REZANOV, NICOLAI PETROVICH DE (1764-1807), Russian administrator under Catherine II., Paul I. and Alexander I. He was the first Russian to represent his country in Japan (1804), and instigated the first attempt of Russia to circum navigate the globe (1803), commanding the expedition himself as far as Kamchatka. But Rezanov's monument for many years after his death was the great Russian-American Fur Company; and his interest to students of history centres round the policy involved in that enterprise.
Meeting (in 1788) Shelikov, chief of the Shelikov-Golikov Fur Company, Rezanov became interested in the merchant's project to obtain a monopoly of the fur trade in those distant dependen cies. He became a partner, and, after the death of Shelikov in 1795, the leading spirit of the company, and resolved to obtain privileges analogous to those granted by Great Britain to the East India Company. He had just succeeded in persuading Catherine to sign his charter when she died, and he was obliged to begin again with the ill-balanced and intractable Paul. Rezanov's skill, subtlety and address prevailed, and shortly before the assas sination of Paul he obtained his signature to the instrument which granted to the Russian-American Company, for a term of twenty years, dominion over the coast of N.W. America, from latitude 55 degrees northward ; and over the chain of islands extending from Kamchatka northward and southward to Japan. This famous "trust," which crowded out all the small companies and inde pendent traders, was a source of large revenue to Rezanov and the other shareholders, including members of the Imperial family, until the first years of the 19th century, when mismanagement and scarcity of food threatened it with ruin. Rezanov, his humiliating embassy to Japan concluded, reached Kamchatka in 1805, and found commands awaiting him to remain in the Russian colonies as Imperial inspector and plenipotentiary of the company, and to correct the abuses that were ruining the great enterprise. He trav elled slowly to Sitka by way of the Islands.
At the end of a winter in Sitka, the headquarters of the com pany, he sailed for the Spanish settlements in California, purpos ing to trade his tempting American and Russian wares for food stuffs, and to arrange a treaty for the provisioning of his colonies twice a year from New Spain. He cast anchor in the harbour of San Francisco early in April 1806, after a stormy voyage which had defeated his intention to take possession of the Columbia river in the name of Russia. Although he was received with courtesy,
he was told that the laws of Spain forbade her colonies to trade with foreign powers, and that the governor of all the Californias was incorruptible. Rezanov, had it not been for a love affair with the daughter of the comandante of San Francisco, Don Jose Arguello, and for his personal address and diplomatic skill, with which he won over the clergy to his cause, would have failed again. As it was, when he sailed for Sitka, six weeks after his arrival, the "Juno's" hold was full of bread-stuffs and dried meats, he had the promise of the perplexed governor to forward a copy of the treaty to Spain at once, and he was affianced to the most beautiful girl in California. Shortly after his arrival in Sitka he proceeded by water to Kamchatka, where he despatched his ships to wrest the island Sakhalin of the lower Kurile group from Japan, then started overland for St. Petersburg to obtain the signature of the tsar to the treaty. He died of fever and exhaustion in Kras noiarsk, Siberia, on March 8, 1807.
The treaty with California, the bare suggestion of which made such a commotion in New Spain, was the least of Rezanov's proj ects. It was sincerely conceived, for he was deeply and humanely concerned for his employees and the wretched natives who were little more than the slaves of the company. His correspondence with the company betrays a clearly defined purpose to annex to Russia the western coast of North America, and encour age immediate emigration from the parent country on a large scale. Had he lived, he might have accomplished his object. The treaty was never signed, the reforms of Rezanov died of discouragement, the fortunes of the colonies gradually col lapsed, the Spanish girl who had loved Rezanov became a nun; and one of the ablest and most ambitious men of his time was forgotten in the cemetery of a poor Siberian town.
See H. H. Bancroft, History of California (1889) and History of Alaska (1887) ; Tikhmener, Istoricheskoye obozryeniye obrazovaniya Rossiisko-Amerikanskoi Kompanii (1861-63) ; T. C. Russell, ed., The Rezcinov Voyage to Nueva California (1926) ; A. Yarmotinsky, "A Rambling Note on the Russian Columbus," New York Public Library Bulletin, vol. xxxi. (1927). (G. AT.)