Andrei Dashkov

Andrei Dashkov moved from military and commercial service into diplomacy. After service in the Semyonovsky Guards, he left the army in 1799 and worked in the Commerce Department. Appointed consul general and chargé d’affaires in 1808, he arrived in the United States in 1809. His appointment combined diplomatic representation with the promotion of trade and the interests of the Russian-American Company. ^{1, 5}

Thomas Jefferson welcomed him in a letter of 12 August 1809, describing the two countries’ common interest in peaceful commerce and inviting him to Monticello. Dashkov subsequently succeeded Count Pahlen as minister in 1811. ^{2, 5}

During the War of 1812, Dashkov transmitted the American response to Alexander I’s offer of mediation. John Quincy Adams recorded reading Dashkov’s dispatch in St. Petersburg on 15 June 1813: it enclosed James Monroe’s acceptance of 11 March. Dashkov’s secretary had also approached the British naval commander about passage for American peace commissioners. Adams and Foreign Minister Rumyantsev nevertheless doubted that Britain would accept Russian mediation. ^{3, 4}

His final years at post were troubled by the arrest of Russian consul Nikolai Kozlov in 1815 on an accusation of raping an underage servant. As historian Larisa Troitskaya explains, Dashkov protested the arrest on immunity grounds and temporarily broke off contact with American officials. His recall was ordered in 1817, but he continued to head the mission until March 1819. The accusation and the diplomatic dispute are distinct from any finding of criminal guilt. ^{4, 5}

Dashkov collected observations on American schools, hospitals, prisons, and technology. Troitskaya identifies his role in sending Russia examples of Eli Whitney’s cotton gin and other machinery. His wife Evgeniia, née Preisser, sustained social and cultural contacts and kept an American diary; their papers survive together in the State Archive of the Russian Federation. His own prison memorandum admired Quaker reform work while criticizing the treatment of people awaiting trial. ⁴

After his return he served on commercial and legal business in Constantinople, then on a committee considering Ottoman claims. In 1828 he became the Foreign Ministry’s representative on the Main Censorship Board. His prison observations, written in 1819, were published long after his death in 1831. ¹