The Alaska Purchase was the sale of the Russian colony of Alaska to the United States. Russia, which had found the distant territory costly to defend and feared losing it to Britain in a future war, offered it to the Americans, and the secretary of state, William Seward, negotiated the deal with the Russian envoy Eduard de Stoeckl. The price was 7.2 million dollars, which came to about two cents an acre. Critics at the time called the acquisition Seward's Folly or Seward's Icebox, though the Senate ratified the treaty. The territory later proved rich in gold, fish, timber and oil, and it became the forty-ninth state in 1959.
Before and after
- 1867Dynamite
- 1867Joseph Lister introduces antiseptic surgery
- 14 January 1867Death of Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres
- from 1 March 1867 to 28 October 1918Austria–Hungary
- 30 March 1867Alaska Purchase
- 3 April 1867Discovery of Tempel 1
- 7 May 1867Birth of Władysław Reymont
- 4 June 1867Birth of Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim
- 8 June 1867Birth of Frank Lloyd Wright
More in Wars, politics & history
- 1790Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen
- from 18 March 1839 to 29 August 1842First Opium War
- from 1 August 1894 to 17 April 1895First Sino-Japanese War
- from August 1899 to September 1901Boxer Rebellion
- from 8 October 1912 to 18 July 1913Balkan Wars
- from 8 October 1912 to 30 May 1913First Balkan War
The era
This moment belongs to the Industrial era (1760 CE to 1914 CE), steam, factories and revolutions. You can also browse everything in the 19th century.