Russia as a Frontier of Europe in the British Educational Games of the Georgian Age

Abstract

In the eighteenth century, an entertainment industry grew in England, including educational games such as playing cards, puzzles, and board games. The educational aspect implied that the game was not only a way of entertainment, but also a source of knowledge. The author examines the image of the Russian Empire shaped by British games of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. He gives special attention to the problem of the player’s interaction with the game reality, analyses the implicit properties of geographical spaces, which manifest themselves when, depending on the characteristics of the “place”, the player is asked to perform a certain action. The author divides the games of the period under review into three types, namely card games, board games designed as geographical maps, and board games with an individual playing field and booklet. He concludes that, regardless of the game format, the traditional early modern division of Russia into Asian and European parts was reflected in its image in all the games under consideration. The European part of Russia, as a rule, was described in the same tones as other regions of Europe. Asian Russia could be endowed with a variety of qualities. In some games it could be described as inhabited by ignorant nomadic tribes of Tartaria, in others – as frosty and deserted Siberia. Sometimes these characteristics were combined, but it is clear that the fragmentation into the “European” and “Asian” worlds presented in British educational games influenced significantly the formation of identification patterns among British youth of the Georgian era.