Tsarist Russia in America’s Pacific Backdoor II: California

Posted on by E Curb Nottus
Cinema, Popular Culture, Regional History

The establishment by the Russian Empire of a colony in California in the early 19th century was a corollary of the earlier North American colony in Alaska. The inherent deficiencies that surfaced in the operation of the Russian American colony convinced the Russian-American Company that it needed to find new, more propitious outposts in the region that could service Russian America’s needs.

California: Fort Ross
Zealous over-hunting of the prized sea otters by the Russian-American Company et al in Alaska’s waters led the company to seek out new, profitable hunting grounds further south. After some early fur hunting expeditions (1806-11) confirmed the presence of abundant sea otters along New Spain’s Pacific coastline, RAC chief Aleksandr Baranov authorised his assistant Ivan Kuskov to find a suitable location in Northern California and establish a Russian colony.

Fort Ross

The location chosen by the RAC to settle its new colony in 1812 – on the “New Albion” shore to the north of Bodega Bay (today in Sonoma County)❈ – was carefully selected. It was close to but outside of the border that Spain had set as its northern-most jurisdiction (San Francisco). As well as the proximity to plentiful sea otter fields, the Russian-American Company wanted its Californian base to be close enough to facilitate trade with Alta (Upper) California.

(photo: www.fortross.org)

The exact spot picked by Kuskov for the settlement was the site of an Indian village called Meteni by the local Kashaya (Kashia Pomo) tribes. After negotiating the sale of the land with the Pomo[1], Kuskov built RAC’s fortress called Fort Ross (Rus: Фopт-Pocc). The other raison d’être of the Californian colony was to provide an agricultural base for the northern settlements (Alaska had proved too harsh an environment and its climate too raw to supply sufficient quantity or variety for the nutritional needs of its settlers).

Russian stamp commemorating 200th anniversary of founding of Fort Ross

By 1814 Kuskov’s men (which included Aleut natives from Alaska) had planted the beginnings of an orchard, a solitary peach tree, later adding more trees which would eventually yield grapes, apples, cherries, pears, quinces and bergamots. This fresh fruit was to prove important in preventing outbreaks of scurvy which had dogged the early Californian colony[2].

An inhospitable neighbourhood
As things transpired, the emergence of the Russian settlement at Fort Ross did provoke the displeasure of the Las Californias authorities who responded by establishing a new mission station and presido (fort) in the vicinity to check any attempt by RAC to colonise any parts of California further south. Early trade opportunities were impeded by Madrid which forbid its Californian outposts from having commercial transactions with Fort Ross (although a healthy contraband trade did exist)[3]. With the Adams-Onis Treaty (1819) by which the US acknowledged Spain’s claim to all land south of the Oregon country border, Russia was even further squeezed out diplomatically in California¤ (and forced to renounce its own Oregon claim[4]. After Mexico gained its independence from ‘Old’ Spain in 1821 it constructed its own forts (such as the Sonoma Barracks) not far from the Russian Fortress to hem it in[5].

Russian chart – Fort Ross & Bodega Bay

Other drawbacks imperiling the viability of Russia’s Fort Ross colony
A. Otter hunting and shipbuilding
Hostility from Hispanic California and free-spirited westward-roaming American pioneers was not the only issue the Russians at Fort Ross had to contend with. By around 1817 the Californian coastline was displaying the same tell-tale signs of rapid depletion of the much sought-after sea otters that had plagued the Northwest Pacific and turned RAC’s focus southward ten years earlier. Being closer to both the US and Mexico and within the English’s sphere of operations, the competition for pelts in Alta California was even more intense. With the southern colony’s annual otter pelt catch declining every year, RAC tried diversifying its industries. For a while shipbuilding took commercial centre stage at the colony’s port at nearby Rumyartsev Bay … in a productive six years from 1818 six major vessels were built there. Unfortunately the Rumyartsev builders used Tanbark oak, which wasn’t suitable for ocean-going vessels and to make matters worse, seasoned it improperly so that the wood progressively rotted and all the ships were unseaworthy within a few years[6].

B. Ranching and animal husbandry
After the wood rot disaster shipbuilding in the colony ceased and Fort Ross switched his emphasis to agriculture and the development of its animal husbandry. New ranches opened up for stock-raising, especially from the early 1830s, with some success in the production of beef and mutton. A 1841 inventory of livestock at Fort Ross (taken just prior to the colony’s demise) listed 1,700 head of cattle, 940 horses and 900 sheep … indicating some marginal success in ranching – but to put it in perspective this was far behind the herd sizes of livestock achieved by the contemporary Spanish and Mexican Californian ranchers[7].

C. Grain production and other agriculture
RAC’s hope was that a colony in Alta California – with its better soils and pasture lands, plentiful timber and good water supply – would be conducive to productive and consistent yields of produce, and would become the granary for the northern outposts in Alaska. Flawed agricultural methods and planning however meant that this would remain a pipe dream. The colonists failed to rotate their crops and fertilise the fields adequately for arability. The type of farming at the ‘Fortress’ was more that of private plots producing fruit and vegetables for local consumption rather than exporting. The quantities sent north were never sufficient, nor were they consistent in quality. At different periods the Russian colony had to trade its manufactured goods♦ for grain and seed from New Spain, both for the colonists’ use and to ship north to Russian America’s capital, Sitka. From the late 1820s on occasionally there were good crops, but even in the most fecund times Fort Ross could only supply a mere 1/12th of RAC’s needs for Alaska[8].

The Fort Ross colony workforce
The colonists’ division of labour comprised the Russians and Creoles in one group of occupations, guards, overseers, artisans and cooks, and the Aleut men as hunters (Aleut women and other native tribes were allotted the more menial tasks). After the sea otter haul largely disappeared, the Aleut hunters were reassigned to herding and lumbering jobs. The calibre of men Kuskov had at his disposal was problematic … the Russian men were often described as “riff-raff” – the risk of desertion was always a concern and many were suspected of criminal intent. As for the native workers, most brought from Alaska were convicts under punishment for “crimes committed against the colony” and many of the Indians were considerable unreliable[9]. The lack of an ongoing, stable workforce added to the colony’s woes. Quantity as well as quality – a sheer lack of manpower also contributed to Fort Ross’s failure.

Hudson’s Bay Co

Endgame for Krepost’ Ross
The isolated colony struggled on through the 1830s trying to make a go of it commercially, but Fort Ross’ death knoll was sounded when the Russian-American Company signed an agreement with the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) in 1839 … HBC would henceforth supply all provisions required by RAC’s Alaskan outposts[10]. RAC, pulling the plug, tried at first to sell Fort Ross to the Hudson’s Bay Company, and then to the Mexican government, but were unsuccessful in both instances. Consequently Fort Ross’s Governor Rotcher managed to sell the Fortress and all its contents (including a disused schooner in Bodega Bay) to Californian settler pioneer and businessman Johann (John) Sutter for $30,000.

ↂ ↂ ↂ ↂ ↂ

Endnote:
The Russians were only one of several players eyeing off the colonial potentiality of Spanish Alta California. French, American and British visitors all made note of how surprisingly tenuous Madrid’s hold was on the territory [11].

PostScript: Fort Ross – the movie!
Intriguingly in a time witnessing a latent reheating of American/Russian superpower tensions, a Russian film company made a feature film about the Fort Ross colony (released in 2014 presumably as a celebration of the Fort’s 200th anniversary two years earlier). Written by Dimitriy Poletaev, Fort Ross is billed as a historical adventure/action/fantasy movie. I’m more than a little skeptical about how historically accurate it is … though it does contain a character called “Komendant Kuskov”. Basically, the plot revolves around a “Gen Y” journalist who find himself transported back to 1814 Fort Ross, coonskin caps, muskets, otter pelts and everything – courtesy of his malfunctioning iPhone! (the fantasy bit). The time-travelling protagonist finds himself embroiled in various intrigues and adventures and the film gives a few nods to the state of contemporary US/Russian relations. A part of the external footage was filmed at Fort Ross National Park – shots of the Russian River (Slavyanka) and the surrounding countryside – though the producers used the recently renovated original Fort Ross itself as a model to re-create a full-scale replica of the fort in Belarus.

⊸⊸⊸⊸⊸⊸⊸⊸⊸⊸⊸⊸⊸⊸⊸⊸⊸⊸⊸⊸⊸⊸⊸⊸⊸⊸⊸⊸⊸⊸⊸⊸⊸⊸
❈ about 130km northwest of San Francisco Bay
¤ A further blow to morale was that Spain, Mexico, the US and Britain never recognised the legitimacy of Russia’s Fort Ross colony … although in the case of Mexico, it was prepared to do so provided Russia recognised it in return, but the conservative Tsar’s suspicion that the new Republic was a radical regime vetoed that diplomatic breakthrough (Schwartz 1977)
♦ such as barrels, bricks, furniture, soap, etc.

[1] ‘negotiated’ for almost sweet FA according to one account – Kuskov bought the area for a small quantity of clothing, bedding and tools, ‘History of the Russian Settlement at Fort Ross, California’, www.parks.sonoma.net/ross
[2] ‘Historic Orchard at Fort Ross’, Fort Ross Conservancy, www.fortross.org
[3] H Schwartz, ‘Fort Ross California – A Historical Synopsis’, Fort Ross Conservancy‘, (Interpretive Planning Unit, Dept of Parks & Rec, Calif. Feb 1977), http://fortross.org/lib.html
[4] ibid.
[5] ‘History of the Russian Settlement’, Wikipedia, www.wikipedia.n.em.org
[6] ibid.; Schwartz, loc.cit.
[7] Schwartz, loc.cit.
[8] ibid.
[9] AA Istomin, ‘Indians at the Ross Settlement – According to the censuses by Kuskov in 1820 and 1821’, (Fort Ross Interpretive Association, Jul 1992), www.fortross.org
[10] ‘Yukon/Alaska Chronology’, Explore North – An Explorer’s Guide to the North, www.explorenorth.com

[11] Kevin Starr, Americans and the California Dream 1850-1915, (1971)

Tsarist Russia in America’s Pacific Backdoor I: Alaska

Posted on by E Curb Nottus
Regional History

All school children in the United States learn the story of America’s acquisition of Alaska. In 1867 Tsarist Russia sold its vast Alaskan territory to the US for $7.2 million in gold bullion. It is together with the Louisiana Purchase the two great stories of government mega-scale real estate acquisition in US history. The United States’ motives for acquiring Alaska at that time have been fairly well canvassed[1]. But less well-known is Russia’s role in Alaska and the North Pacific littoral prior to 1867 and the reasons for its eventual and permanent withdrawal from the region.

Russia’s move into Alaska was a natural outgrowth of the Romanov Empire’s expanding imperial reach eastwards. It was also driven by the need to find a new source of fur-bearing mammals❈. Siberia and the Russian Far East (Tartaria Oriental) had become rapidly depleted in stock and Imperial Russia was intent on exploring the lands and islands further east and, among other things, getting a stranglehold on the trade in pelts there[2].

Soon after Russian explorers first sighted the Alaskan shoreline in 1741, Russian hunters and fur traders (the promyshlenniki) began to move into the Aleutian Islands, a preliminary step to further expansion into the Gulf of Alaska. An outpost was established at Unalaska, from here the Russian traders encroached on Alaskan territory in a piecemeal fashion. Using the same strategy employed against the Siberian tribes earlier, the promyshlenniki coerced the indigenous Aleuts into hunting sea otters for them. The missionary zeal of Russian Orhodox priests, who were part of the colonial community in the outposts, played a role in the ‘pacification’ of the Alaskan native populations[3]. Contact with the Russians was also devastating to the health of indigenous Americans: it is estimated that 80% or more of Alaskan peoples were wiped out as a result of infectious diseases brought by the Europeans[4].

The Russian-American Company

Moscow chose as its template the successful model of Britain’s East India Company, a powerful enterprise which capitalised on Robert Clive’s triumph over the moguls of India [5]. A Russian foothold was established in 1784 on the peninsula, with the name “the Three Saints Bay Colony” on Kodiak Island. The settlement’s founder, powerful merchant Grigory Shelekhov used brutal and excessive force against native tribes that rebelled against his authority (eg, wholesale massacre of natives from the Alutiiq nation). But the nucleus of the Russian presence in Alaska was to be the Russian-American Company (RAC) (established in 1799). Headed by autocratic Chief Manager Aleksandr Baranov de facto governor of the Russian colony (till 1818), the Company effectively controlled all of Russia’s possessions in North America. RAC established a number of settlements including the Russian American capital, New Archangel (Novo-Arkhangel’sk), modern-day Sitka.

Northern sea otter (enhydra lutris kenyoni)▼ )

Russian over-dependence on the indigenous population
Food: the Russian colonists failed to establish self-sufficiency in food … a foul climate made for low or poor agricultural yields (not helped by the Russians’ inexperience in farming the local Tanana soil) and a lack of fresh food. This made them reliant on the local Indians for the acquisition of deer, fish, etc. The Russians also needed to trade with Hispanic California, the British in Canada and the United States for many of the foodstuffs they couldn’t grow in Alaska (wheat, barley, peas and beans, etc).
Labour shortage: the RAC labour force in Russian America was always well below requirements to make the colony thrive. Most Russian workers were not attracted to Russian America … too far from Russia, a particularly inhospitable, desolate climate, low pay, heavy work, sparse diet. The colony lacked essential infrastructure (no attendant medical doctor before the 1820s).
Unskilled providers of goods: RAC’ eye was on the prized sea otter trade (or “sea beavers” as they sometimes referred to them)✦, but the Russians themselves were not adept at pelagic hunting … the mustelid creatures proved especially elusive, without the superior hunting skills of the compliant Aleuts, RAC’s pelt haul (and therefore its profits) would have been vastly diminished.

Companionship and sex: the colony’s male to female ratio was heavily skewed in favour of men – at its nadir in 1819 there were 29 Russian men for every one Russian woman. An inevitable outcome of this was that many Russian men took indigenous mistresses, with the equally inevitable consequence of producing numerous Creole (or mestizo) offspring[6].

Tlingit resistance to Russian rule
The Russian colonists met with much stiffer resistance from the Tlingit or Kolosh Indians (southern Alaska) than it did from the eastern native tribes. The Tlingits were more war-like and equipped with firearms, and early on engaged in fierce warfare with the Russians. Unable to subjugate them like the Aleuts, the RAC resorted to an assimilation strategy, herding them in close to the reinforced New Archangel fort and engaging in barter with the Tlingit chiefs for fur skins and other, edible animals … RAC created a special ‘Kolosh’ market which allowed the Company to monopolise the trade in Alaska[7].

Eastern Siberian Governor-General Muruvyov on the RUB5,000 bank-note ▼

The Russian withdrawal from Alaska
Although RAC’s brief was to establish a network of settlements in Alaska and its chain of islands, it never managed to penetrate far into the Alaska landmass and so clearly failed to develop the territory as a whole. But this was not entirely down to the RAC and its leadership – as Oleh Gerus notes, had the Russian government taken “a more positive and imaginative approach to (the colony’s) potential”, it may be been a “viable enterprise'[8].

Deprived of adequate funding and support from Moscow, the RAC’s administrative and technological capacities were ultimately found wanting: the provisioning of the colony was way short of the mark, the Company was chronically unable to provide sufficient supplies for its personnel in Alaska … undernourished, understaffed and isolated in a raw, harsh climate, the men slowly drifted into apathy and alcoholism (at the best of times in Russia, not an atypically characteristic trait!)¤.

A trigger for the colony’s economic undoing was the over-farming of sea otters[9] – as had also occurred in Siberia. Diversification into coal-mining and other activities was tried but the lost economic return from otter pelts couldn’t be offset[10]. The Russian colony was also subject to fierce competition from American and British traders. By the 1860s RAC’s share value on the Russian Stock Exchange had plummeted and the quasi-government commercial venture was facing bankruptcy. The cost of transportation to and from the colony was an expensive burden for the Russian economy. Overall, from the 1820s, the colony’s expenses were rising at a much higher rate that its revenue[11].

Alaska Purchase

Thus, clear economic reasons for the ultimate unravelling of Russkaya Amerika can be identified, and the $7,200,000 in gold sale price would have eased some of the burden on Moscow’s treasury, but James Gibson downplays the economic factor in the cession of the territory by Russia. He concludes that Russia’s decision was prompted more by political and geo-strategic considerations. The reversals suffered by Russia in the Crimean War, Gibson argues, exposed the vulnerability of Russian America to naval attack by the Allies (GB and France). The inability to match the might of the British Navy in Pacific waters helped convince Moscow that Alaska was a liability and a threat to its security in the event of new conflicts. Gibson continues, Russia’s over-stretched navy was not only unable to defend its Pacific colony from enemy warships, but even from the incursions of ‘freewheeling’ Yankee traders who roamed around the North Pacific trafficking in various goods and products in disregard of Russian authority[12].

If Russian America was not viable as a base for Russian activities in the Pacific and eastern Asia, somewhere else needed to be found. The problem was solved by the Governor-General of Eastern Siberian Nikolay Muruvyov. Muruvyov’s plan was to refocus Russia’s Pacific Destiny on Asia – rather than North America. Whilst China was racked by internal strife (the Taiping Rebellion), Muruvyov took the opportunity to expand Russia’s imperial territory between the Amur and the Ussuri rivers. This waterway foothold gave Russia access to the Pacific at the Sea of Japan and led to the establishment in 1860 of the strategically important port of Vladivostok which became home to the Russian Pacific fleet[13].

▼ RAC flag

PostScript: The Alaska Sale – why sell to the US and not Britain?
Britain already possessed a territory contiguous with Russian Alaska, British Columbia (including at that time the Yukon), so it made geographic sense for Britain to take over and control the northwestern chunk of the continent回. The Russian government’s decision was a political calculation, post-Crimea Britain was still very much Russia’s number one enemy, whereas with the US, if not exactly a friendly power, it had neutral relations. Moscow reasoned that with Alaska American, England’s British Columbia colony, ‘bookended’ by the US, would be under pressure. It was widely thought that given the US’s recent record of territorial aggression on its borders, it would be inevitable that British Columbia would eventually fall into its hands. The positive spin-off for Russian imperial and commercial aspirations in the Pacific would be Britain’s loss of its naval base on Vancouver Island[14].

╼╾╼╾╼╾╼╾╼╾╼╾╼╾╼╾╼╾╼╾╼╾╼╾╼╾╼╾╼╾╼╾╼╾
❈ much in demand domestically in the Empire as Russia’s northern cold climate necessitated rugging up most of the time
✦ also much in demand by the Russians as a commodity to trade was walrus ivory
¤ the perception of the typical Russian on the ground was that Russian America was more remote and desolate than even Siberia! (JR Gibson 4)
回 as it transpired Britain for its part expressed little interest in buying Alaska

[1] enlarging the American dominion in the name of republicanism (Secretary of State Seward’s aggrandising ambitions which included eyeing off British Columbia and thus strategically flanking British Canada on its west); expanding the US base of its international commerce to Japan and China; knowledge of potential gold deposits in the territory, etc, JR Gibson (1), ‘The Sale of Russian America to the United States’, (PDF, 1983), www.eprints.lib.hokudai.ac.jp
[2] As well as domestic consumption, furs were also important to Russia’s export market. At one point furs were used as a monetary unit in Siberia due to a shortage of roubles, S Crawford Isto, The Fur Farms of Alaska: Two Centuries of History and a Forgotten Stampede, (2012)
[3] punitive measures against the Indians included displays of the superior technology of their weaponry, holding of family members as hostages, wholesale destruction of villages, reducing the Aleuts and after them the Kodiak tribes to the status of serfs, RM Carpenter, “Times Are Altered with Us”: American Indians from the First Contact to the New Republic, (2015); the priests were very successful in converting Aleuts and other indigenous Indians, ‘Russian Orthodox’, www.alaskaweb.org
[4] JR Gibson (2), ‘Russian Dependance on the Natives of Alaska’, in SW Haycocks & M Childers Mangusso, An Alaskan Anthology: Interpreting the Past (2011)

[5] Owen Matthews, Glorious Misadventures: Nikolai Rezanov and the Dream of a Russian America (2013)]
[6] Gibson (2), loc.cit.
[7] although a smallpox epidemic in 1836 seriously weakened the Tlingits’ power, ibid; AV Grinev, The Tlingit Indians in Russian America, 1741-1867, (2005)
[8] OW Gerus, ‘The Russian Withdrawal from Alaska: The Decision to Sell’, Revista de Historia de América, Nos 75/76. (Jan-Dec 1973)
[9] the promyshlenniki also coveted the furs of other creatures (the largest quantities of animal skins exported by RAC came from sea otters, beavers, land otters, Polar foxes, fur seals and sables), but it was the sea otters that fetched the highest prices – the otter pelt market was highly prized in Canton, China, JR Gibson (3), ‘Russian America in 1833. The Survey of Kirill Khlebnikov’, Pacific Northwest Quarterly, 63(1), Jan 1972
[10] at its peak RAC was transporting one million roubles’ worth of furs back to Russia annually, ibid.
[11] JR Gibson (4), ‘Imperial Russia in Frontier America: The Changing Geography of Supply in Russian America, 1784-1867 (1976); Gibson (3), loc.cit.
[12] Gibson (1), op.cit.
[13] ibid.
[14] Britain countered this threat by forming the Canadian Confederation three months after the Purchase, and admitting British Columbia to it in 1871, RE Neunherz, ‘ “Hemmed In”. Reactions in British Columbia to the Purchase of Russian America’, Pacific Northwest Quarterly, 80(3), Jul 1989

Fountainhead of the Fermented Grape: Wine’s Ancient Origins

Posted on by E Curb Nottus
Archaeology, Pre-history, Regional History, Social History

Where did the story of wine and wine-making begin? As with many things whose beginnings are shrouded in the mystery of ancient and even pre-historic times, it is very hard to pinpoint a one hundred percent, definitive answer to this question. The evidence for when and where humans might have first cultivated Vitis vinifera va. sylvestris (the wild grape fruit)❈ lies in the realm of archaeology.

🔝 Today’s Transcaucasian republics – physical map

The timeline for the first experiments with wine-making, thanks to a wealth of archaeological evidence, puts it in the pre-recorded history stage of humanity, more precisely in the Neolithic Era (in Eurasia this was, very roughly, from 9,000 to 4,000 BCE). The consensus view has traditionally tended to be that the rudiments of viticulture can be located in the area around Mesopotamia and the Caspian Sea (see also footnote).

The Fertile Crescent: home of Ur-winemakers
Transcaucasia (the Caucasus), that relatively narrow strip of multi-ethnic lands separating the Black Sea from the Caspian, stretching south to include the northern parts of Turkey and Iran, has perhaps the best claim to the honour. Archaeologists have discovered early signs of wine activity and implements in southern Georgia, north-western Azerbaijan, and northern Armenia, suggesting that “Stone Age people took advantage of a temperate climate and availability of wild fruit species to experiment with cultivating grapes”[1].

Wine expert Caroline Gilby identifies three basic pre-conditions for successful wine-making in the Neolithic era, (i) a stable human population settled in the one place for some time, (ii) invention of pottery/clay vessels for storage✜, and (iii) existence of wild grapevines (plus a self-fertile plant to cross-pollinate with). Transcaucasia fits the bill – plant cultivation for most of the major agricultural crops began in the Middle East region around 10,000 years ago. Within the greater Caucasus, Georgia for which wine is a national obsession has 500 distinct varieties of the vine, whilst Turkey and Armenia have around 600 and 200 respectively[2].

🔝 Zagros Mountains

Not to be outdone, Iran itself has a claim worthy of contention for longevity of vine production. In the mid 1990’s evidence of mey (Persian: wine), dating to about 5,400 BCE, was found in excavated jars at the Hajji Firuz Tepe site in the Zagros Mountains of north-western Iran. What was especially significant about this location was that it also contained evidence of the preservation of wine (in the form of a resin from the local terebinth tree)[3].

Armenia: site of oldest known vineyard
In recent years archaeologists discovered and excavated the Areni-1 Cave – the earliest known site of wine production (pre-historic “wine-making on an industrial scale” not hitherto unearthed)[4]. Items found at the vineyard at Vayots Dzor included a wine-press, fermentation vats, jars and cups[5]. The clay receptacles with their wine traces were radiocarbon-dated after being chemical analysed at between 4100 BCE and 4000 BCE. A side-effect of the recent vinaceous archaeological discoveries has been squabbling among the various Transcasusian states as to who were the first wine-makers[6].

🔝 Egyptian winery, 2nd millennium BCE

Mediterranean wine culture
Transcaucasian wine production and consumption clearly predates those from the Mediterranean region. Egypt is closest in time to the northern Eurasian area, its oldest traces of wine (yrp or irep), found inside the Tomb of the Scorpion King (Abydos, Upper Egypt), is about 5,000-years-old. Interestingly they were found to be spiked with natural medicines (effectively herbal wine). These medicinal additives were later adopted by Greek and Roman winemakers who followed the Egyptian practice[7]. The ancient Egyptians, who had a preference for red wine, were the first to depict wine and wine-making in their hieroglyphics.

🔝 Roman wine jars – great & small

In Grecian Macedonia fragments of crockery and assorted pottery with wine traces have been found dating back to around 4,500 BCE. Evidence of wine cultivation – dating from the mid-3rd century BCE – was also found on the Greek island of Crete. For ancient Romans wine was the drink de jour … initially Roman attempts at the craft of wine-making were derivative of the established Greek (and Etruscan) methods of viticulture but the Romans later drew on the ample supply of indigenous vines in southern Italy to produce their own varieties. With the ever widening reach of Roman imperial expansion – through war, trade and settlements – the Romans spread wine consumption and viticulture to the countries and regions it conquered (especially France, Germany, Spain and Portugal)[8].

Vino in eastern Asia: China’s early wine origins
In the mid 2000s China emerged as a candidate for the world’s earliest consumers of wine. An international team of archaeologists (Chinese, American and German) dug up an early Neolithic village (Jiahu) in Henan Province, unearthing pottery with traces of “wine-like drinks”(sic) (a fermented mixture comprising rice, honey and hawthorn fruit and grape). The beverage has been dated somewhere between the year 7,000 BCE and 5,500-6,000 BCE[9].

Whether China has the bragging rights to being the earliest consumer of wine (and perhaps the first centre of wine production), or Transcaucus does, one point remains clear: the interest and active, on-going work of archaeologists in this field, ensures that ownership of the title has a fluidity to it. Yet more candidates for the world’s earliest pioneers of viticulture are likely to be unearthed in the future.

🔝 Georgian vineyard (photo: BBC Travel)

FN: A vintage Georgian drop🍷 🕸🕸🕸The fertile valleys and protective slopes of Transcaucasia and modern-day Georgia were conducive to grapevine cultivation and Neolithic wine production. Archaeological evidence from Georgia suggests wine production there at least 8,000 years ago with the recent discovery of clay pots containing the residue of wine [‘Oldest Evidence of Winemaking Discovered at 8,000-Year-Old Village’, (Andrew Curry), National Geographic, 13-Nov-2017, http://news.nationalgeographic.com; ‘Georgia’, Vinolgue, (Miquel Hudin & Daria Kholodolina, Georgia: a guide to the Cradle of Wine, 2017)].

∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸
❈ the European grape-vine common to western Eurasia – between the Mediterranean and Caspian seas
✜ ceramic containers were invented around 20,000 years ago

[1] T de Waal, The Caucasus: An Introduction, (2010). For instance, discoveries in the 1960s of domesticated grape pips in N/W Azerbaijan have been dated at around 6,000 BCE; in Shulaveri, Georgia, University of Pennsylvania academic Patrick McGovern found wine residues in the shards of 8,000-year-old ceramic vessels, A Friedrich, ‘Georgia’s Vintners Thrist for the Past’, The Washington Post, 22-Feb-2004
[2] C Gilby, ‘The Birthplace of Wine?’, Decanter, (Jan. 2012), www.winesofturkey.org. The domesticated form of the grape has hermaphrodite flowers which self-pollinate, KK Hurst, ‘Wine and its Origins – The Archaeology and History of Wine Making’, (About Education), www.archaeology.about.com
[3] ibid.; M Berkowitz, ‘World’s Earliest Wine’, (Newsbriefs) Archaeology Archive, 49(5) Sep/Oct 1996, www.archaeologicalarchive.org/9609/newsbriefs/charlesfort.html
[4] Dig project co-director Boris Gasparyan, cited in Gilroy, op.cit.
[5] ‘History of Wine’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org
[6] Gilroy, loc.cit.
[7] the Scorpion I wine did not emanate from a local production point, but was imported to the Nile from the Levant, B Handwerk, ‘Scorpion King’s Wines — Egypt’s Oldest — Spiked with Meds’, National Geographic News, 13-Apr-2009, www.news.nationalgeographic.com; J Butler & R Heskett,
Divine Vintage: Following the Wine Trail from Genesis to the Modern Age, (2012)
[8] ‘Ancient Rome and wine’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org
[9] ‘Chinese People were Drinking Wine 9,000 Years Ago’, (Phys Org) 19-Dec-2004, www.phys.org

Bonaparte in America

Posted on by E Curb Nottus
Biographical, Regional History, Social History

The association of America with Napoléon Bonaparte for most people probably revolves round the US government’s bonanza real estate deal with Napoléon in 1803…the US cheaply acquired huge swathes of territory (the Louisiana Purchase) which the French emperor wanted to offload to build up France’s finances for war. Napoléon Bonaparte (Italian: Nabulione Buonaparte) never came to the United States or to anywhere in the New World –- although in the event of his grand scheme to conquer Europe going pear-shaped (as it ultimately and irrevocably did in 1815), his “Plan B” was just that, to make good an escape to the American Republic [1]. However it was Napoléon’s older brother Joseph (born Giuseppe) Bonaparte, formerly installed as king of Spain and the Indies, and before that, king of Naples and Sicily, who did come to the American continent and moreover lived in the US for some 17 or more years after the Emperor’s fall from power.

Sibling & HM King Joseph

Joseph succeeded in his getaway where Napoléon failed, slipping out of French waters and travelling incognito to New York, albeit narrowly avoiding detection by the British. In America Joseph styled himself the Comte de Survilliers … after living in New York and Philadelphia for a period Bonaparte purchased a palatial residence in Bordentown, New Jersey called “Point Breeze” – one of the finest country houses in the Delaware Valley. Joseph was able to afford (and subsequently vastly improve) one of the republic’s grand mansions because he had brought the Spanish Bourbons’ crown jewels with him which he had acquired when abdicating the Spanish throne. With his dubiously acquired riches Bonaparte made other land acquisitions in upstate New York on the Black River (a locale still known as Lake Bonaparte)[2].

‘Point Breeze’, Bordentown, NJ

Joseph AKA the Count of Survilliers largely led a quiet, uneventful and comfortable life in the US, taking no interest in a political role … when Mexican rebels and expat French supporters gave their backing to him to be made emperor of Mexico (1820), he demurred at the offer. In 1832 Bonaparte returned to Europe (although he did return briefly to the US and his much loved mansion ‘Point Breeze’❈ in 1839), living for a while in London and in Italy where he died in 1844. The ineffective, former ‘puppet’ king of Spain was never permitted to return to his native France again because of the French government’s concern that it might provoke a groundswell for a Bonapartist restoration[3].

Joseph was not the only Bonapartist to flee to America following his brother’s downfall in 1815. The return of the Bourbons with the ascension of Louis XVIII prompted a “witch-hunt” of Bonapartists in France. Many followers of Napoléon escaped to America to avoid arrest and recriminations … once there some of Napoléon’s loyal soldiers set up Bonapartist colonies in Alabama (Vine and Olive Colony) and Texas (Champ d’Asile) – which were uniformly unsuccessful and short-lived[4].

Joseph’s (Spanish) Royal Monogram 👑

PostScript: Napoleon’s “life in America”
A) Rescue plans – before exile and on St Helena
In the aftermath of the disaster of Waterloo rumours abounded about various plots and attempts to rescue Napoléon. One plot involved a mega-wealthy French-born banker Stephen (Étienne) Girard living in the US who supposedly hatched an elaborate plan to transport the deposed emperor to Virginia (a claim made in the Baltimore American, 1902). According to some sources Girard also played a role in the Louisiana Purchase machinations[5].

Napoléon’s island prison
By far the most bizarre plot involved a Brit of Irish parentage Tom Johnson, who as well as being a recidivist smuggler had a bit of a reputation as an escape expert. Johnson’s claim was that in 1820 he was offered £40,000 to rescue Napoléon from St Helena, using two primitive types of submarines he had designed as the “getaway” vessels. Johnson’s colourful account reads as highly fanciful and the plot was in any case never implemented … the one plausible element of the story being that Johnson’s underwater crafts (for which designs did exist) were inspired by Robert Fulton’s 1806 submarine -–the American engineer and inventor had earlier worked for both Napoléon and the British government on armed maritime vessel projects (what is less certain is whether Johnson had actually met Fulton as he claimed)[6].

B) Exploring the “What If …” scenario for Napoléon
Devotees of alternative history have speculated lyrically about what might have happened had Napoléon made good his escape to the Americas. One of the early imaginative conjectures (1931) came from British historian HAL Fisher who hypothesised that the exiled emperor might have established a base in New York and then gone on to Spanish America to liberate the masses, before finally drowning at sea whilst attempting to conquer India[7].

Outlawed in Europe after Waterloo, it would have been logical for Napoléon to gravitate towards America … the US had only recently engaged in hostilities with Britain (War of 1812), so the locals would probably have been disposed or at least neutral towards him, he would have been able to live as a free man. The US was a new country born of revolution (and one inspiring a revolution in his native France which promoted his own rise). An American base would position the ambiguous ex-monarch well to marshal his resources and launch an invasion of Central and South America which was ripe for revolution against the Spanish conquerors. One of Napoléon’s aides-de-camp in fact made the suggestion to him that he should make himself “emperor of Mexico”[8] (anticipating what transpired with a later Habsburg royal).

A recent alternative history (Shannon Selin, Napoléon in America) postulates three possible theoretical courses of action for Napoléon – settling on the eastern (Atlantic) seaboard, living peacefully, probably near his favoured brother Joseph (possibly biding his time, building up the necessary support for another go at overthrowing the French Bourbons and reclaim the throne either for himself or for his son); establishing a colony within the US peacefully (in fact Bonapartists later attempted to forge colonies in Alabama and Texas – both then controlled by Spain); and as with Fisher’s supposition, invading Spain’s American colonies and thereby securing a new throne[9].

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❈ as boys Frank and Charles Woolworth (the future retail empire giants) lived close to ‘Joe’ Bonaparte’s abandoned Bordentown mansion, spending lots of their leisure time playing at ‘Point Breeze’

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[1] originally Napoléon and Joseph had laid plans for the two of them to seek refuge together in America in the likelihood of a worst-case scenario. A location in New Jersey was picked out as the optimum place for settling but Napoléon missed a real chance to escape to the US by stealth, having prevaricated too long waiting for anticipated passports which did not come, and then making the fateful decision to give himself up to the British authorities, CE Macartney & G Dorrance, The Bonapartes in America, (1939), www.penelope.uchicago.edu (see also PostScript above)
[2] R Veit, ‘Point Breeze (Bonaparte Estate)’, (2015), www.philadelphiaencyclopedia.org; ‘Joseph Bonaparte at Point Breeze. New Jersey’s Ex-King and the Crown Jewels’, Flatrock, www.flatrock.org.nz
[3] ibid.
[4] ‘Bonapartist Refugees in America, 1815-1850’, www.napolun.com
[5] L Weeks, ‘What if Napoleon Had Come to America’, NPR, 10-Feb-2015, www.npr.org. Girard also underwrote the American war effort in the War of 1812.
[6] M Dash, ‘The Secret Plot to Rescue Napoleon by Submarine’, Smithsonian Magazine, 08-Mar-2013, www.smithsonian.com
[7] H.A.L. Fisher, ‘If Napoleon had Escaped to America’, (Scribner’s Magazine, Jan. 1931), www.unz.org
[8] M Price, ‘How Napoleon Nearly Became a U.S. Citizen’, History News Network, 28-Dec-2014, www.historynewsnetwork.org
[9] Weeks, op.cit.