Companyland

The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Companyland

 

(also Company Island), the name found on 17th- and 18th-century maps for Urup Island (in the Kuril Islands). In 1643 the Dutch navigator M. G. de Vries, who discovered the island and erroneously assumed that he had found a large land mass, named the island after the East India Company. In the 19th century the name was revived for a short time to refer to the site of the Russian-American Company, which was based on the island (Kurilorossiia).

The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 3rd Edition (1970-1979). © 2010 The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.