Perry Collins’s electronic rim around the Pacific : the Russian-American telegraph, 1865 to 1867

• Main Author: Wilcockson, Stephen
• Format: Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: 1996
• Subjects: Bering Strait; Pacific; Alaska; Siberia
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/2429/5757

In my thesis, I explain the historical and geographical significance of the failed Russian- American Telegraph Expedition of 1865 to 1867. I explain how American Manifest Destiny facilitated the confident proposal of this stupendous scheme to connect America to Europe telegraphically by Bering Strait The telegraph men sent to British Columbia, Russian America and eastern Siberia struggled in horrendous conditions. In British Columbia the work improved communications, brought new work practices and stimulated discovery of northern corridors of power. In Russian America, the disastrous work resulted in masculinised, ethnocentric and boostered images of the landscape, and facilitated America's 1867 purchase of Alaska. In Siberia the American men suffered greatly, but, by contextualising the 'primitve barbarism' of Siberian environments and people, portrayed themeselves as heroes. Furthermore, surveyor George Kennan wrote and lectured in America on his Siberian travels, using them to frame his influential opinions on Russian expansion and Siberian exile. I conclude that the scheme facilitated the northward encroachment of modernity, dislocating Native lifeworlds. Arts, Faculty of Geography, Department of Graduate