Open a world map and turn your gaze toward North America.
At first glance, the superpower there was impossible to miss, making it hard to notice the regions beyond its borders.
Yet beyond the neat blocks of its states, did you notice a conspicuous territory far from the mainland, so distant that it seemed almost unnatural?
Not the island chains that served as vacation resorts, but the world's largest exclave—a vast land that seemed like an independent world just outside its own doorstep.
That was—
—Alaska.
Every exclave was born from complex historical circumstances, but compared to the others, Alaska's origins were particularly unusual.
In that age of colonial expansion, the explorer Bering crossed the Bering Strait, which had not yet been named after him, and found a route from Asia to the Americas.
He discovered the last stretch of human geography beyond Antarctica, and after generations of effort,
Alaska became a Russian colony.
But by the nineteenth century, Russia had suffered devastating losses in the Crimean War over the powder keg of the Balkan Peninsula.
Still wary of the formidable England upon which the sun never set, Russia's control over Alaska weakened.
At the same time, it feared that England, which already possessed Canada as a colony, would use it as a springboard to attack Russia's militarily weak east.
Coupled with two unequal treaties that had seized vast swathes of temperate land from the declining Qing Dynasty, Russia's expansion strategy shifted.
So in the end, with its finances strained and wanting someone to help block the Western European powers,
Russia decided to sell this "money pit," which it no longer valued and which was bleeding it dry.
And thus came one of the largest—and most absurd—transactions in world history.
7.2 million US Dollars.
Converted by gold purchasing power, that