The sale of Alaska by (then imperial) Russia to the United States , in 1867.
Signing of the Treaty of Alaska Cession on March 30, 1867
The Sale of Alaska was an international agreement between the United States of America and the Russian Empire in 1867, through which the United States of America acquired the territory of today’s state of Alaska. Overall, the territory purchased had an extension of approximately 1600,000 km², the figure on which the two nations agreed for the sale was $7,200,000 , (just over 4 dollars per km²), a paltry sum if we think of the enormous discoveries of oil fields that will make the US fortunes in a few years.
Until the first half of the 20th century, in fact, Alaska was seen as an extremely arid, dry and completely frozen land area that had nothing to offer , until the Americans – by chance and luck – discovered large deposits of black gold there which the country’s energy fortune, precisely during the height of the Cold War against the Russians.