Eighteenth-Century Samara in the Diary by English Officer of the Orenburg Expedition

Abstract

This article examines the Diary of the Englishman John Castle, an important source on the history of the Orenburg Expedition (Commission) and regions where it operated. The expedition made a notable contribution to the annexation of new territories in southeast Russia and their development. The Diary is one of the few graphical testimonies on the history of the territory, as Castle was a draughtsman. The Diary was published in German in 1784 while a translation into Russian was only released in 1998. The article’s author also refers to another translation of parts of the Diary devoted to Samara translated by A. Ognev in the same year. The research demonstrates that Castle’s work contains noteworthy data on matters other than Kazakhstan, which until now has been of primary importance for specialists working with the source. It contains authentic and unique data on the daily life of Russian towns bordering Asian countries in the eighteenth century. The Diary also relates its author’s communications with the outstanding statesmen I. Kirilov and V. Tatishchev, Castle’s superiors. They headed the Orenburg Expedition (Commission) when its headquarters was located in Samara. Foreign specialists worked in the expedition because Russian modernisation relied on progressive foreign experience and a policy of attracting foreigners into Russian service. The view of a non-Russian expert on local realities is important given the presence of many actors on the outskirts of the empire. Social groups, including foreigners who served in Russia, participated in the process of forming “collective representations” of a society undergoing modernisation. This process had its own peculiarities in territories where modernisation and colonisation via the “frontier model”: Bashkiria, the Southern Urals, the Trans-Urals, and the Trans-Volga regions. Beyond any doubt, the search for and analysis of the written and artistic heritage of foreign witnesses of the development of southeastern Russia in the first half of the eighteenth century will add to our knowledge about an important epoch of Russian history and the life of its southeastern territories.