The Last Sea Cow: The Politics of Eighteenth-Century Extinction

The last Steller's sea cow died in 1768, killed by an anonymous Russian hunter only 26 years after its discovery.  The sea otter, main object of the Russian fur trade in the North Pacific, would soon face near extinction itself.  By the 1850s both of these animals from an obscure corner of the world would emerge in the European consciousness as symbols of the evils of colonization and humans' ability to negatively reshape the environment.  In response, the Russian Empire would enact some of the period's most ambitious conservation measures.

The process by which these animals gained their symbolic power had several complex roots.  Revolutions in the sciences of biogeography and geology encouraged scientists to think in terms of species extinction for the first time.  The late-Enlightenment and early-Romantic critiques of European imperialism directed intellectuals' attention towards colonial injustices.  Above all, intra-European rivalry made criticism of Russian imperialism particularly interesting to England and France, who sensed the possibility of expanding their influence in the North Pacific.  Thus, eighteenth- and nineteenth-century European conceptions of animal extinction were deeply entwined with the key scientific, political, and imperial developments of the time.