Empire of extinction: Nature and natural history in the Russian North Pacific, 1739--1799.

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

This study examines the published and unpublished writings of natural historians working for the Russian Empire in the North Pacific between 1739 and 1799, with the intention of shedding light on the process of Russian imperial expansion, and on early modern European attitudes towards colonial nature. Beginning with the Second Kamchatka Expedition (1733--1742), natural historians played key roles in Russia's exploration and exploitation of the North Pacific. These men were included in the machinery of imperial expansion mainly because St. Petersburg felt they could add legitimacy to Russia's new interests in the North Pacific by emulating Western European practices of empire-building. The expedition's naturalists, Georg Wilhelm Steller and Stepan Krasheninnikov, accomplished much for Russia by publishing widely read books of natural history, but the men developed competing interpretations of the local environment. Whereas Krasheninnikov emphasized Kamchatka's potential economic contributions to the Russian state, Steller chronicled Russian misuse of the North Pacific's peoples and animals. Both men wrote glowingly of the region's natural abundance in fish and fur-bearing animals, a trope that the state and other commentators would take up enthusiastically throughout the century.
Many of the plans natural historians had for North Pacific development---such as agriculture, whaling, and fish exports to Japan---failed to produce results. Instead, from the 1740s until the 1780s, academicians such as Peter Simon Pallas and Gerhard Friedrich Muller invested hope in the growing trade in sea-otter and fur-seal pelts. The fur trade helped stimulate the Russian merchantry and promised to turn the terms of trade against the Chinese, who were the main purchasers of sea-otter pelts. However, already by the 1750s there were signs that the sea-otter trade was unsustainable. After St. Petersburg abandoned early attempts to conserve the animals, Russian promyshlenniki (fur traders) hunted out the surprisingly fragile sea otters on successive groups of North Pacific islands, usually within fifteen years of the islands' discovery. Natural historians read the fur traders' reports of growing scarcity, but usually chose to disbelieve the amateur knowledge of the promyshlenniki . Even when fellow scientists produced evidence of extinction in the North Pacific, men such as Pallas were slow to accept it, informed as they were by theories of Nature's Economy, and reluctant to criticize the Russian Empire that employed them.
Perception changed when St. Petersburg again sent large-scale expeditions to the region in the 1780s. The Billings Expedition (1785--1795) included a cadre of sailors and scientists who reacted with shock at the radical disappearance of North Pacific sea cows, sea otters, and fur seals. Secretary Martin Sauer recorded the sea cow's extinction, and joined other crew members in predicting the eminent total extirpation of the sea otter. The Billings Expedition tied concerns about extinction to Russian exploitation of the native Aleuts and Koniags, as well as the general incivility of the Russian Empire. Expedition members formulated what could be called an "environmental anti-imperialism." Such criticism hurt Russia's efforts to cast its empire-building as an enlightened process, competitive with the best European practices. Though natural historians provided legitimacy and prestige for the Russian Empire through much of the century, they also became the first to broadcast the environmental costs of expansion in the North Pacific.
In some respects, North Pacific natural historians behaved as the historiography on science and empire has suggested they would---they assisted the state in its attempt to discover, map and harness natural resources for the expansion of industry and trade. However, Russia's mostly foreign-born natural historians' cosmopolitan ties throughout the Enlightened scientific world, their divergent religious beliefs, and their sensitivity to environmental change informed a countervailing, subversive analysis of the environmental effects of Russian expansion. Their early environmental anti-imperialism would bear fruit in the nineteenth century when Russia first implemented large-scale conservation measures in the North Pacific, long before its European competitors in the region did.