Seeing Imperial Borderlands through Petrine Maps

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

This panel addresses Russia’s imperial expansion along its southern periphery through the prism of maps produced in the late seventeenth/early eighteenth centuries. The maps analyzed here invite a variety of questions related to Russian Empire in the south. Some of the questions we ask include: How do these maps reflect imperial expansion and/or empire building? What kinds of knowledge and networks contributed to the creation of these maps and what might this tell us about Russian empire under Peter I? How if at all does the history of these specific maps (of the Don River/Sea of Azov; Caspian Sea; Lake Teletskoe, upper Irtysh region) prompt reconsideration of Peter’s I’s Asia policy? Does close analysis of these maps contribute to liberation from historiographical tropes, reinforce well-established lines of understanding, or point us in altogether different directions?

Sub Unit

• Early Slavic Studies

Chair

• Scott C. Levi, Ohio State U

Papers

• Remezov’s Maps at Empire’s Edge - Erika L. Monahan, U of New Mexico

• The Caspian Sea on the Maps of Bekovich-Cherkassky and Kozhin - Aleksandr Lavrov, U Paris-Sorbonne- Paris 4 (France)

Discussant

• Colum Leckey, Piedmont Virginia Community College