Thread by @kamilkazani

Combination of land and river routes. Which made the cost of Pacific navy (and thus Alaska expansion) prohibitively high. Add to that that profits from Alaska were low as Russia was not allowed to sell those furs to China by sea like Westerners. And you'll get why Russia sold it

https://twitter.com/topglog/status/1548316486590033923

While Westerners traded with China by the sea, Russia was allowed to trade only via the Kyakhta town located deep inland. So you either carry Alaskan furs to Kyakhta or sell them to Americans who were allowed to do maritime commerce with China. Usually Russia chose the latter

Basically this asymmetry: prohibitively high costs of maintaining Alaska and the absurdly low profits from it were a major reason why Russia sold its only overseas colony (To be fair many of the Russian Far Eastern possessions were supplied by the sea routes via Suez, etc.)

I learnt this from Chris Miller's book "We shall be masters". Very informative and entertaining study. I discussed it on @jordanschnyc ChinaTalk podcast, so had to read it beforehand. Reading it during the recording might have felt awkward: that's something I usually try to avoid