THE SCIENTIFIC EXPEDITION ROUTE OF THE ACADEMIC BRIGADE IN THE TRANS-BAIKAL TERRITORY IN 1735

Abstract

In 1735, the Academic brigade under G. F. Miller and I. G. Gmelin’s command went on a scientific expedition to Transbaikal. The researchers were to visit the most populated areas and industrial facilities. The route was determined by the density of population in the district and presence of scientifically significant objects of study, human-made or natural. The current article features the road diaries and journals that were left by the future academicians S. P. Krasheninnikov and A. Gorlanov, who were students at that time, and the notes compiled by I. Yakhontov, the translator for the brigade. Some of G. F. Miller’s scientific works, as well as his promemoria are mostly represented by business correspondence stored in the Transbaikalian State Archive. The content of the road diary entries is often very poor: they contain the names of the places they passed, the precise locations of bivouacs, fording sites, distance between verst posts, etc. It is the power of observation and responsibility to the Science Academy that made each individual researcher introduce brief but diverse descriptions of economic, ethnographic, or natural-climatic character. The expedition around the Transbaikal region lasted for almost half a year and resulted in a detailed description of the western, southern and south-eastern areas, while the eastern and northern territories of Transbaikal were not involved due to their inaccessibility and sparse population.

Keywords

• expedition
• academic unit
• route
• road route
• settlement
• industrial facility
• transbaikal