Map printing in early eighteenth-century Russia
Abstract
The significance of the early eighteenth-century reform period in Russia was that Peter I introduced, with an emphasis on military and administrative sectors, many arts and sciences that were previously almost non-existent in the country.
To start domestic cartographic production in the form of both indigenous surveys and establishment of graphic production facilities was of primary importance. The means for achieving these goals were educating, Russian students abroad, establishing cartographic education and employing foreign experts.
Already in the 1710s there were numerous printing houses involved in map printing and several foreign engravers working on both Russian and foreign material. The volume of map production was variable and dependent on government initiative and military campaigns, but generally print runs remained small.
The standard of map production was generally high from the beginning, due to rigid following of western standards. From the beginning, the new Civilian character set was adopted in cartography. The analysis of two half-century atlases indicates a high level of workmanship and graphic skills, which have been employed in promoting an idea of a strong and modern uniform state, through cartographic standardization and ornamentation of maps. Early Russian cartography serves as an example of a field developed through the allocation of resources within the context of the military, where imposed technical development supersedes the transformation of human and social resources.
Published
Issue
Section
License
Authors who publish with Fennia agree to the following terms:
- Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal. The license of the published metadata is Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0).
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a doctoral dissertation or book compilation), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).
.png)



