“Between Fair and Foul Weather”: Mission and Nature in Russia's North Pacific, 1794–1837

Despite the relatively recent surge in histories of Russian Orthodox missions and the eighteenth century revival of monasticism, few have ventured to link the two using an environmental frame of analysis. Thus far, historians have stressed the connection between missionaries and the State, arguing that evangelization served to homogenize the multiethnic and multi-confessional empire under one Autocrat. Complicating that narrative requires us to consider the relevance of Orthodox theology when thinking about how missions operated in a number of diverse environments. This article uses the Kodiak Mission (1794-1837) to Alaska to explore the connection between Orthodox theology and the demanding North Pacific environment. The article aims to explore how lived experience in a hostile environment played an important role in constructing relations between the missionaries and their secular and indigenous co-inhabitants in the early Russian-America. The broader aim is to place Kodiak within new Pacific histories, which emphasize local environmental experiences as a way to connect different coastal societies bordering the seascape. In the conclusion, the article gestures towards re-examining missions in the context of local ecologies and theological traditions. It also urges historians to begin thinking about the lounge durée of Russia’s Pacific experience as a way of re-approaching the relatively neglected topic.