Mapping
Lithuanians:
Examining Russian
Imperial Ethnic
Cartography
(1840s-1880s)
Vytautas Petronis,
PhD candidate in History, South Stockholm
University-College
vytautas.petronis@sh.se
Ethnic cartography in the Russian Empire
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Cartography:
1.
The first (Petrine) instrumental land
survey of imperial Russia (1720-1744);
The General Land Survey (1765- ~1840s);
- Notes in the “economical journals”
(ekonomicheskie zhurnaly):
- Collecting economic, geographical and
other information about the surveyed
territories;
2.
Ethnic cartography in the Russian Empire
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1.
2.
3.
Ethnography:
First ethnographical investigations
began during the 18th century;
In the first half of the nineteenth
century numerous “learned societies”
appeared; they greatly expanded the
understanding of what and where the
Russian Empire was, and who inhabited
its space;
A major turning point in the scientific
ethnographic research occurred after
the establishment of the Imperial
Russian Geographic Society (IRGS) in
1845;
Šafařik (1842)
The Latvian and Lithuanian ethno-linguistic territories (a fragment
from Šafařik’s map in Slovanský národopis (1842))
Koeppen (1848; 1851)
The Lithuanian ethno-linguistic territory around the city of Vil’na
(fragments from Koeppen’s Etnograficheskii atlas Evropeiskoi Rossii
(1848))
Koeppen (1848; 1851)
The Lithuanian and Latvian ethnic territory (fragment from Koeppen’s
Etnograficheskaia Karta Evropeiskoi Rossii (1851))
Rittikh (1862 (1864))
The Lithuanian inhabited territory in Rittikh’s Atlas narodonaseleniia
Zapadno-Russkogo kraia po veroispovedaniiam (1864)
Erckert (1863)
Alterations of the ethnic composition in the North Western provinces
found in the French (on the left) and Russian (on the right)
Erckert (1863)
The Latvian and Lithuanian inhabited territories
(fragment from Erckert’s Atlas Ethnographique des provinces habitées
en totalité ou en partie par des Polonais (1863))
Rittikh (1875)
The Lithuanian ethnic territory on Rittikh’s
Etnograficheskaia karta Evropeiskoi Rossii (1875 - fragment)
Concluding remarks
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Šafařik’s work was the first modern
ethno-linguistic map, which beside the
Slavs also indicated the territories of other
ethnic groups;
The imperial ethnic cartographers were
predominantly of German origin;
Erckert’s atlases were illustrated
possibilities of ideological manipulation in
ethnic cartography;
Lithuanian ethnic territory was gradually
shrinking. It was reflected in the maps.
The political situation and ideology if the
time allowed scientists interpreting
multiethnic and multilingual territories in
a “politically correct way”;
The Lithuanian National Movement,
paradoxically enough, greatly relied upon
the ideological ethno-cartographic works
(Erckert and partially Rittikh (1862)),
because they depicted the biggest
Lithuanian territory.