Gerald Easter

A dynamic history of the Battle of Sitka that recognizes the vital importance of the Tlingit people, their fight against Imperial Russia, and how it changed the fate of the North America.“If the long-term plans of Peter the Great had been realized, then California never would have become a Spanish colony,” asserted the head of the Russian-American Company. At the turn of the nineteenth century, Russia was a rising power in North America. The Tsar’s empire extended across the Bering Sea, through the Aleutians and Kodiak Island, and down the Alaskan panhandle. The objective of this imperialist project was to corner the lucrative North Pacific fur trade and colonize the American coastline all the way to San Francisco Bay. The audacious scheme was moving apace until the Russians were finally confronted and stalled on the battlefield. When Russia went to war in America, the fate of a continent was at stake. Yet it was neither the Old-World rivals Spain and Britain nor the upstart United States who stopped Russian expansion, but a coalition of defiant Tlingit tribes. The Last Stand of the Raven Clan is the true story of how the indigenous Tlingit people of southeast Alaska thwarted Imperial Russia’s grand plan of conquest in North America. Leading the charge was the young war chief K'alyáan, a hero as fierce and courageous as Crazy Horse or Geronimo. The Tlingit stance against Russian colonization—during the Battle of Sitka and beyond—was arguably the most successful indigenous resistance against European imperialism in North America. Tlingit oral histories and Russian eyewitness accounts bring this history to life, shedding light on events both inspiring and infamous: the Massacre at Refuge Rock, one of Native America’s worst atrocities; the Survival March, the perilous Tlingit retreat to avoid Russian capture and enslavement; and the cutthroat competition between the U. S. and Russia to control the northern Pacific. Ultimately, The Last Stand of the Raven Clan chronicles the determined struggle for survival of the Tlingit people in their ancestral homeland and places the Battle of Sitka in its rightful spot as a key turning point in North American history.

A riveting history and maritime adventure about priceless masterpieces originally destined for Catherine the Great. On October 1771, a merchant ship out of Amsterdam, Vrouw Maria, crashed off the stormy Finnish coast, taking her historic cargo to the depths of the Baltic Sea. The vessel was delivering a dozen Dutch masterpiece paintings to Europe’s most voracious collector: Catherine the Great, Empress of Russia. Among the lost treasures was The Nursery, an oak-paneled triptych by Leiden fine painter Gerrit Dou, Rembrandt’s most brilliant student and Holland’s first international superstar artist. Dou’s triptych was long the most beloved and most coveted painting of the Dutch Golden Age, and its loss in the shipwreck was mourned throughout the art world. Vrouw Maria, meanwhile, became a maritime legend, confounding would-be salvagers for more than two hundred years. In July 1999, a daring Finnish wreck hunter found Vrouw Maria, upright on the sea floor and perfectly preserved. The Tsarina’s Lost Treasure masterfully recounts the fascinating tale of Vrouw Maria—her loss and discovery—weaving together the rise and fall of the artist whose priceless masterpiece was the jewel of the wreckage. Gerald Easter and Mara Vorhees bring to vivid life the personalities that drove (and are still driving) this compelling tale, evoking Robert Massie’s depiction of Russian high politics and culture, Simon Schama’s insights into Dutch Golden Age art and art history, Gary Kinder’s spirit of, danger and adventure on the beguiling Archipelago Sea.

Huikea tositarina purjelaiva Vrouw Marian haaksirikosta ja löytymisestä, sen mukana kadonneesta taideaarteesta ja Katariina Suuren hovista. Heinäkuussa 1999 löydetty Vrouw Maria on legendaarisin saaristomeren syvyyksissä lepäävistä hylyistä. Amsterdamista kohti Pietaria lokakuussa 1771 lähtenyt kauppalaiva haaksirikkoutui Saaristomerellä ja vei mukanaan meren pohjaan historiallisen lastinsa. Aluksen suurimman aarteen tilaaja oli tsaaritar Katariina Suuri, saaliinhimoinen taidekeräilijä. Hän oli hankkinut kymmenkunta hollantilaista maalausta, joista arvokkain oli leidenilaisen mestarin Gerrit Doun tammilevylle maalaama, lastenhuonetta esittävä triptyykki. Dou oli Rembrandtin loistavin oppilas ja taidemaalarina Hollannin ensimmäinen kansainvälinen supertähti. Doun triptyykki oli aikansa rakastetuin ja halutuin maalaus, ja sen menetystä haaksirikossa suri koko taidemaailma. Gerald Easter ja Mara Vorhees maalaavat värikkään, kiehtovan ja monikerroksisen kokonaiskuvan taideaarteesta, sen tekijästä ja taustasta, Katariina Suuren hovin taiteesta ja politiikasta, Vrouw Marian kohtalokkaasta purjehduksesta sekä sen hylyn löytymisestä liki 200 vuoden jälkeen, kun Rauno Koivusaaren johtama ryhmä sen viimein paikansi. Gerald Easter on Boston Collegen professori, joka on opettanut ja kirjoittanut Venäjän Itä-Euroopan politiikasta ja historiasta yli kaksi vuosikymmentä. Mara Vorhees on Venäjään perehtynyt matkailutoimittaja, joka on ollut kirjoittajana yli 40 kirjassa.

The postcommunist transitions produced two very different types of states. The "contractual" state is associated with the countries of Eastern Europe, which moved toward democratic regimes, consensual relations with society, and clear boundaries between political power and economic wealth. The "predatory" state is associated with the successors to the USSR, which instead developed authoritarian regimes, coercive relations with society, and poorly defined boundaries between the political and economic realms. In Capital, Coercion, and Postcommunist States, Gerald M. Easter shows how the cumulative result of the many battles between state coercion and societal capital over taxation gave rise to these distinctive transition outcomes. Easter's fiscal sociology of the postcommunist state highlights the interconnected paths that led from the fiscal crisis of the old regime through the revenue bargains of transitional tax regimes to the eventual reconfiguration of state-society relations. His focused comparison of Poland and Russia exemplifies postcommunism's divergent institutional forms. The Polish case shows how conflicts over taxation influenced the emergence of a rule-of-law contractual state, social-market capitalism, and civil society. The Russian case reveals how revenue imperatives reinforced the emergence of a rule-by-law predatory state, concessions-style capitalism, and dependent society.

The postcommunist transitions produced two very different types of states. The "contractual" state is associated with the countries of Eastern Europe, which moved toward democratic regimes, consensual relations with society, and clear boundaries between political power and economic wealth. The "predatory" state is associated with the successors to the USSR, which instead developed authoritarian regimes, coercive relations with society, and poorly defined boundaries between the political and economic realms. In Capital, Coercion, and Postcommunist States, Gerald M. Easter shows how the cumulative result of the many battles between state coercion and societal capital over taxation gave rise to these distinctive transition outcomes. Easter's fiscal sociology of the postcommunist state highlights the interconnected paths that led from the fiscal crisis of the old regime through the revenue bargains of transitional tax regimes to the eventual reconfiguration of state-society relations. His focused comparison of Poland and Russia exemplifies postcommunism's divergent institutional forms. The Polish case shows how conflicts over taxation influenced the emergence of a rule-of-law contractual state, social-market capitalism, and civil society. The Russian case reveals how revenue imperatives reinforced the emergence of a rule-by-law predatory state, concessions-style capitalism, and dependent society.