As other European states expanded westward across the Atlantic Ocean, the Russian Empire went eastward and conquered the vast wilderness of Siberia. Although it initially went east with the hope of increasing its fur trade, the Russian imperial court in St. Petersburg hoped that its eastern expansion would also prove its cultural, political, and scientific belonging to Europe. The Eurasian empire looked to North America after reaching the Pacific Ocean in 1639 and occupying the Kamchatka Peninsula in the 1680s.