Siberian Discovery by D. s> Collins (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS 153 Using these principles,Poe has identifiedtwenty-nine texts offeringthe best ethnographicinformationfound among the foreign accounts (vol. i, pp. 6-7). However, not all these best texts are included in the series. EarlyExplorations feature Collins and Fletcher (vol. i), Herbersteinand Margeret (2), Korb (3), Meyerberg (4), Neuville (5), Olearius (6), Paul of Aleppo (7 and 8), Petreius (9), Possevino (i o), Reutenfels (ii) and Staden (I 2). The editor does not explain explicitly why he has preferredthese thirteen texts to the remaining sixteen. However, hejustly notes that the chosen texts are the most important eye-witnessed, analyticaland narrativeethnographicaccounts of pre-modern Russia. The readerwill not findcriticalor analyticalcomments to most of the travel accounts in Poe's volumes. Only the accounts of Korb and Paul of Aleppo have introductions by nineteenth-century editors, and the editions of Possevino and Staden feature detailed historical comments by Hugh F. Graham and FritzEpsteinrespectively.Biographicaldata on the authorsin the introductory notes to each volume is sketchy and in places superficial. What the reader gets from the series is the unique opportunityto study early travel texts as cultural artefacts. Without going to the library's rare book department, we can now easily access printed texts that circulated across early-modern Europe and formed common views of Russia. Many familiar engravings appear here in their original context; we can also see original typescripts (illegible in places despite the best effortsof the publisher),page layouts, and even typos. Marshall Poe and his publisher RoutledgeCurzon should be praisedfor undertakingthisproject. In the introduction,Poe writes with impressive confidence that 'this work will be of immense value'. He is right. School ofSlavonic andEastEuropean Studies SERGEI BOGATYREV University College London Collins, D. (ed.). Siberian Discovey. I2 vols. Curzon Press, Richmond, 2000. 4,000 pp. Maps. Illustrations.Notes. ?950.??. THIS comprehensive and beautifully bound edition provides readers with facsimileeditions of fourteen raretravelaccounts through Siberiaby Western Europeanauthors.The collection isprefacedby a detailedandwell referenced introduction by David Collins, which gives the full context of each work as well as placing the genre of travelliteraturewithin an authoritativehistorical frame. These twelve volumes are an important addition to any librarywhere students are taught not only the geography of Eurasia but also the cultural historyof the concept of Europe.As Collinsnotes in his introduction,the early eighteenth-centurytravelaccounts of Siberiaplayed an importantrole in the development of political and historic thought in Europe a role which is now forgotten.This collection predominatelyemphasizesworksfromthe start of the twentieth century an interesting period on the cusp of the great revolutionswhich changed the face of most of Siberia. The collection is arrangedin a not quite strictalphabeticalorderwhich also worksmore or less chronologically. I54 SEER, 84, I, 2006 The collection opens with facsimile editions of the seventeenth-century works of IsbrantIdes and Adam Brandwhich were up until now most easily accessible only in a Russian edition. These are travel accounts of a Dutch envoy and his secretary on theirjourney to Peking. The work is deservedly famous not only for its pioneering descriptions of indigenous peoples in Western Siberia and the Baikal region, but for its wonderful primitivist engravings. There can be no better introduction to the history of colonial curiosity in Eurasia as to the history of how early Europeans understood themselvesin relationto others. Volume two provides a copy of the well-illustrated I927 English-language edition of Sten Bergman's Through Kamchatka byDog-SledandSkis(Swedish original 1924). This is an invaluable glimpse at the cosmopolitan fur trade society in Kamchatkaconsistingof Scots, Scandinaviansand Americans. Volumes three and four are reproductions of the works of two important diplomats (althougharguablynot as rare).CharlesHawes (1904) and Fridtjof Nansen (I 9I4) give forward-lookingdevelopmentalist accounts of Sakhalin and the YeniseiNorth respectively.Bothworksfallinto an importanttradition of regionalist studies which focuses on populist concerns for the welfare of local peoples. These two reprintscan servewell any reading course looking at the ideology of social development and in particular in these two regions which are well documented in other works by Anton Chekhov and Maria Czaplicka. The theme of industrialexpansion in Siberiais reinforcedby volumes five, six and ten. Volumes five and six present the worksof a Britishengineer and an economist. Volume ten includes, seemingly for ironic contrast, the travel account of an American...