Polyethnic Structure of the Russian Empire on the Mental Maps of the British of the Late 18th Century (Edward Daniel Clarke’s Travel Diary)

Abstract

At the turn of the 18–19th centuries, despite the tense relationship between the British and Russian Empires, English mineralogist Edward Daniel Clarke and his companion John Martin Cripps went on a grand-tour, during which, in addition to other countries, they visited Russia. In this article, we focus on how the British author described the different ethnic groups that lived on the boundless areas of this Empire. Important part of the article is a short resume of historiography of mental maps and research of the “British myth” of the Russian Empire. Besides, we consider this journal as the historical source, focusing on its content, popularity, number of editions. One of the elements of the research is description of other journals used by Ed. D. Clarke before travelling and writing his diary. The above mentioned ethnic groups include Russians, Malo-Russians (Little Russians), Cossacks, Circassians, Kalmyks, and Tatars. This article shows the subjective evaluations of Ed. D. Clarke, which are important for an analysis of how the Russian Empire was represented in Britain. Using journal’s data, we are able to reconstruct a certain ethnic chart of the population. Russians are described as a superstitious, angry, rude, inhospitable, frightened, violent, dirty nation; Cossacks as a well-informed, free from prejudices, educated, generous, hospitable, unprofitable, sincere, and honest group of people; Malo-Russians are presented as a clean, hardworking, honest, generous, polite, hospitable, truly pious and less superstitious than Russians ethnic group; Circassians and Kalmyks are characterized as Nomadic tribes with accompanying this life-style traits; and last, but not least, were Tatars – clean, hospitable, treated unfairly by the Russians. The text of Clarke depicts population of Russian Empire not as monolithic society, but as a set of certain diverse groups that appear in relation to each other, and, despite having certain similar characteristics, still do not make up one whole. In this article, for the first time we present a source – a travel-diary of Ed. D. Clarke, which has not yet been used in Ukrainian historical studies.