Empire of extinction: nature and natural history in the Russian North Pacific, 1739-1799

This research project builds on the dissertation, extending the timeframe into the middle of the nineteenth-century when the environmental critiques developed in the eighteenth century bore fruit as full-fledged colonial conservation movements. British and American fur-traders now joined the Russians in a large-scale hunt of sea otters and fur seals, and these animals' decline reached crisis proportions from Kamchatka down to Vancouver Island. Unique among European powers in the region, the Russian Empire enacted serious and effective conservation measures of fur-bearing animals. The Empire's natural historians played a vital role in this process, alerting Russia to the scope of the decline, and proposing measures based upon their growing understanding of marine ecology.