Since the Czar was the principal cohesive in the negotiations, the Yank negotiator, Gallatin, suggested a move to Ghent, Belgium to facilitate the talks, as the region was now considered pacified and would be more convenient for both the Czar and the British. After news of the repulse of the British Peninsular veterans outside Plattsburg, New York, reached the parties, the negotiations are drawn to a quick conclusion, much to the Brits' detriment. In order to settle the conflicting claims to the Oregon Country and the operation of fort Astoria, known as fort George to the British, the Czar offer to buy all interest of both parties from his treasury, and offered to John Jacob Astor the governorship of the fort and region and full Russian citizenship at his discretion. While this appeared to be quite favorable to the British negotiators, as this quickly settled the issue with a considerable infusion of treasure into the badly depleted British coffers. Unfortunately for the British, the full claims of the British navy and the North West Company were both grossly underestimated.		After the great victory over the French, Young officers who had pursued Napoleon I into Western Europe, returned to Russia with many western ideas, including: human rights, abolition of serfdom, representative government, or even democracy. These liberal notions and his discomfortable with the landed peasant class within his empire, Alexander I sought out means to relieve the political and ethnic tension while harnessing the fervor to exploit the resources of the new world. In 1816 Czar Alexander I authorized the agricultural colonization of his holdings in the new world. Russian interest had to this time been limited to the fur trade in the form of the RAC and the Pacific Fur Company under John Astor, but this limit exploitation was of little interest to the traditionally agricultural German. In order to redirect the energies of the western looking intelligentsia and to placate unrest amongst the surfs, who resented the landed class, Alexander I promises considerable self rule powers to the expanded RAC and Pacific Fur Company which would be united as the Russian Northwest colony. The Czar persuaded a number of the Russian aristocracy to assume position of impotence in the new colony, but the governorship would remain in the hands of Alexander Andreevich Baranov, while John Astor was make Minister of trade and de facto prime minister.