The story of the Russian-American Company’s (RAC) Hawai’ian ‘colony’ reads as a minor footnote in the history of Russian America. In fact, rather than amounting to a colony, the ephemeral Hawai’ian enclave might at best be described as a putative outpost. The first tentative contacts between the Russians of RAC and the Sandwich Islands (Hawai’i) was in 1804 when Russian ships visited two of the islands, O’ahu and Kaua’i❈. RAC funded such circumnavigational expeditions from the early 19th century – one of its commercial aims to locate suppliers for its Russian-American settlements and markets for its manufactured goods (eg, China, Japan)[1].

Hawai’i: Fort Elizabeth
In 1807 RAC vessels began exchanging goods with the Hawaiian chieftains (animal pelts for foodstuffs and supplies). The following year RAC sent Lieutenant Hagemeister to Hawai’i to obtain salt (vital to Alaska for the preservation of both food and furs). Russian trade approaches were soon reciprocated by King Kamehameha I who had unified most of the Hawai’ian Islands under his kingdom[2]. Kamekameha exchanged correspondences with the governor of Russian Alaska at Sitka (New Archangel), Baranov, welcoming an annual trade between the two – hogs, batatas (sweet potato) and salt for otter pelts[3].

The Schaffer Fiasco – the “Hawai’ian Spectacular”
Around late 1814 early 1815 an RAC vessel was shipwrecked on Kaua’i and its company goods were seized by the island’s chieftain Kaumuali’i. Lieutenant Podushkin and George Anton Schäffer (a German surgeon in the Company’s employ) were sent to Kaua’i to recover the goods, but Schäffer, instead of following instructions, allowed himself to be embroiled in Hawai’ian politics and a plot hatched by Chief Kaumuali’i to regain power in the archipelago. Kaumuali’i and Schäffer entered into an alliance (without the approval of RAC!) – the Kaua’i king would provide 500 warriors + Schäffer would provide ships and ammunition for a military assault on King Kamekameha’s stronghold. The injudicious Schäffer embraced the quixotic notion that he was capable of paving the way for the RAC and the Russian navy to colonise Hawai’i[4].

Dr GA Schäffer

What followed was a bizarre 18-month misadventure during which Schäffer built fortifications at Waimea which he named Fort Elizabeth (Rus: Форт Елизаветы) and two smaller, earthworks forts on Kaua’i, made costly purchases of American ships without RAC authority, planted crops and failed to muster any native support for a Russian takeover of the archipelago (except for Kaumuali’i who was playing him for his own advantage) – all the while Shäffer was losing touch with reality and succumbing to delusions of grandeur (eg, naming the region of the island where the fort was, Shäfferthal). Schäffer’s faux colony finally came a cropper when Kamekameha’s influential clique of American traders ejected him from Hawai’i in 1817. Back in Sitka Baranov and RAC disavowed Schäffer’s actions and refused to pay the outstanding bills incurred by the German physician-cum-imperialist adventurer¤.

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Kaua’i

PostScript: Baranov, RAC and Russian designs on Hawai’i
Did Baranov at any stage perhaps want to go further than just establishing bilateral trade with the Hawai’ian chiefs? His written instructions to Lt Podushkin in early 1816 hint at something more imperially expansionist – Podushkin was told to secure King Kaumuali’i’s agreement to conduct trade and the construction of a Russian factory on Kaua’i, or failing that “… the whole island of Kauai should be taken in the name of our Sovereign Emperor of all the Russias and become a part of his possessions”[5]. After the War of 1812 broke out Baranov certainly sensed the chance to get a foothold in the Sandwich Islands and the lucrative sandalwood trade whilst the two combatants (Britain and the US) were likely to be distracted. Schäffer’s forcible removal from Hawai’i did not put an end to his advocacy … he continued to make grander and grander proposals to the Tsar that the islands be taken by force ASAP to safeguard all of Russian American possessions. And the delusional Schäffer was not entirely alone in running this line … after Baranov left Sitka elements of RAC continued to entertain Russia’s “Hawai’ian project” until 1821. The whole disastrous business was finally brought to a conclusion when Alexander I unequivocally expressed his disapproval of Schäffer’s scheme to integrate Hawai’i into the Russian Empire✥ (Alexander was very mindful of the necessity of not antagonising the European powers who used Hawai’i as a free port and regular trading station). Whether Russia and RAC harboured designs on Hawai’i or not, Washington was quick to react to the Russian incursion by establishing a consulate on Hawai’ian territory in 1820 – paving the way for the missionaries[6].

FN: Surprisingly, rather than disappearing without trace as you might imagine, the discredited Doctor Schäffer resurfaced in Brazil in the early 1820s, reinventing himself as an agent for Emperor Dom Pedro I securing large-scale emigration of Germans to newly independent Brazil.

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❈ following upon Captain James Cook’s discovery of the Sandwich Islands in 1778 American and British traders had established close commercial ties with the Hawai’ians
¤ described by RA Pierce as “a fast-working interloper”
✥ this was not the end of Russian involvement with Hawai’i by any measure – a Russian political exile, Nikolai Sudzilovsky, was elected the first Senate president of Hawai’i in 1901 (socialist Sudzilovsky was both opposed to Hawai’i joining the US and hostile to Tsarist Russia)

[1] ‘First Russian circumnavigation – Russian Voyage’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org
[2] E Joesting, Kauai: The Separate Kingdom (1988)
[3] RA Pierce, Russia’s Hawaiian Adventure, 1815-1817, (1965)
[4] H Schwartz, ‘Fort Ross California – A Historical Synopsis’, Fort Ross Conservancy, (IP Unit, Dept of Parks & Rec. California, Feb 1977)
[5] A.A.Baranov to I.A.Pudushkin, Feb. 15, 1816, cited in Pierce, op.cit.
[6] ‘Georg Anton Schäffer’, Wikipedia, http://.wikipedia.n.em.org