Why Russia sold Alaska to the United States !

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Alaska, The largest state of the United States, was once owned by Russia. Alaska with its rich resources like oil ,natural gas, timber and tourism adds more than $49 billion in GDP to the country's economy. And a recent oil project: The Willow project is estimated to produce more than 200,000 barrels of oil per day in its 30 years lifespan. Alaska also has beautiful wildlife, mountains and national parks which makes it an incredible attraction for tourism. But why it had to desperately sell such a gem to the U.S. has quiet the history. Alaska was a found piece of land by Danish explorer; Vitus Bering and a Russian explorer; Alexei Chirikov during Second Kamchatka expedition in the mid 18th century. On July 15th, 1741, Chirikov sighted the west side of Prince of Wales Island and just 1 day later on July 16th Vitus Bering and his crew sighted Mount Saint Elias on mainland Alaska. Gradually the Russian tribes started to migrate to the new found land of Alaska due to its rich availability of fish, fur, timberand otter pelts. They colonized various islands and mainland of Alaska by forcing the indigenous Aleuts tribes into labor,hunting for fish and otter pelts. Four decades later in 1784, with the rise in Russian colonization and pelt trade in Alaska, Grigory Ivanovich Shelekov; a Russian seafarer, established the Russian American Company and appointed Alexander Andreyevich Baranov as the manager for the company. Over the course of 3 decades, Baranov controlled all of the fur trade and established a very strong monopoly in the Alaskan region. Later he also became the 1st Governor of Alaska which was officially called; Russian America. But during the mid 19th century the sea otter population started to decline due to overhunting, and the Russian Americanmonopoly started to weaken. In succeeding years British Hudson Bay Company established its ports towards the southernend of Russian America under the RAC-HBC agreement, that adversely impacted the Russian business as the Hudson baycompany started to siphon off Russian trade. Later Russia and The U.K. entered into a Crimean war forcing Russians to abandon Alaska. Tsar Alexander 2, who was then the emperor of Russia, desperately started to look for opportunities to sell Alaska, because it would have been very difficult to defend the land across the Bering strait in any future war with the British. And Alexander 2, never wanted the beautiful land of Alaska to fall in the hands of the British. So he found the United States to be the perfect fit for the sale.

[thestoriesacross]

Was selling Alaska to the US was the right move and What if the US didn't purchase it in the first place !