1753 Jonas Hanway Map of the Russian-Kazakh Frontier

This fascinating map, engraved by John Gibson in 1753, depicts modern-day southern Russia, along the empire's contentious frontier with the lands of the Kazakh and Oirat tribes. These and other tribes from what the map terms 'Independent Tartary' made regular incursions into Russian territory, and the first part of the 18th century was characterized by Russia's efforts to stem those incursions. Among these efforts was the construction of the Irtysh line, a series of fortifications clearly shown on this map spanning the Volga and the Irtysh Rivers, for much of the distance following the north bank of the Ural, or Yaik river. The map distinguishes between those fortifications already constructed, and those which were yet intended to be built.

A Little Known Region

This map, included by Jonas Hanway in his An Historical Account of the British Trade Over the Caspian Sea, was one among several derived from Russian sources supplementing the results of his own travels to the Caspian. These, combined with a multiplicity of travelers' journals and the maps of other explorers, formed an exhaustive collection of the most up to date geographical sources for this area, making it one of the most obscure regions in the world. The map encompasses the Republics of Tartaristan and Bashkortostan, and the Oblasts of Ulyanovsk, Samara, Orenberg, Tyuman and part of Omsk. It represented the remotest part of Russia at the time: for example, Tobolsk - the capital of Siberia - would be the town to which Swedish officer and geographer Philipp Johann von Strahlenberg would be exiled from 1711 to 1721. Hanway's travelogue being largely intended to show the suitability of the Caspian Sea as an access to the Indian Ocean, it may well be that his inclusion of this map was an effort to show the utter futility of attempting a land passage this far east.

Orenburgh and the Orenbergh Expedition

Ivan Kirillovich Kirilov (Иван Курилов, 1689 - 1737), the father of Russian Cartography, took part in Shestakov's expedition to Kamchatka between 1731 and 1733. The experience led him to appreciate the economic and strategic opportunities offered Russia in assessing her more remote provinces. In 1734, he proposed the creation of an administrative center to aid the assessment and exploitation of Russia's southeastern frontier regions. The ambitious project called for the construction of fortresses and even cities in order to extend Russia's influence and the reach of her geographers. To this end, the city of Orenburg was constructed in the southern Urals in 1735, the site having been chosen by Kirilov himself. Specifically, his intent was '...opening up transit routes to Bukhara, Badakhshan, Bulk, and to India'. Kirilov died in 1737, but the bureaucracy he established lived on under new administrators. After several false starts, Orenburg was re-founded in 1743, at the juncture of the Yaik (Ural) and the Sakmara rivers, its present location. From that time on, Orenburg functioned as both a military and administrative center on the Kazakh frontier. Exploration in the Caspian region fell within Orenberg's sphere of influence. Even the work of English merchant explorers like Woodroofe and Elton would inform the geographical information compiled at Orenberg. This did not guarantee, however, that the material disseminated by the Expedition would be state-of-the-art: the maps based on the Orenberg Expedition that came to Jonas Hanway fell far short of his own maps of the Caspian and the Aral Sea published in the same work.

Publication History and Census

The chart was engraved by John Gibson in 1753 for inclusion in Jonas Hanway's An Historical Account of the British Trade over the Caspian Sea. We are aware of three editions of the work; this example appeared in the third. We see eight examples of the complete work in institutional collections. We see only one example of this map catalogued in OCLC, in the 1753 issue, at the Bibliotheque National de France.