Nikolay Yakovlevich Rosenberg (, 1807–1857) was an officer of the
Imperial Russian Navy
The Imperial Russian Navy () operated as the navy of the Russian Tsardom and later the Russian Empire from 1696 to 1917. Formally established in 1696, it lasted until being dissolved in the wake of the February Revolution and the declaration of ...
who was appointed as Chief Manager of the
Russian-American Company
The Russian-American Company Under the High Patronage of His Imperial Majesty was a state-sponsored chartered company formed largely on the basis of the Shelikhov-Golikov Company, United American Company. Emperor Paul I of Russia chartered the c ...
, effectively Governor of Russian America, serving from 1850 to 1853.
[Yereth Rosen, "That Great Big Jewish Alaska"](_blank)
''Moment Magazine,'' January-February 2012; accessed 2 November 2016 He was replaced before the end of the usual 5-year term because of his difficulties in managing relations with the native
Tlingit
The Tlingit or Lingít ( ) are Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast of North America. , they constitute two of the 231 federally recognized List of Alaska Native tribal entities, Tribes of Alaska. Most Tlingit are Alaska Natives; ...
peoples, who were important to the Russian
fur trade
The fur trade is a worldwide industry dealing in the acquisition and sale of animal fur. Since the establishment of a world fur market in the early modern period, furs of boreal ecosystem, boreal, polar and cold temperate mammalian animals h ...
and their survival. He may also have been called back to Russia to serve in the
Crimean War
The Crimean War was fought between the Russian Empire and an alliance of the Ottoman Empire, the Second French Empire, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and the Kingdom of Sardinia (1720–1861), Kingdom of Sardinia-Piedmont fro ...
(1853 to 1856), which included naval actions.
In 1935 the United States named Mount Rosenberg for him; it is a 3,050-foot peak on
Baranof Island
Baranof Island is an island in the northern Alexander Archipelago in the Alaska Panhandle, in Alaska. The name "Baranof" was given to the island in 1805 by Imperial Russian Navy captain Yuri Lisyansky, U. F. Lisianski in honor of Alexander Andrey ...
, Alaska.
History
A number of Jewish traders and furriers who had been exiled to Siberia by the Tsar worked for the
Russian-American Company
The Russian-American Company Under the High Patronage of His Imperial Majesty was a state-sponsored chartered company formed largely on the basis of the Shelikhov-Golikov Company, United American Company. Emperor Paul I of Russia chartered the c ...
. In 1848 Ashkenazi Jewish settlers from Germany began to settle in Sitka, helping develop it and other settlements as cities in the nineteenth century.
According to a brief article about Jews in Alaska by Yereth Rosen in ''Moment'', Nikolay Rosenberg, an Imperial Russian Navy officer, was appointed in 1850 as Chief Manager of the Russian-American Company, effectively Governor of Russian America. Rosen claims that he was Jewish.
(But naval officers generally belonged to the aristocracy of Russia and the state Russian Orthodox Church. The Jews were prohibited from any service in the army before 1827; if they converted to Christianity, they received additional rights. Rosenberg may have changed his given and surnames to pass as an ethnic German. He would have had to convert to the state Russian Orthodox Church in order to enter or be promoted as an officer in the navy.)
During Rosenberg's three years of overseeing company operations from
New Archangel
Sitka (; ) is a unified city-borough in the southeast portion of the U.S. state of Alaska. It was under Russian rule from 1799 to 1867. The city is situated on the west side of Baranof Island and the south half of Chichagof Island in the Al ...
(Sitka), the naval officer had difficulties with the native peoples. He was described as "especially inept at maintaining good relationships with the
Tlingit
The Tlingit or Lingít ( ) are Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast of North America. , they constitute two of the 231 federally recognized List of Alaska Native tribal entities, Tribes of Alaska. Most Tlingit are Alaska Natives; ...
."
[Black, Lydia T. ''Russians in Alaska, 1732-1867.'' Fairbanks, AK: University of Alaska Press. 2004, pp. 196-198.]
His leadership so antagonised the Sitka Tlingit that a skirmish with them took place outside the settlement. Rosenberg later earned the enmity of the
Stikine River
The Stikine River ( ) is a major river in northern British Columbia (BC), Canada and southeastern Alaska in the United States. It drains a large, remote upland area known as the Stikine Country east of the Coast Mountains. Flowing west and ...
-based Tlingit for failure to warn them of the hostile intentions of a Sitka band of Tlingit.
[ Rosenberg was replaced by Aleksandr Ilich Rudakov in 1853. He did not complete what was by then a standard 5-year term as governor, and he may have been called back to Russia as an experienced officer to serve in the ]Crimean War
The Crimean War was fought between the Russian Empire and an alliance of the Ottoman Empire, the Second French Empire, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and the Kingdom of Sardinia (1720–1861), Kingdom of Sardinia-Piedmont fro ...
(1853-1856).
Rosenberg was the first chief manager of the Russian-American Company to be replaced before the end of his term since Semyon Yanovsky
Semyon Ivanovich Yanovsky (; April 15, 1789 – January 6, 1876) was a Russian naval officer who was appointed in late 1818 as Chief Manager of the Russian-American Company, serving into 1820. He had traveled to Kodiak Island with his commanding ...
, who served from 1818 to 1820. Yanovsky was the first of the exclusively Imperial Russian Navy officers who had been appointed since 1818 as Chief Manager of the RAC.
Representation in other media
*Ivan Doig
Ivan Doig (; June 27, 1939 – April 9, 2015) was an American author and novelist, widely known for his sixteen fiction and non-fiction books set mostly in his native Montana, celebrating the landscape and people of the post-war American West.
W ...
portrays Rosenberg as a character in his historical novel
Historical fiction is a literary genre in which a fictional plot takes place in the setting of particular real historical events. Although the term is commonly used as a synonym for historical fiction literature, it can also be applied to oth ...
'' The Sea Runners'' (2013). It begins in Russian America in 1853.[Ivan Doig, ''The Sea Runners,'' New York: Simon and Schuster, 2013, pp. 293-296]
Legacy
*In 1935, Mount Rosenberg, a 3,050-foot peak on Baranof Island, was named for Rosenberg.[Donald J. Orth, ''Dictionary of Alaska Place Names''](_blank)
US Geological Survey, Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1949/1967, p. 816
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Rosenberg, Nikolay Yakovlevich
1807 births
1857 deaths
19th-century people from the Russian Empire
Baltic-German people from the Russian Empire
Governors of the Russian-American Company