Toboleski the chief city of Siberia/ The great Rocky waterfall call´d Skamanskoy

Title

Toboleski the chief city of Siberia/ The great Rocky waterfall call´d Skamanskoy

Description

Map shows the city of Tobolsk and the waterfalls of Skamanskoy.

ca. 1778

Artist

Bowen (1720-1767)

Emanuel Bowen (1714- 1767 in London) was an English map engraver, who worked for George II of England and Louis XV of France as a geographer. In spite of his royal appointments and apparent prosperity he died in poverty and his son, who carried on the business was no more fortunate and died in a Clerkenwell workhouse in 1790.

Historical Description

During the Russian Empire, Siberia was chiefly developed as an agricultural province. The government also used it as a place of exile, sending Avvakum, Dostoevsky, and the Decemberists, among others, to work camps in the region. During the 19th century, the Trans-Siberian Railway was constructed, supporting industrialization. This was also aided by the discovery and exploitation of vast reserves of Siberian mineral resources. The early history of Siberia was greatly influenced by the sophisticated nomadic civilizations of the Scythians (Pazyryk) on the west of the Ural Mountains and Xiongnu (Noin-Ula) on the east of the Urals, both flourishing before the Christian era. The steppes of Siberia were occupied by a succession of nomadic peoples, including the Khitan people, various Turkic peoples, and the Mongol Empire. In the late Middle Ages. They had long maintained relations with the people of the Siberian forest (taiga). Tibetan Buddhism spread into the areas south of Lake Baikal. As early as the 11th century the Novgorodians had occasionally penetrated into Siberia. After the fall of the Novgorod Republic its communications between Northern Russia and Siberia were inherited by the Grand Duchy of Moscow. With the breakup of the Golden Horde late in the 15th century, the Khanate of Sibir was founded with its center at Tyumen. The non-Borjigin Taybughid dynasty vied for rule with the descendants of Shiban. In the beginning of the 16th century Tatar fugitives from Turkestan subdued the loosely associated tribes inhabiting the lowlands to the east of the Ural Mountains. In the mid-16th century the Tsardom of Russia conquered the Tatar khanates of Kazan and Astrakhan, thus annexing the entire Volga Region and making the way to the Ural Mountains open. The main treasure to attract Cossacks to Siberia was the fur of sables, foxes, and ermines. Explorers brought back many furs from their expeditions.