(Received 19 December 1996; accepted in revised form 12 August 1997)
ABSTRACT. On 30 March 1867, William Henry Seward, American Secretary of State (1861-69), provoked controversy both at home and abroad by signing the treaty that ceded Russian America to the United States. On the East Coast of America, reactions to the newly renamed Alaska were coloured by a personal antipathy towards Seward and the administration that he served. The British considered the cession unfriendly towards ...