Russian American Telegraph
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The Russian American Telegraph was an undertaking by the Western Union Telegraph Company in 1865-1867, to connect Vancouver, British Columbia, with Moscow, via Alaska, under the Bering Sea, and across Siberia to Moscow, and a connection with the rest of Europe.
It was started when several of Cyrus Field efforts to lay a cable under the Atlantic to Europe had failed, and was halted when those efforts finally succeeded. It was based on a concept promoted by Perry Collins (see) Bookreviews, and initiated exploration of the Canadian West beyond that done by the Hudson's Bay Company, and precipitated the US purchase of Alaska. The story of that adventure is covered in a book, "Continental Dash: The Russian-American Telegraph," by: Rosemary Neering, and a personal account by one member of the expedition is a diary of Franklin Leonard Pope, documented as part of a biography of him at Telegraph History
The expedition consisted of three sections, British Columbia heading towards the Yukon, The Yukon towards Bering Strait, and from the eastern side of the Strait through Eastern Siberia to Nikolayevsk-on-Amur on the Amur River.
In British Columbia, one of the lasting legacies of "Colonel" Charles Bulkley's military-style leadership was the naming of the Bulkley River and Bulkley Valley.
Further north, the scientific leadership of "Major" Kennicott, who died on the expedition (some think by suicide), can be seen in the naming of Kennecott, Alaska. Note that the geographical place name was mis-spelt. Kennicott Glacier, also named after Major Robert Kennicott, was spelt correctly. Some like Steve Wilcockson in his MA Thesis, University of British Columbia, 1997, believe that the expedition actually was a major cause of the purchase of Alaska by William Seward. An immature thesis perhaps, but it's well worth looking at his assertion. Seward was a sponsor of the expedition and would have been exposed to the reports coming back from the Smithsonian Institution-sponsored scientists, like Kennicott, of the mineral wealth in the region. It is also no coincidence that among the first arrivals at Nome, Alaska, in its gold rush was a chap called Libby, who had been in the same place some thirty years earlier with the Telegrah Expedition. Two major works are available documenting the exploration. A scientific travelogue by Smithsonian scientist W. H. Dall is perhaps the most referenced, while a humorous English travelogue by Frederick Whymper provides additional if fatuous reporting.
All parts of the expedition were tough, but who in America would have relished building a telegraph across the Siberian tundra ? Young George Kennan (explorer) did, as did Richard Bush. Kennan would later become notable for influencing American opinion of the Russian Empire. Originally very much for Russian settlement of the far East, on visiting the exile camps in the 1880's he changed his mind. Kennan's original thrilling account of the telegraph expedition can be found at Tent Life in Siberia: Adventures Among the Koryaks and Other Tribes in Kamchatka and Northern Asia, available freely at Project Gutenberg (1870;reprint 1986 ISBN 0879052546;). Richard Bush, aiming to emulate Kennan's success, wrote the considerably less interesting "Reinder, Dogs and Snowshoes".
All works relating to the expedition are interesting, not only from a travel and discovery perspective but also from a cultural studies standpoint. The ethnocentric descriptions of aboriginal peoples in the places now known as British Columbia, Yukon Territory and Alaska, as well as the general region of Eastern Siberia, typify those attitudes of the time. In hindsight, the descriptions create havoc in modern liberal academia, but they can still be useful. Telegraph records provide evidence for native land claims such as those of the Gitxsan Nation of northern British Columbia. Dall's records have helped locate Smithsonian exhibits returned to their original native domiciles, and so on.
In the long run, the telegraph expedition, while an abject economic failure, provided a further means by which America was able to expand its Manifest Destiny beyond its national boundaries. Provincial British Columbia meanwhile could further colonise, communicate with, and "know" its northern landscapes.
