The linguistic impact of the Russian-American Company, with a special focus on Fort Ross

From the 18th century onwards the Russian Empire was vying for a share of the newly discovered overseas territories. It succeeded in establishing itself in Alaska for a century, and made brief forays into the American North West and Hawai’i. Russian overseas enterprises have raised expectations among Pidginists and Creolists that Russian-lexifier contact languages may have emerged. The evidence for this has, however, never been strong enough to make a case for the existence of pidgins or the like in these Russian domains, but there seemed also no clear indications to the contrary, so that hopeful anticipations of possible future discoveries of pertinent source material are still thriving. In the present article extant information on the overall sociolinguistic setting in the settlements set up by the Russian-American company is being pieced together in an attempt to argue for the unlikeliness of the emergence of a Russian pidgin in these settings.