Russian-American Company

The Russian-American Company (officially: Russian-American Company Under His Imperial Majesty's Highest Protection (patronage)) was a state-sponsored chartered company formed largely on the basis of the so-called Shelekhov–Golikov Company of Grigory Shelekhov and Ivan Larionovich Golikov (after Shelekhov's death managed by his widow Natalia Shelekhova, with heavy involvement from Shelekhov’s son-in-law Nikolai Rezanov until the latter’s death in 1807).

Chartered by Tsar Paul I in 1799, it was Russia's first joint stock company, and came under the direct authority of the Ministry of Commerce of Imperial Russia. The Minister of Commerce (later, Minister of Foreign Affairs) Nikolai Petrovich Rumyantsev was a pivotal influence upon the early Company's affairs. In 1801 the Company's headquarters were moved from Irkutsk to St.Petersburg and the merchants who were initially the major stockholders were soon replaced by Russia's nobility and aristocracy. Count Rumyantsev funded Russia's first naval circumnavigation under the joint command of Adam Johann von Krusenstern and Nikolai Rezanov in 1803-1806, and later funded and directed the voyage of the Riurik's circumnavigation of 1814–16, which provided substantial scientific information on Alaska's and California's flora and fauna, and important ethnographic information on Alaskan and Californian (among others) natives. Rumyantsev (Bodega) Bay in northern California was named in his honour during the Russian-California period (1812–42) of Fort Ross.