United or Divided Twins? The Political Economy of Beringia

Abstract

When the US purchased Alaska from the Russians in1867 it quickly stepped into Russia's role in the colonial relationship. The US exploited salmon as the primary base resource from about 1878. Gold was discovered in lode deposits in the 1880s in the southeast of Alaska (Juneau and Treadwell), about the same time as the Lena goldfields of Irkutsk began to step up operations. We anticipate that Alaska contains or has demonstrated most of the elements that we can expect to see in the foreseeable development of other post-Soviet Arctic regions, including Alaska's nearest neighbor Chukotka, one of Russia's poorest and least modernized regions. This article was written for the 'Beringia' issue of the Northern Expanses journal which was a joint effort of the US National Park Service as part of the International Decade of Indigenous People.