Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gbm5v Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-29T06:50:02.708Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Inter-academic cooperation in the Arctic during the 1898–1901 Swedish–Russian Arc-of-Meridian expedition: Based on materials from the Russian Academy of Sciences Archives

Part of: Arctic Science Diplomacy in the Rapidly Changing World

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 May 2022

Olga V. Shabalina Open the ORCID record for Olga V. Shabalina [Opens in a new window]  and
Ksenia S. Kazakova Open the ORCID record for Ksenia S. Kazakova [Opens in a new window]
Olga V. Shabalina*
Affiliation:
Leading Research Fellow of Barents Centre of Humanities, FRC KSC RAS, Apatity, Murmansk Region, Russia
Ksenia S. Kazakova
Affiliation:
Senior Research Fellow of Barents Centre of Humanities, FRC KSC RAS, Apatity, Murmansk Region, Russia
*
Author for correspondence: Olga V. Shabalina, Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The article analyses the experience of international scientific cooperation in the Arctic in organising and conducting an academic Swedish–Russian Arc-of-Meridian expedition to the Spitsbergen archipelago in 1898–1901. This was one of the largest projects of its kind in history. The military and naval government agencies of the two countries were extremely interested in measuring the meridian arc near the Geographic North Pole. The fulfilment of this task made it possible to more accurately determine the shape of the Earth as a geoid. This was the significant and fundamental result of testing the hypothesis of the Newton–Huygens spheroid and was of applied importance. Funding for the expeditionary activities was carried out on a parity basis from the budgets of the two nations. The study of archival documents from the collections of the Russian Academy of Sciences Archives enabled an understanding of the unprecedented financial and physical costs of preparing and carrying out expeditionary work. Analysing inter-academic research of the late nineteenth – early twentieth centuries is valuable for understanding the potential interactions between the government and academic structures of international scientific cooperation in the Arctic during the modern era.

Keywords

ArcticInternational scientific cooperationSpitsbergenMeridian arc measurementSwedish–Russian Arc-of-Meridian expedition
Type
Research Article
Information
Polar Record , Volume 58 , 2022 , e14
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Anisimov, Y. A., & Onopriyenko, V. I. (1985). Feodosiy Nikolayevich Chernyshev. 1856–1914 [Feodosiy Nikolaevich Chernyshev. 1856–1914]. Moscow: Nauka.Google Scholar
Beznosov, A. (2000). Russkiy flag na Shpitsbergene (K 100-letiyu Russko-Shvedskoy ekspeditsii v Arktiku [Russian flag in Spitsbergen. To the 100th anniversary of the Russian-Swedish expedition to the Arctic]. Marine Collection, 1, 82.Google Scholar
Chernouss, S., & Sandahl, I. (2008). Comparison and significance of auroral studies during the Swedish and Russian bilateral expedition to Spitsbergen in 1899–1900. Annales Geophysicae, 26, 1127–1140.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chernyshev, F. N. (1901). Russkaya ekspeditsiya na Shpitsbergen [Russian expedition to Spitsbergen]. World of God, 2, 223–284.Google Scholar
Commission of the Academy of Sciences for Degree Measurement on the Spitsbergen Islands (1898–1912). Protokoly zasedaniy Komissii po gradusnomu izmereniyu na Shpitsbergene [Minutes of the meetings of the Commission on Degree Measurement on Spitsbergen]. The Archive of the Russian Academy of Sciences. St. Petersburg Branch, c13, i1, f1.Google Scholar
Commission of the Academy of Sciences for Degree Measurement on the Spitsbergen Islands (1899–1915). Materialy o proizvodstve sovmestno so shvedskim pravitel’stvom gradusnogo izmereniya na ostrovakh Shpitsbergena [Materials on the production of the degree measurement with the Swedish government on the Spitsbergen islands]. The Archive of the Russian Academy of Sciences. St. Petersburg branch, c13, i1, f2–3.Google Scholar
Commission of the Academy of Sciences for Degree Measurement on the Spitsbergen Islands (1900). Dokumenty po izucheniyu Shpitsbergena [Documents on the study of Spitsbergen]. The Archive of the Russian Academy of Sciences. St. Petersburg Branch, c13, i1, f37.Google Scholar
Commission of the Academy of Sciences for Degree Measurement on the Spitsbergen Islands (1904). Perepiska o proizvodstve sovmestno so shvedskim pravitel’stvom gradusnogo izmereniya na ostrovakh Shpitsbergena [Correspondence on the production of the degree measurement with the Swedish government on the Spitsbergen islands]. The Archive of the Russian Academy of Sciences. St. Petersburg Branch, c13, i1, f4.Google Scholar
Derzhavin, V. L. (2002). Archive papers on the Swedish-Russian arc-of-meridian expedition. In Bouzney, E. (Еd.), International Scientific Cooperation in the Arctic (pp. 86–89). Moscow: Scientific World.Google Scholar
Gnucheva, V. F., & Komarov, V. L. (1940). Materialy Dlya Istorii Ekspeditsiy Akademii Nauk v 18 i 19 Vekakh: Khronologicheskiye Obzory i Opisaniye Arkhivnykh Materialov [Materials for the History of Expeditions of the Academy of Sciences in the 18th and 19th Centuries: Chronological Reviews and Description of Archival Materials]. Moscow, Leningrad: Publishing house Academy of Sciences USSR.Google Scholar
Kaptüg, V. B., Sokolov, Y. G., Vereshchagin, S. G., & Garnikyan, V. A. (1999). The first Russian wire-measured baseline investigated. Survey Review, 35, 251–264. doi: 10.1179/sre.1999.35.274.251.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Krawczyk, A. (1999). The first Polish people on Spitsbergen. The centenary of the Swedish Russian arc-of-meridian expedition 1899–1901. Polish Polar Studies, 6, 405–407.Google Scholar
Krynzhina, M. (2018). Interpretations of science diplomacy in Russian academic community. International Trends, 16(55), 193–208. doi: 10.17994/IT.2018.16.4.55.12.Google Scholar
Lindberg, M. (2011). Some relations between the Stockholm and Tartu observatories during the 19th century. Baltic Astronomy, 20(c), 297–300. doi: 10.1515/ astro-2017-0295.Google Scholar
Makarov, S. O. (1901). «Yermak» Vo L’dakh [“Yermak” in the Ice]. Saint-Petersburg: Printing house of E. Evdokimov.Google Scholar
Meer, J. V. (2004). The De Geer archive in Stockholm exemplified by the documentation on a late-nineteenth century glacier surge in Spitsbergen. Developments in Quaternary Science, 4(C), 114–121. doi: 10.1016/S1571-0866(04)80101-5.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
MOSAiC. (2021). MOSAiC in numbers. https://mosaic-expedition.org/expedition/.Google Scholar
Palme, S. (1923). Edvard Jäderin. Scandinavian Actuarial Journal, 4, 286–288. doi: 10.1080/03461238.1923.10404700.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Puziene, R. (2019). The struve geodetic arc: the development of the triangulation, technical possibilities, and the initiation of the project. History of Geo and Space Sciences, 10, 269–277. doi: 10.5194/hgss-10-269-2019.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Roberts, B. (1948). The Place-names of Svalbard. Polar Record, 5(35–36), 172–184. doi: 10.1017/S0032247400037608 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Romanov, K. K. (1903). Pis’mo velikogo knyazya Konstantina Romanova k S.Yu. Witte [Letter from Grand Duke Konstantin Romanov to S.Yu. Witte]. The Archive of the Russian Academy of Sciences. St. Petersburg branch, c13, i1, f4, l110.Google Scholar
Sellheim, N., Zaika, Y. V. and Kelman, I. (2019). Arctic Triumph: Northern Innovation and Persistence. Basel: Springer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shabalina, O. V. (2014a) Dokumenty po istorii izucheniya novoy zemli iz personal’nogo fonda M.A. Lavrovoy Muzeya-arkhiva TSGP KNTS RAN: k 100-letiyu so dnya organizatsii polyarnoy komissii akademii nauk [Documents about investigation history of Novaya Zemlya from the M.A. Lavrova’s personal collection of the Museum-archive of the BCH KSC RAS: for the 100th anniversary of the Polar Commission of the Academy of Science]. Trudy Kol’skogo Nauchnogo Tsentra [Proceedings of the Kola Science Center], 2(21), 210–223.Google Scholar
Shabalina, O. V. (2014b). Istoriya arkticheskikh ekspeditsiy v materialakh personal’nykh fondov Muzeya-arkhiva istorii izucheniya i osvoyeniya yevropeyskogo severa TSGP KNTS RAN [History of arctic expeditions in personal collections of the Museum-archive of the history of study and development of the European North of the BCH KSC RAS]. Trudy Kol’skogo Nauchnogo Tsentra [Proceedings of the Kola Science Center], 2(17), 3–18.Google Scholar
Shrader, T. A. (2003). Shvedsko-russkoye sotrudnichestvo v izuchenii Shpitsbergena (konets 19 – nachalo 20 vekov [Swedish-Russian cooperation in the study of Spitsbergen (late 19th – early 20th centuries]. In V. N. Baryshnikova, & S. Y. Trokhacheva (Eds.), St. Petersburg and the Nordic Countries: Materials of the Fourth Annual Scientific Conference. Saint-Petersburg, April 2002 (pp. 101–107). Saint-Petersburg: Russian Christian Humanitarian Institute.Google Scholar
Stone, I. (1984). Edward Sabine, polar scientist, 1788–1883. Polar Record, 22(138), 305–309.Google Scholar
Torge, W. (2015). From a regional project to an international organization: the “Baeyer-Helmert-era” of the international association of geodesy 1862–1916. In C. Rizos, & P. Willis (Eds.), IAG 150 Years. International Association of Geodesy Symposia (pp. 3–18). Cham: Springer.Google Scholar
Tulsky, N. I. (1901). Al’bom s fotografiyami iz pokhoda Yermaka na Shpitsbergen v 1901 godu [Album with photographs from Yermak’s campaign to Spitsbergen in 1901]. The Museum-Archive of the BCH KSC RAS, c428(2, 3).Google Scholar
Tunkina, I. V. (2018). Aktual’noye Proshloye: Vzaimodeystviye I Balans Interesov Akademii Nauk I Rossiyskogo Gosudarstva V XVIII- Nachale XX V. Ocherki Istorii [Actual Past: Interaction and Balance of Interests of the Academy of Sciences and the Russian State in the 18th and Early 20th Centuries. History Essays]. Saint-Petersburg: Renome.Google Scholar
Vasiliev, A. S. (1915). Na Shpitsbergen I Po Shpitsbergenu Vo Vremya Gradusnogo Izmereniya: Nablyudeniya, Puteshestviya I Zametki Astronoma A.S. Vasil’yeva: S Kartoy I 20 Fotografiyami Na Melovoy Bumage [Towards Spitsbergen and on Spitsbergen During the Degree Measurement: Observations, Travels and Notes by Astronomer A.S. Vasiliev: with a Map and 20 Photographs on Chalk Paper]. Odessa: “Commercial Printing House” B.I. Sapozhnikov.Google Scholar
Wilson Rowe, E. W. (2018). Arctic Governance: Power in Cross-Border Cooperation. Manchester: Manchester University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Witte, S. Y. (1900). Pis’mo k velikomu knyazyu K. Romanovu [Letter to Grand Duke Konstantin Romanov]. The Archive of the Russian Academy of Sciences. St. Petersburg Branch, c13, i1, f13.Google Scholar
Wråkberg, U. (2002). The Russo-Swedish arc-of-meridian expeditions to Spitsbergen 1898–1902. In Bouzney, E. (Ed.), International Scientific Cooperation in the Arctic (pp. 15–51). Moscow: Scientific World.Google Scholar
Wråkberg, U. (2019). A. E. Nordenskiöld in Swedish memory: the origin and uses of Arctic heroism. Acta Borealia, 36(2), 166–182. doi: 10.1080/08003831.2019.1680511.CrossRefGoogle Scholar