Depicting Sites of Colonialism

Abstract As the Rurik sought the Northern Passage, its mission also included the gathering of information about colonial powers in the Pacific. Captain Kotzebue reported extensively on Russian Alaska, Spanish-held California, and the Hawaiian Kingdom ruled by Kamehameha I. In general, all members of the expedition offered scathing reports of colonialism’s impact on the Indigenous communities they encountered. The most nuanced of these reactions were visual rather than textual: the artist Ludwig Choris painted watercolors and produced lithographs that called close attention to colonial relations. His images of Aleutian islanders, Indigenous Californians, and Hawaiians offer some of the most long-lasting and intriguing documentation of colonial settings in the Pacific from this period.