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A geographical and historical analysis of Russian perspectives on the expansion of Russia.

Focusing on geographical practices—such as exploring, observing, describing, and mapping—Reconnoitring Russia explains how Russia’s rulers and public came to understand the expanse of their territory. It adopts a broad chronological framework and compares the Russian experience to the concurrent realities of other European countries between 1613, the emergence of the Romanov dynasty, and 1825, the conclusion of Alexander I’s reign.

In 1853 Richard Hovendon Kern was hired as topographer and artist for a government-sponsored reconnaissance led by Captain John Williams Gunnison. Kern sketched landscape panoramas as the group made its way from the eastern border of Kansas Territory toward the Pacific Ocean. When the expedition reached Sevier Lake, Utah, however, it was attacked by a band of Indians. Seven men, including Kern and Gunnison, were killed and Kern’s drawings were stolen. The sketches were soon recovered and eventually carried to Washington, D.C. 

Robert Shlaer came across them many years later at the Newberry Library in Chicago and was inspired to locate the views depicted in the drawings and to photograph them, as nearly as was possible, from the same spot where Kern stood when he sketched them. 

Richard Kern’s Far West Sketches juxtaposes Kern’s drawings with Shlaer's photographs, presenting 389 illustrations in geographic sequence from east to west, as well as a detailed narrative of the expedition. An associated website will include maps, drawings, and photographs so that they can be enlarged, compared, and studied in detail, providing an immersive experience of this important and ill-fated expedition.
 

Black's work challenges the standard perspective on the Russian period in Alaska as a time of unbridled exploitation of Native inhabitants and natural resources. Without glossing over the harsher aspects of the period, Black acknowledges the complexity of relations between Russians and Native peoples.

She chronicles the lives of ordinary men and women, the merchants and naval officers, laborers and clergy, who established Russian outposts in Alaska. These early colonists carried with them the Orthodox faith and the Russian language; their legacy endures in architecture and place names from Baranof Island to the Pribilofs.

This deluxe volume features fold-out maps and color illustrations of rare paintings and sketches from Russian, American, Japanese, and European sources, many have never before been published. An invaluable source for historians and anthropologists, this accessible volume brings to life a dynamic period in Russian and Alaskan history. A tribute to Black's life as a scholar and educator, Russians in Alaska will become a classic in the field.