On This Date In History

On August 14, 1784, on Kodiak Island, Grigory Shelikhov, a Russian fur trader, founds Three Saints Bay, the first permanent Russian settlement in Alaska.
The European discovery of Alaska came in 1741, when a Russian expedition led by Danish navigator Vitus Bering sighted the Alaskan mainland. Russian hunters were soon making incursions into Alaska, and the native Aleut population suffered greatly after being exposed to foreign diseases. The Three Saints Bay colony was founded on Kodiak Island in 1784, and Shelikhov lived there for two years with his wife and 200 men. From Three Saints Bay, the Alaskan mainland was explored, and other fur-trade centers were established. In 1786, Shelikhov returned to Russia and in 1790 dispatched Aleksandr Baranov to manage his affairs in Alaska.
Baranov established the Russian American Company and in 1799 was granted a monopoly over Alaska. Baranov extended the Russian trade far down the west coast of North America and in 1812, after several unsuccessful attempts, founded a settlement in Northern California near Bodega Bay. British and American trading vessels soon disputed Russia’s claims to the northwest coast of America, and the Russians retreated north to the present southern border of Alaska. Russian interests in Alaska gradually declined, and after the Crimean War in the 1850s, a nearly bankrupt Russia sought to dispose of the territory altogether.
The czarist government first approached the United States about selling the territory during the administration of President James Buchanan, but negotiations were stalled by the outbreak of the American Civil War. After the war, Secretary of State William H. Seward, a supporter of territorial expansion, was eager to acquire the tremendous landmass of Alaska, one-fifth the size of the rest of the United States. On March 30, 1867, Secretary of State William H. Seward signed a treaty with Russia for the purchase of Alaska for $7.2 million. Despite the bargain price of roughly two cents an acre, the Alaskan purchase was ridiculed in Congress and in the press as “Seward’s folly,” “Seward’s icebox,” and President Andrew Johnson’s “polar bear garden.” In April 1867, the Senate ratified the treaty by a margin of just one vote.
Despite a slow start in settlement by Americans from the continental United States, the discovery of gold in 1898 brought a rapid influx of people to the territory. Alaska, rich in natural resources, has been contributing to American prosperity ever since. On January 3, 1959, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed a proclamation admitting the territory of Alaska into the Union as the 49th state.

  

 

Shelikhov's settlement, Three Saints Bay, on Kodiak Island.

The territory sold to the U.S. by Russia.

The check used to purchase the territory of Alaska.

 

On August 14, 1917, as World War I enters its fourth year, China abandons its neutrality and declares war on Germany.
From its inception, the Great War was by no means confined to the European continent; in the Far East, two rival nations, Japan and China, sought to find their own role in the great conflict. The ambitious Japan, an ally of Britain since 1902, wasted no time in entering the fray, declaring war on Germany on August 23, 1914 and immediately plotting to capture Tsingtao, the biggest German overseas naval base, located on the Shantung Peninsula in China, by amphibious assault. Some 60,000 Japanese troops, assisted by two British battalions, subsequently violated Chinese neutrality with an overland approach from the sea towards Tsingtao, capturing the naval base on November 7 when the German garrison surrendered. That January, Japan presented China with the so-called 21 Demands, which included the extension of direct Japanese control over most of Shantung, southern Manchuria and eastern Inner Mongolia and the seizure of more territory, including islands in the South Pacific controlled by Germany.
When China declared war on Germany on August 14, 1917, its major aim was to earn itself a place at the post-war bargaining table. Above all, China sought to regain control over the vital Shantung Peninsula and to reassert its strength before Japan, its most important adversary and rival for control in the region. At the Versailles Peace Conference following the armistice, Japan and China struggled bitterly to convince the Allied Supreme Council, dominated by the United States, France and Britain, of their respective claims on the Shantung Peninsula. A bargain was eventually struck in favor of Japan, who backed down from their demand for a racial-equality clause in the treaty in return for control over Germany’s considerable economic possessions in Shantung, including railways, mines and the port at Tsingtao.
Though Japan promised to return control of Shantung to China eventually, it did so in February 1922, the Chinese were deeply outraged by the Allied decision to favor Japan at Versailles. A huge demonstration was held in Tiananmen Square on May 4, 1919, protesting the peace treaty, which Chinese delegates in Versailles refused to sign. “When the news of the Paris Peace Conference finally reached us we were greatly shocked,” one Chinese student recalled. “We at once awoke to the fact that foreign nations were still selfish and militaristic and that they were all great liars.” A year after the peace conference closed, radical Chinese nationalists formed the Chinese Communist Party, which under the leadership of Mao Tse-tung and Chou En-lai, as well as many other former leaders of the anti-Versailles Treaty demonstrations, would go on to win power in China in 1949.