Liechtenstein is an amazing country, a very small principality, squeezed between Austria and Switzerland in Western Europe. It is not well-known and unfortunately, I have never visited it, but I can tell you a very interesting fact about it that will blow your mind right away. You could possibly, for a cool $70,000 a night, rent the principality of Liechtenstein. Crazy, right? That’s the only country in the world that you can actually hire. Imagine the parties one could organize there…

Anyway, let’s move on to the point. Supposedly after reading the first couple of lines, you have checked Liechtenstein on Google Maps and you may be asking yourself how and when this country had anything to do with the largest U.S. state – Alaska. Well, it is simple, but a cool story, so enjoy.

It is the end of the 19850s and Russia’s economy is crumbled by the Crimean War. Without any unnecessary details, this was a war, which the Russian Empire fought against Great Britain, France, and the Ottoman Empire. The war was a result of the Russian pressure on Turkey, which originated from the long-term Russian goals of gaining the Bosporus and the Dardanelles straits and also the recognition that Russia would be the official protector of all Christians with thin the Ottoman empire. This is a very interesting and complicated topic that I would like to cover in another article, but let us not get distracted right now.

So, in other words Russia needed money and Tzar Alexander II and the Russian government decided that they can use Russian America for the matter. The Government discussed the proposal to sell the colony to a foreign power, in order to use the money to financially support the economy and pay the war reparations. The Russians though that if potentially gold and other valuable resources were to be discovered in Alaska, the British Canadians and the Americans would overwhelm any Russian presence in the colony and there is no point in keeping it. Plus, some argued that Аляска (Alaska) was even the so called “Siberia’s Siberia” and is just an empty tundra.

Now the following question arose: Who exactly are we going to sell Russian America to?

We all know what happened in our timeline and the Alaska Purchase in 1867, so what if I were to tell you, that another country was offered the purchase of the Russian colony before the United States. Obviously that country was not Great Britain, since the Russians didn’t want under any circumstances the British to control a territory so close to their borders. Then maybe France or Spain…

No. It was mighty Liechtenstein. The offer was first made to them, because of the good relations between the House of Romanov and the House of Liechtenstein. It is a known fact, that the Liechtenstein royal family was very wealthy and they most certainly had the money to negotiate the deal. It is believed that the proposal was made oral though, so there is that. I couldn’t find any written evidence to support this historic moment, although it is claimed that that the memory of this offer was passed down through the descendants of the House of Liechtenstein.

Also, Tzar Aleksander II was looking forward to signing the deal, since the Liechtenstein royal family could really bring about the much-needed investment in the Russian economy. The Tzar was desperate at this point, because the only other potential byer for the colony was in the middle of an all-out civil war (The U.S.A.) and the outcome was not clear at all.

The only reason why the Liechtensteins ruled out the purchase of Alaska as possibility was due to the largeness of the land itself.

Alaska is like almost trice the size of mainland France and the Family feared that they had no way of governing it. Which is true. Lichtenstein is not a relevant power in Europe, thus in the world. They do not even have a coastline, which means that if they were to extract the goods of the territory, they must use a foreign power’s ports and merchant fleet, possibly the Austrian Empire’s (Lichtenstein had very good relations with the Habsburg empire). But even then, it was questionable, whether they could keep the land at all, cause in case of a major war, Alaska would most certainly be taken either by the British or the Americans.

There you have it. I hope this little article was interesting, and if so, be sure to check some of my other writings and enjoy the unusual history.