http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaskan_Purchase
The Alaskan purchase is a funny story that is told very differently depending on college US history courses and their high school counter parts. The article on Wikipedia is short and tells the usually pieces of information. When it happened, who was responsible, for how much, and how it was looked at when it first happened.
This is highly accurate in what is included, but very much inaccurate as a whole for what wasn’t included. Wikipedia makes no effort to give the story leading to the deal, nor the discovery of gold that reversed the notion of the transaction being a “folly.”
What isn’t spoken of is how the Civil War a few years earlier was causing Britain great financial trouble. Textile industries decimated by the blockade of southern ports by the US navy demanded British intervention. Finally the British sent armies via boat to Canada to prepare for an invasion. The Russians who hated the Brits knew this could happen, so they sent hundreds of thousands of troops to New York to have a parade and declare their support for the United States. This effectively ended the invasion and the troops were left in Ottawa.
Angry the British decided to send the troops across Canada to seize Alaska, for the Canadians discovered gold in the streams coming from Alaska. The US spies learned of the British plot to take the gold rich lands. With the Civil War over, they decided to “thank” Russia for their show of support by offering them a deal for Alaska. With the intelligence that Britain was going to declare war and the lands would be lost, they jumped at the deal. The deal was considered horrible for America, until gold was “discovered” shortly after by a government sponsored expedition to Alaska.
America likes to romanticize our ethics with pride, but we thank an act of alliance by effectively stealing under false pretenses. Cheat once, lie twice is what we did. Hoorah American revisionist history! Wiki has none of this info, most likely because it is too controversial to say anything anti American.
2 comments:
It seems like you really know your American History
Yeah, it seems like a lot of time when it comes to history, America can make no mistakes whatsoever, and to accuse it of such a thing would be blasphemous. It's unfortunate that trying not to seem "anti-American" so often becomes more important than presenting history accurately.
-Dallas
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