Both monopolies had over previous decades secured regions for control of the Maritime fur trade; the RAC being based in Russian America and the HBC in the Columbia Department of the Oregon Country.
As the outposts and trading stations of each company grew closer in proximity, a clash of interests occurred in 1834 at Redoubt Saint Dionysius on the site of modern Wrangell, Alaska.
The Russians granted the HBC exclusive fur trapping rights in "a strip of land ten miles in width, to the north and south of the Stakhina River, that is, the portion of the seacoast from 54°40′ latitude to a line drawn between Cape Spencer on Cross Sound and Mt.
Naval shipments from Great Britain destined for Russian America cost the RAC only ₽80 per ton of supplies, compared to ₽250 from Kronstadt and ₽630 overland through Siberia to Okhotsk.
"[7] Additionally, the Russian authorities claimed exclusive rights to the timber, fisheries, and ice within the portion of the Alaska Panhandle occupied by the HBC, to allow further agreements with other companies for exploitation of resources.
In return for an annual payment of £3,000, retaining company posts and rights to an ice harvesting monopoly, the RAC would lease all lands of Russian America south of Mount Saint Elias.
The historian John Semple Galbraith appraised Rutkovski's considered offer as "Such a proposal would have been unhesitatingly accepted had it been made twenty years earlier.
Mikhail Tebenkov responded that the RAC was itself unaware of the treaty's terms, but stated that the company "can only suppose the cession itself will cause the refusal of our Government to sanction of our agreement with your honourable body for a continuation of the lease of the Stackine Territory.