Glorious Misadventures: Nikolai Rezanov and the Dream of a Russian America

Matthews, a Newsweek editor and Russia specialist, follows in the footsteps of the eccentric Rezanov, illuminating the story of the Russian American Company, whose early-19th-century land claims stretched from the Aleutians to Northern California and included a short-lived Hawaiian colony. Russia’s schemes for Pacific domination amounted to little more than a “string of lonely stockades and forts manned by a motley array of convicts, fur trappers and foreign desperadoes,” and Rezanov, the driving force behind Russia’s New World forays, grew increasingly erratic the longer he was away from St. Petersburg. The book’s most memorable episode occurs not in America, however, but during Rezanov’s disastrous mission to Japan. With his ship anchored off the coast during a weeks-long wait for the shogun’s permission to land, he amused himself by urinating from the deck, in full view of curious locals. Humiliated by his eventual failure to establish diplomatic relations, he would later declare war on the country against the express orders of the czar. Matthews’s humor, eye for detail, and voluminous knowledge of the historical context make this book a penetrating and enjoyable account of the exploration age and Russian society, from the imperial court to the wild frontier garrisons. Agent: Natasha Fairweather, A.P. Watt (U.K.). (Nov.)