The First Kamchatka Expedition is a classic among the voyages of discovery, being famous for the discovery of the Bering Strait between Asia and North America. Chaplin's journal holds a special place among the documents of the expedition. It is the only official document that preserves its history in detail, day by day, from the author's departure from St. Petersburg on 24 January 1725 until his return to the Russian capital on 1 March 1730. The publication includes introductory articles and commentary by leading specialists, a glossary, indexes, and maps.
"An extensive study of the emergence of ethnology and ethnography, and how theories in Europe and Russia during the eighteenth century experienced a paradigm shift with the work of Franz Boas starting in 1886"--
The story of the world's largest, longest, and best financed scientific expedition of all time, triumphantly successful, gruesomely tragic, and never before fully told The immense 18th-century scientific journey, variously known as the Second Kamchatka Expedition or the Great Northern Expedition, from St. Petersburg across Siberia to the coast of North America, involved over 3,000 people and cost Peter the Great over one-sixth of his empire's annual revenue. Until now recorded only in academic works, this 10-year venture, led by the legendary Danish captain Vitus Bering and including scientists, artists, mariners, soldiers, and laborers, discovered Alaska, opened the Pacific fur trade, and led to fame, shipwreck, and "one of the most tragic and ghastly trials of suffering in the annals of maritime and arctic history.
Russia first encountered Alaska in 1741 as part of the most ambitious and expensive expedition of the entire 18th century. During the next 126 years the struggle to develop and refine geographic knowledge of the vast region comprising northeastern Asia, the North Pacific, and Alaska met with many obstacles, including inclement weather, the chain of supply over great distances, the need to train expert navigators and cartographers, and false leads due to spurious voyage accounts. For much of this era, critical geographic knowledge was kept as a state secret in Russia and not shared, even with the very navigators and cartographers who were developing much needed maps and navigational aids. Despite this, a rich cartographic heritage developed to be carried forward into the American era. The traditional Russian cartographic methods were applied to new discoveries in Siberia and beyond. Early fur traders and explorers utilized this system which for a time co-existed with the new cartographic methodology utilized in Europe and adopted for use by the Russia of Peter the Great. It became an age of scientific exploration. Great Britain, France, Spain, but especially Russia, sent expeditions. An increasingly complete knowledge of the coasts of North America, with forays into the interior, emerged. Postnikov describes the explorations and richly illustrates how the resulting maps evolved and contributed to the world’s knowledge of one of the last great regions of the world to be explored.
