Practice of marine cartography and the Russian representation of the Baltic Sea in the eighteenth century

Abstract

The emergence of detailed hydrographic mapping in Russia is interpreted in connection to the social and technological practices that determine the content and significance of maps. Source materials include Russian and other northern European printed maps and atlases of the early eighteenth century and related manuscript materials. These were examined in the context of European marine cartography of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and naval and navigation practice together with strategies of territorial control. Through a comparative analysis of documents their influence on the construction of geographical knowledge in the form of charts was analyzed.

Russian hydrographic mapping of the eighteenth century employed conventions of western European genres of marine cartography. The influence of Russian naval practice in the Baltic Sea initiated new types of charts, which were characterized by their relatively large scale and comprehensive coverage of hydrographic conditions both on open sea and in the archipelagos. Russian eighteenth-century production of sea charts culminated in the Atlas of the Baltic Sea (1757), compiled by Alexei I. Naga'ev. Surveying results enabled detailed charts to be drawn of most of the Russian coasts in the Baltic. The elaborate decoration of the atlas's charts underlines the message of the power and prosperity of the Russian state.