Information and Empire: Mechanisms of Communication in Russia, 1600-1850

Read more from contributors including Katherine Bowers, Clare Griffin and Daniel C. Waugh discussing the book on our 

From the mid-sixteenth to the mid-nineteenth century Russia was transformed from a moderate-sized, land-locked principality into the largest empire on earth. How did systems of information and communication shape and reflect this extraordinary change?
Information and Empire brings together a range of contributions to shed some light on this complex question. Communication networks such as the postal service and the gathering and circulation of news are examined alongside the growth of a bureaucratic apparatus that informed the government about its country and its people. The inscription of space is considered from the point of view of mapping and the changing public ‘graphosphere’ of signs and monuments. More than a series of institutional histories, this book is concerned with the way Russia discovered itself, envisioned itself and represented itself to its people.
Innovative and scholarly, this collection breaks new ground in its approach to communication and information as a field of study in Russia. More broadly, it is an accessible contribution to pre-modern information studies, taking as its basis a country whose history often serves to challenge habitual Western models of development. It is important reading not only for specialists in Russian Studies, but also for students and non-Russianists who are interested in the history of information and communications.
Information and Empire: Mechanisms of Communication in Russia, 1600-1850
Simon Franklin and Katherine Bowers (eds.) | November 2017
444 | 48 colour illustrations | 6.14" x 9.21" (234 x 156 mm)
ISBN Paperback: 9781783743735
ISBN Hardback: 9781783743742
ISBN Digital (PDF): 9781783743759
ISBN Digital ebook (epub): 9781783743766
ISBN Digital ebook (mobi): 9781783743773
ISBN Digital (XML): 9781783744527
DOI: 10.11647/OBP.0122
Subject Codes: BIC: HBTB (Social and cultural history), JFC (Cultural studies); BISAC: HIS032000 (HISTORY / Russia & the Former Soviet Union)
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Acknowledgments
Notes on Contributors
Introduction
Simon Franklin
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I. MAP-MAKING
1. Early Mapping: The Tsardom in Manuscript
Valerie Kivelson
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2. New Technology and the Mapping of Empire: The Adoption of the Astrolabe
Aleksei Golubinskii
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II. INTERNATIONAL NEWS AND POST
3. Muscovy and the European Information Revolution: Creating the Mechanisms for Obtaining Foreign News
Daniel C. Waugh and Ingrid Maier
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4. How Was Western Europe Informed about Muscovy? The Razin Rebellion in Focus
Ingrid Maier
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III. NEWS AND POST IN RUSSIA
5. Communication and Obligation: The Postal System of the Russian Empire, 1700–1850
John Randolph
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6. Information and Efficiency: Russian Newspapers, ca.1700–1850
Alison K. Smith
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7. What Was News and How Was It Communicated in Pre-Modern Russia?
Daniel C. Waugh
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IV. INSTITUTIONAL KNOWLEDGE AND COMMUNICATION
8. Bureaucracy and Knowledge Creation: The Apothecary Chancery
Clare Griffin
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9. What Could the Empress Know About Her Money? Russian Poll Tax Revenues in the Eighteenth Century
Elena Korchmina
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10. Communication and Official Enlightenment: The Journal of the Ministry of Public Education, 1834–1855
Ekaterina Basargina
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V. INFORMATION AND PUBLIC DISPLAY
11. Information in Plain Sight: The Formation of the Public Graphosphere
Simon Franklin
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12. Experiencing Information: An Early Nineteenth-Century Stroll Along Nevskii Prospekt
Katherine Bowers
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Selected Further Reading
List of Figures
Index
© 2017 Simon Franklin and Katherine Bowers. Copyright of each chapter is maintained by the author.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0). This license allows you to share, copy, distribute and transmit the text; to adapt the text and to make commercial use of the text providing attribution is made to the author (but not in any way that suggests that he endorses you or your use of the work). Attribution should include the following information:
Simon Franklin and Katherine Bowers, Information and Empire: Mechanisms of Communication in Russia, 1600–1850. Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2017, http://dx.doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0122
Further details about CC BY licenses are available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Every effort has been made to identify and contact copyright holders and any omission or error will be corrected if notification is made to the publisher.
Every effort has been made to identify and contact copyright holders and any omission or error will be corrected if notification is made to the publisher.
Cover image:
Top: Clement Cruttwell, Map of the Russian Empire, in Atlas to Cruttwell’s Gazetteer, 1799, image by Geographicus Fine Antique Maps (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:1799_Clement_Cruttwell_Map_of_Russian_Empire_-_Geographicus_-_Russia-cruttwell-1799.jpg).
Bottom: image from the first Italian edition of Sigismund von Herberstein’s description of Muscovy (Venice, 1550), private collection.