Military actions and military structures on the maps of Siberia and the Far East (the XVIII - the beginning of the XX century)

In the article the maps of Siberia and the Far East that depict the War Department structures or the war events of the times of the imperial Russia are described. The fragments of bibliographical entries of military maps and plans of the second half of the 18 - the beginning of the 20 centuries are given. Studying the classification of military maps of the famous Russian military history specialist, professor Beskrovniy L.G., the authors offer their own classification basing on the analysis of the maps of Siberia and the Far East that were made in War Department of Russia and other establishments. Among the large number of maps of Russian Eastern Regions found in the last decades there are cartographic documents that are directly or indirectly related to military maps. The overview of such maps that are kept in the archives, museums, libraries of Moscow, Saint Petersburg, Irkutsk, Ekaterinburg, Novosibirsk and other cities is given along with their brief description. The majority of existing maps of the 18 - first half of the 19 centuries are the maps of cities of Western and Eastern Siberia, meaning the settlements that were the military and administrative centers of the corresponding territories at that historic period. From the second half of the 19 century maps with military structures located in the Asian part of the empire territorial border like fortresses, outposts, redoubts start prevailing. Military actions in the Pacific Ocean and in the Far East connected with the events of Crimean war and Russo-Japanese war in 1904-1905 were also shown in some military maps of the region mentioned in this article. A considerable part of military maps was made by central establishments, while some maps were made locally by the orders of military and civil authorities of the region. The compilers of these maps are not always mentioned in the explanatory notes. Some information about the so called “Public maps” meaning maps that can be used by a wide range of people and not only the specialists can be found in the article. Such maps of the region appeared in 1904 during the war with Japan. Except for the battlegrounds, the territory of Russian Far East was usually shown on these maps. The maps created for ordinary people contained a number of peculiarities: the lack of scale, rather rough or approximate objects and structures anchoring, presence of illustrations (portraits of people, images of ships) and various advertisements as well. Thus, this article gives general idea of the maps with the elements of military character or fully devoted to military issues. Right now, the whereabouts of some maps are defined. The information about the military history of the region that can be received from analyzing such maps and the evolution that occurred to the military maps of the region throughout the 18 -the beginning of the 20 centuries are identified.

Keywords

Authors

References