The Purchase of Alaska

   

This cartoon was about how America bought Alaska from Europe. The message of this cartoon was how Russia literally was giving the U.S. a chunk of ice for the U.S. in trade of money. An opinion an American citizen might have at this time would be that is was not at all a worthy purchase from the Russians and the United States just lost a large amount of money because the land is literally like a lump of ice. The techniques that make this cartoon convincing is the labeling that is shown. The cartoonist labeled Russia's land and the amount of money the United States was going to trade for the land of ice. The land that the Russians used to own was labeled as “Russian”s America” and that meant that once America bought it, that would be America’s land. Also, the cartoonist labeled the specific amount of money that the United States was going to give to Russia for Alaska and that looks like the cartoonist was trying to give a point on how much money we were wasting for a lump of ice. That is why this political cartoon is persuasive. The cartoon helps with my anti-imperialism position because although today we have figured out that the United States had gained a lot of raw materials from “Russian’s America,” back then, people didn’t believe in the purchase, they saw it as a big mistake. Lastly, even though it was a fair trade, imperialism in Alaska didn’t really help much with how we are today.

Murfin, Patrick. "The Purchase of Alaska." Blogspot. N.p., n.d. Web. 14 Feb. 2016. <http://patrickmurfin.blogspot.com/2013/03/seward-buys-alaska-for-pocket-change.html>.