Geographical and statistical descriptions of the Murmansk coast of the Barents Sea, made by Russian officers of the General Staff and Navy in the XIX – early XX centuries

Abstract

The paper considers geographical and statistical descriptions of the Murmansk coast of the Barents Sea, prepared in the XIX – early XX centuries by officers of the Russian General Staff and Navy, analyzes the contribution of military and navy specialists in the study of polar and circumpolar territories of the Russian North. Already in the 1820s, research on the Murmansk coast was also carried out by officers-hydrographers of the Navy Department, whose purpose was to clarify map and establish sea routes. In the 1830s and 40s, military geography and military statistics were formed in the Imperial Military Academy (later the General Staff Academy) as separate branches of knowledge. The latter fulfilled the functions of a generalizing science, the purpose of which was to analyze from a military point of view the widest possible range of data (geographical, demographic, economic, etc.) on a particular territory. Following this principle, the officers of the General Staff, who in the 1840-60s were making military and statistical reviews of Arkhangelsk province, which included the Murmansk coast (L.L. Shtyurmer, A.E. Zimmerman, N.N. Kozlov, and others), tried to make the description of the complex character. A new impulse for the study of the Murmansk coast by military experts was given in the 1880s by the idea of creating a naval base in the Barents Sea, which would provide the possibility of a cruising war against Britain or other strong maritime power. In general, in the XIX – early XX centuries, military specialists made a significant contribution to the study of the Murmansk coast, the collection and synthesis of information on geography, hydrography, ethnography of the Murmansk coast and the Russian North as a whole,