Alaska Purchase in the context of "Orthodox Church in America"

The Aleutian Islands (/əˈluːʃən/ ə-LOO-shən; Russian: Алеутские острова, romanized: Aleutskiye ostrova; Aleut: Unangam Tanangin, "land of the Aleuts"; possibly from the Chukchi aliat, or "island")—also called the Aleut Islands, Aleutic Islands, or, before 1867, the Catherine Archipelago—are a chain of 14 main, larger volcanic islands and 55 smaller ones.

Most of the islands belong to the U.S. state of Alaska, with the archipelago encompassing the Aleutians West Census Area and the Aleutians East Borough. The Commander Islands, located further to the west, belong to the Russian federal subject of Kamchatka Krai, of the Russian Far East.

The Mexican Cession (Spanish: Cesión mexicana) is the territory that Mexico ceded to the United States in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848 after the Mexican–American War. It comprises the states of California, Texas, New Mexico, Utah, Nevada, and Arizona, and parts of Colorado, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Wyoming in the present-day Western United States. Consisting of roughly 529,000 square miles (1,370,000 km), not including Texas, the Mexican Cession was the third-largest acquisition of territory in U.S. history, surpassed only by the 827,000-square-mile (2,140,000 km) Louisiana Purchase of 1803 and the later 586,000-square-mile (1,520,000 km) Alaska Purchase from Russia in 1867.

Most of the ceded territory had not been claimed by the Republic of Texas following its de facto independence in the 1836 revolution. Texas had only claimed areas east of the Rio Grande. After annexation into the U.S. and admission as a state in 1845, Texas's southern and western boundaries with the Mexican state of Santa Fe de Nuevo México had not been defined by the U.S. Most of the ceded area was part of the Mexican province of Alta California (Upper California) while the southeastern strip east of the Rio Grande had been part of the state of Santa Fe de Nuevo México. Mexico had controlled the ceded territories with considerable local autonomy. After the Mexican War of Independence finished in 1821, the area had seen several revolts but the Mexican government sent few troops from central Mexico to suppress them. In 1846, U.S. President James K. Polk sent soldiers to occupy the disputed territory between the Nueces River and the Rio Grande, starting the Mexican–American War. At the war's outbreak, the U.S. conducted a naval landing on Mexico's northeastern coast on the Gulf of Mexico, and advanced into Nuevo México.

The Seward Peninsula is a large peninsula on the western coast of the U.S. state of Alaska whose westernmost point is Cape Prince of Wales. The peninsula projects about 200 mi (320 km) into the Bering Sea between Norton Sound, the Bering Strait, the Chukchi Sea, and Kotzebue Sound, just below the Arctic Circle. The entire peninsula is about 210 mi (330 km) long and 90–140 mi (145–225 km) wide. Like Seward, Alaska, it was named after William H. Seward, the United States Secretary of State who fought for the U.S. purchase of Alaska.

The Seward Peninsula is a remnant of the Bering land bridge, a roughly thousand-mile-wide swath of land connecting Siberia with mainland Alaska during the Pleistocene Ice Age. This land bridge aided in the migration of humans, as well as plant and animal species, from Asia to North America. Excavations at sites such as the Trail Creek Caves and Cape Espenberg in the Bering Land Bridge National Preserve as well as Cape Denbigh to the south have provided insight into the timeline of prehistorical migrations from Asia to the Seward Peninsula.

Tlingit (English: /ˈklɪŋkɪt/ KLING-kit; Lingít Tlingit pronunciation: [ɬɪ̀nkɪ́tʰ]) is an endangered language indigenous to Southeast Alaska and Western Canada spoken by the Tlingit people that forms an independent branch of the Na-Dene language family. Although the number of speakers is declining, extensive effort is being put into revitalization programs in Southeast Alaska to revive and preserve the language.

Missionaries of the Russian Orthodox Church were the first to develop a written version of Tlingit by using the Cyrillic script. After the Alaska Purchase, Tlingit language use was suppressed by the United States government, though preservation programs were introduced beginning in the 20th century. Today, Tlingit is spoken natively by perhaps only 100 elders.

The Russian Empire officially recognized the United States of America in 1803. However, Russia had established trade relations with the Thirteen Colonies well before they issued the United States Declaration of Independence in 1776. This commerce, which violated the Navigation Acts of the British Empire, continued to take place during the American Revolution. Although Russian empress Catherine the Great decided against openly endorsing either side during the American Revolutionary War, she did hold the view that it was the "personal fault" of British policy and also believed that secession among British colonies in the Americas could be "advantageous" to her realm. Russia's position on the United States, therefore, largely facilitated France's pro-American position and contributed to the British defeat in 1783.

Diplomats were first exchanged between Saint Petersburg and Washington, D.C., in 1809. During the American Civil War, Russia openly supported the Union and while it refrained from entering the conflict as a belligerent, the Imperial Russian Navy maintained a presence in American ports as a show of force against the Confederacy. In 1867, the Alaska Purchase resulted in the American acquisition of Alaska, which had previously been a Russian colony in North America. Following the collapse of the Russian Empire in 1917 (the year of American entry into World War I), the United States supported the White movement until 1920. However, the Allied effort to support the White movement was ultimately unsuccessful, as the Russian Civil War ended with the establishment of the Soviet Union.

Seward (Alutiiq: Qutalleq; Dena'ina: Tl'ubugh) is an incorporated home rule city in Alaska, United States. Located on Resurrection Bay, a fjord of the Gulf of Alaska on the Kenai Peninsula, Seward is situated on Alaska's southern coast, approximately 120 miles (190 km) by road from Alaska's largest city, Anchorage.

With a population of 2,717 people as of the 2020 census, Seward is the fourth-largest city in the Kenai Peninsula Borough, behind Kenai, Homer, and the borough seat of Soldotna. The city is named for former United States Secretary of State William H. Seward, who orchestrated the United States' purchase of Alaska from the Russian Empire in 1867 while serving in this position as part of President Andrew Johnson's administration.

The United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations is a standing committee of the U.S. Senate charged with leading foreign-policy legislation and debate in the Senate. It is generally responsible for authorizing and overseeing foreign aid programs; arms sales and training for national allies; and holding confirmation hearings for high-level positions in the Department of State. Its sister committee in the House of Representatives is the Committee on Foreign Affairs.

Along with the Finance and Judiciary committees, the Foreign Relations Committee is among the oldest in the Senate, dating to the initial creation of committees in 1816. It has played a leading role in several important treaties and foreign policy initiatives throughout U.S. history, including the Alaska Purchase, the establishment of the United Nations, and the passage of the Marshall Plan. The committee has also produced eight U.S. presidents—Andrew Jackson, James Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, Benjamin Harrison, Warren Harding, John F. Kennedy, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden (Buchanan and Biden serving as chair)—and 19 secretaries of state. Notable members have included Arthur Vandenberg, Henry Cabot Lodge, and William Fulbright.