Ryan Jackson Jones, Empire of Extinction: Russians and the North Pacific’s Strange Beasts
of the Sea, 1741-1867
As the Russians spread east, across the rim of
the North Pacific, from Kamchatka across to the Aleutian Island chain in the 18th
and 19th centuries, they created a wave of extermination for the fur-bearing
animals of the region. The Russians wiped out huge numbers of sea otters. In
fact, the animal never recovered from the hyper-killing of 1749-1750, but it
did not go extinct. The same could not be said of the sea cow, which vanished
from the earth sometime in the late 1760s. As Jones points out, the sea cow was
already in trouble before the fur-greedy Russians showed up and wiped them out.
As global temperatures warmed in the aftermath of the little ice age, the sea
cow headed north (it had ranged as far south as Baja California), huddling on a
cluster of islands in the North Pacific. The last recorded sighting of a sea
cow occurred in 1766. It is hard to say when the species went extinct because
it would be another thirty years before the Cuvier introduced the idea of animal
extinction. In 1802 Martin Sauer postulated that the sea cow had gone extinct
within a couple of years of the last confirmed sighting.
Naturalists were in an uneasy position in the
Russian imperial expansion. Mostly made up of non-Russians, they were critical
of an empire they considered somewhat mickey mouse. On the other hand, the
Russian rulers were their bosses who demanded positive affirmation about the
grandeur and vastness of their empire. Wanting to play on the same stage as the
French and English, the Russians wanted to appearance of science to give them
some enlightenment credibility as a modern state, but they were not terribly
interested in hearing what the naturalists had to say. Moreover, the secretive
and suspicious Russians did not want scientists in their employ spreading
information outside of the borders, clearly demonstrating a lack of
understanding of the value of cooperative, transnational science. So much for
appearances. Ironically, when the consequences of dramatic fur-bearing
population decline were obvious – read, tax revenues from skins shrunk
dramatically – conservation measures were implemented without even consulting naturalists.
Like the French and English in east North
America, the Russians ensnared native peoples (Yakut, Kamchadal, Aleut) into
their market network. The new imperial overlords assessed a tribute to their
colonial peoples that was payable in furs. This was only the tip of the
iceberg, like every other native population in North America, the people of the
North Pacific experienced devastating epidemics with the arrival of Europeans.
The Aleuts suffered a 50%-80% mortality from disease. As their population
declined and their environment degraded, they became more reliant on the money
they made market hunting to feed their families. As fur bearing animals became
increasingly difficult to find, Russian overlords sent their native hunters on
longer and more dangerous missions, causing yet more stress on their society.
I checked Empire
of Extinction out merely to look at how he covered the fur seals of the
Pribilof Islands. The cause of the fur seal was close to William T. Hornaday’s
heart, and he ardently fought for their protection between1909-1920 against
what could be called the scientific establishment led by David Starr Jordan. For
more on Hornaday’s fur seal conservation campaign check out The Most Defiant Devil, or his digitized scrapbooks online at the
Wildlife Conservation Society. Despite
my initial limited interest in this book, I found Empire of Extinction to be an enjoyable read that really pulled me
in, and I highly recommend it to anyone interested in the history of the
environment or wildlife in particular, especially to American historians looking for a little perspective on what was happening outside of our borders.
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