The Russian navy as Chartmaker in the eighteenth century

The modern period of chart making in Russia began in the reign of Peter the Great. Peter created the country's navy, which became the main focus for cartography in the eighteenth century. In this paper the multi‐faceted duties of naval officers in the charting and mapping of seas, rivers, forest resources and other features important for ship building and the development of navigation, and essential to Russia's geo‐political interests, are considered. The history of the early stages of specialized naval education and the training of surveyors at the Moscow Mathematical‐Navigational School (from 1701) and the St Petersburg Naval Academy (from 1715) are outlined, and the first surveys in the Baltic and Caspian seas are described. Finally, special attention is paid to the hydrographical surveys and charting of the Aegean Sea during the Russian‐Turkish war of 1768–1774, the sources and methods involved, and the little‐known Atlas of the Archipelago (1788) which was created from the surveys

Ancient history · Archaeology · Archipelago · Cartography · Chart · Geography · Navy · Political science · Politics · Reign · Turkish · Arctic and Russian Policy Studies · History · Law · Marine and environmental studies · Maritime and Coastal Archaeology

• From charting to mapping

  Aleksey V Postnikov•Imago Mundi•2001

  Add to list

• Andrew Dury's map of the present seat of war, between the Russians, Poles, and Turks (1769)

  Vladimir E Bulatov, Catherine Delano Smith et al.•Imago Mundi•2001

  Add to list

• A Russian naval officer's chart of Haifa Bay (1772)

  Mitia Frumin, Rehav Rubin et al.•Imago Mundi•2002

  Add to list

• The Greeks and Their Heritages

  William Peter Kaldis, Arnold Toynbee et al.•The American Historical Review•1982

  Add to list