Great question, and yes. The sale and purchase of Alaska was a significant diplomatic move for the latter part of the 19th century.

There were quite a few mentions in the European press, particularly in the French press, that the purchase appeared to be a step toward fulfillment of De Tocqueville's prediction earlier that century that Russia and the United States would grow into the global powers of the future, dividing the Earth between them.

The London Times, the Economist, the French Liberté all published significant thoughts on the sale of Russian America. Nikolai Bolkhovitinov's Russian-American Relations and the Sale of Alaska has a wonderful chapter devoted to Russian reaction to the sale, and he mentions that most Russian reaction was drawn from these previously published European sources.

The Liberté referred to De Tocqueville when it wrote: "we already stated in September of last year [1866] that apparently Russia and America, starting from different points of departure, have met and united while at the same time Western Europe, situated between these two colossi, takes up arms over some [mere] patches of land. We stated then that it is ridiculous to bother about the Rhine, when Europe is threatened by the danger of losing mastery of the entire ocean, that it is laughable to speak of a French-Belgian alliance in view of the Russo-American alliance."

The Liberté reference to a Russo-American alliance is an allusion to the fact that Russia was America's closest European friend from the 1770s through 1917. Russia saw the United States as a counterweight to the British Empire. Russian officials repeatedly put forward the argument that Russia's interests were in Eurasia, America's were in the Americas, and there was no conflict between those two spheres of influence.

The newspapers and popular press were far from alone in commenting on the sale. Karl Marx took note of it in an 1870 letter: "the acquisition is at the moment not worth a cent economically ─ but England is, thereby, cut off from the sea on one side by the Yankees, and the reversion of the whole of British North America to the United States thus accelerated. There's the rub!"