Our Notes & References
A superb, complete example of this great work both of scholarship and book production, finely printed and with a wealth of maps and illustrations.
This particular copy bound in a prestigious full-morocco integrating two Russian coins marked ‘Moneta Sibirskaia’ from the early part of Catherine the Great’s reign. The binding is signed but the binder E. Mitrophanow, probably a Russian émigré, remains elusive.
This is copy num. 219 out of only 250 produced.
This impressive two-volume opus marks the beginning of English-language scholarship on the history of Russo-Chinese interactions. (Kotkin, 21, n. 5) Unusually, the second volume was written before the first: it contains translations of a series of narratives written or dictated by Russian envoys to Mongolia and China, some previously unpublished, and others published only in Russian. (The earliest text, relating to an expedition beyond the Yenisey River in 1602-1609, no longer exists in Russian and is known only through a Dutch translation.) This volume traces the history of Russia’s eastward expansion, and the development of geographical and ethnographic knowledge of Northern Asia.
Volume 1, which grew out of the author’s realisation of the necessity for historical introductions to his translated texts, offers a very detailed outline of the regions in question, with emphasis on the work of pioneering cartographers. It has two dozen excellent reproductions of historical maps, most folding and some in colour, including Battista Agnese’s map of Russia, and the maps of Jenkinson, Godunov, Remezov, Schleissing, Witsen, and Strahlenberg. Volume 1 is also notable for Amédée Forestier’s elaborate frontispiece (“the book epitomised in a series of pictures,” as the author puts it), engraved by Emery Walker. Both volumes offer historical plates, folding, double-page, and numerous in-text illustrations – covering a wide chronological and thematic range, from genealogical tables of Mongol princes to ceremonial Muscovite dress.
Bibliography
Kotkin, S. Introduction to S. Kotkin and D. Wolff, eds., Rediscovering Russia in Asia: Siberia and the Russian Far East. London: Routledge, 2015.
Physical Description
Two volumes folio (35 x 23.4 cm). Limitation page, 16 incl. title in red and black, ccclxvi pp. with 29 illustrations and 2 maps in text (1 in colour), [13] ll. incl. errata and genealogical tables in red and black, with 3 plates incl. frontispiece engr. by E. Walker after A. Forestier with protective tissue, 22 maps of which 10 double-page (2 in full colour and 2 partly in colour), 6 folding tipped in (2 in full colour and 1 partly in colour); xii pp. incl. and title in red and black, 446, [2] pp. with 40 illustrations in text, 2 plates with protective tissue incl. portrait frontispiece, 1 folding illustration, 4 maps (2 partly in colour).
Binding
Contemporary full dark brown crushed morocco by E. Mitrophanow, gilt fillet at edges, spines with raised bands and direct gilt lettering, upper boards decorated with 1767 copper Siberian denga coins in fawn tondo framing (vol.1 shows obverse, vol. 2 reverse), red moiré silk endpapers, pastedowns framed with two contrasting brown morocco, marbled fly-leaves, all edges gilt.
Condition
Bindings’ spines a tiny bit faded, the two coins worn; a handful of minor closed tears at some folding maps, one with a split, rare light foxing, otherwise beautifully fresh and crisp.
![Image for SKALKOVSKII, K. Vneshniaia politika Rossii [Russia's external policy]. First edition, Skt. Peterburg, 1897 #2](https://www.pyrarebooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/56_1-300x471.jpg)
