while it would make sense for Russian to pick up a native word for "canoe" or "maize" or whatever, why would they pick up a core word like "value" when they must have already had one... this would be remarkable, especially since "tzolk" doesn't mean "value", it means "score" which is different altogether. Let's see... [shuffle shuffle]... Wiktionary says толк is derived from Old East Slavic тълкъ (tŭlkŭ), from Proto-Slavic *tъlkъ (it also gives various meanings for толк, none of which are "value" or "score" or anything close. It means "sense" mainly (in the sense of "in the sense"), and how on Earth would this rather subtle concept need to be imported into the Russian language from a stone age civilization.) Sheesh.

Mnmh, an established editor added this, in the fall of 2020, and at the time it also said that корабль (ship) and водоросль (alga) were similar words (it doesn't give the Maya equivalent though). Somehow I'm not seeing Russians having had to say, before Mayan contact, "this floaty thing we go about in" rather than "ship".

Removed. Herostratus (talk) 22:11, 24 February 2021 (UTC)

N.B. the editor who put it in doesn't remember the circumstances and has no objection to removal. Herostratus (talk) 21:28, 25 February 2021 (UTC)

Hawai’i

While under the jurisdiction of the Russian-American Conpany, there should probably be some rewording of the discussion of the Hawai’i outposts. They shouldn’t be listed as settlements in North America, for instance, because Hawai’i isn’t in North America. 104.220.190.191 (talk) 00:51, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

Preceded by and succeeded by Kingdom of Hawaii and Alta California

In the info box, under "Preceded by" and "Succeeded by," the Kingdom of Hawaii and Alta California are both listed. This is nonsensical. Russian America did not "succeed" Alta California; Russia simply had outposts and sparse settlements in parts of Alta California (part of New Spain and later Mexico). There was no transfer of jurisdiction or ownership. As for Hawaii: Again, there was no transfer of sovereignty or jurisdiction. Russia never owned or governed part of the Kingdom of Hawaii. Leaving these in the info box implies far more than what occurred in history. I recommend that they be removed from the info box. What remains in the body of the article adequately and accurately explains what Russia was doing in part of Alta California and in the Kingdom of Hawaii. If there's no discussion or opposition, I (or someone else) will delete them. Holy (talk) 18:31, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

OK, no discussion in 5 days, so I'm making the deletions. Holy (talk) 22:39, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

Proposed merge

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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Support for merging Russian colonization of North America into Russian America was previously expressed at Talk:Russian America/Archive 1#Move/rename to "Russian America". I am agnostic as to which title is better, but as far as I can tell have exactly the same scope, especially given the inclusion of pre-colony history as background. -- Beland (talk) 01:00, 10 January 2023 (UTC)

Support  Even the subheadings are similar. —Michael Z. 19:14, 10 January 2023 (UTC)

• Comment I think that that title might be used as a disambig page, one may potentially search for "Russian colonization of North America" and mean Settlement of the Americas.★Trekker (talk) 12:51, 16 January 2023 (UTC)

Support  These articles are basically identical.  Aearthrise (talk) 01:08, 18 February 2023 (UTC)

Support  same scope, so a merge is definitely in order. Prefer the article title Russian colonization of North America, since it describes most accurately the entire process and period of the Russian empire's claim and colony-building efforts on the literal continent of North America.—N2e (talk) 12:54, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

Support  but title should be kept Russian America as that refers to the political entity. Any new information from the colonization article can easily fit into the headings already present in that article.Yeoutie (talk) 16:35, 30 March 2023 (UTC)

Oppose  The Russian American article gives a cliff-notes summary of the colonization, but readers should be able to have a separate longer, more detailed page on the colonization-specific topic. Merging the article would result in a deletion of large portions of information as is usually what happens when two articles are merged. SouthernResidentOrca (talk) 01:11, 12 May 2023 (UTC)

Oppose Seperate article on the colonization activities is more appropriate, since that is better for the readers' understanding. Shadowwarrior8 (talk) 20:39, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

Support: Dup article and unneeded WP:CFORK, Oppose votes have not addressed how the topics are different. Summary articles are important, but this is not a case where SUMMARYSTYLE applies: the topics are simply rephrased titles for the same subject. There is a great deal of unsourced material in the article (I tagged it, it should not be included in merge unless properly referenced). When the unsourced content and the content duplicated in the target are taken into considerations, this article contains little to merge and nothing is gained by spliting the subject.  // Timothy :: talk  19:38, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

  Y Merger complete. Klbrain (talk) 10:52, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

Move discussion in progress

There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:Russian colonization of North America which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 09:16, 21 December 2023 (UTC)