The Russian merchant and explorer Aleksandr Andreievich Baranov (1747-1819) was the manager of the Russian American Company and governor of Russian America from 1799 to 1818.

Aleksandr Baranov was born in Kargopol, a small town near the Finnish border, on April 16, 1747, where he received a rudimentary education. He worked for a German merchant in Moscow as a youth and then returned to his home to marry and become a merchant. In 1780 he left his wife and emigrated to Siberia, where he became manager of a glass factory at Irkutsk and a fur trader.

Many fur-trading companies were operating in the Aleutian Islands, and in 1790 Baranov accepted the position of general manager of the American interests of the Shelekhov-Golikov Company on Kodiak Island, at Three Saints Bay. For the next 28 years the development of Russian America was furthered by his aggressive administration. At first Baranov engaged in ruthless competition with the...