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English Views of Russia in the Age of Peter the Great

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 January 2017

Matthew S. Anderson
Matthew S. Anderson*
Affiliation:
London School of Economics and Political Science, University of London
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Extract

“Yesterday the Czar [sic] of Muscovy was brought from Greenwich in his majesties barge, and at present lyes incognito at a house joyning to the water-side in Norfolk Street.“ Thus simply a contemporary chronicler recorded the arrival in London of Peter I in January, 1698. What did the people amongst whom he was setting foot for the first and only time know of the country from which he had come?

Not unexpectedly, they knew very little about Russia, and few of them felt more than a superficial interest in events there.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Slavic and East European Review , Volume 13 , Issue 2 , April 1954 , pp. 200 - 214
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies 1954

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References

1 Luttrell, N., A Brief Historical Relation of State Affairs from September 1678 to April 1714 (Oxford, 1857), IV, 330.Google Scholar

2 Lubimenko, I., “Anglo-Russian Relations during the First English Revolution,“ Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 4th Series, XI (1928), 39–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 Cawley, R. R., Milton's Literary Craftsmanship: a Study of a Brief History of Moscovia (Princeton, 1941)Google Scholar, passim.

4 Hakluyt, R., The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of the English Nation (Glasgow, 1903–5), III, 135.Google Scholar

5 This was Edward Barnard, Savilian Professor of Astronomy. See Simmons, J. S. G., “H. W. Ludolf and the Printing of his Grammatica Russica at Oxford in 1696,” Oxford Slavonic Papers, I (Oxford, 1950), 108–13.Google Scholar

6 Largely because of the ignorance of the Russian language from which the authors of most descriptions of Russia suffered. Ključevskij, V. O., Skazanija innostrantcev o Moskovskom gosudarstve (Moscow, 1918), p. 21.Google Scholar

7 Ruffmann, K. H., Das Russlandbild im England Shakespeares (Göttingen, 1952), p. 173.Google Scholar

8 Ibid., pp. 2, 19–24, 26–29, 41, 73–74.

9 See, for example, the letters of Thomas Hale, a merchant in Archangel and Moscow, to his brother Bernard, of August 31, 1702, May 9, 1703, April 8, 1706, in British Museum Additional MSS. 33573. (All dates are New Style.)

10 Burnet, Bishop, History of His Own Time (Oxford, 1833), IV, 408.Google Scholar

11 Luttrell, op. cit., IV, 330, 332, 368; Burnet, op. cit., IV, 407. Diary and Correspondence of John Evelyn, Bray, W., ed. (London, 1906), III, 138, note 2.Google Scholar

12 A Congratulatory Voem to the Czar of Muscovy on His Arrival in England (London, 1698).Google Scholar

13 Crull, Jodocus, The Ancient and Present State of Muscovy (London, 1698), II, 204–5, 208.Google Scholar

14 Ibid., I, Epistle Dedicatory.

15 Of the seventy-six contemporary accounts of the battle of Narva cited by Minzioff, C. R., Pierre le Grand dans la litterature étrangère (St. Petersburg, 1872), pp. 256–77Google Scholar, none is in English.

16 It comes from his poem The Dyet of Poland, a Satyr (London, 1705).

17 David Jones, Compleat History of Europe for the Year 1708, p. 318.

18 Luttrell, op. cit., V, 282; Defoe, Review of the State of the British Nation (September 5, 1709), Miscellanea.

19 Dated August 10, 1703, in Public Record Office, State Papers Foreign, S. P. 101/40, Newsletters, Hamburg, 1703–26.

20 In St. John (Secretary of State for the Northern Department) to Raby (Ambassador to Prussia) January 1, 1711, State Papers Foreign, Foreign Entry Books, S. P. 104/52. As early as December 1706 however Peter had thought it necessary to order A. A. Matveev, his newly appointed representative in London, to assure the Government that he did not intend to construct a large Baltic fleet. Nikiforov, L. A., Russkie-Angliiskie otnošenija pri Pǫtre I (Moscow, 1950), p. 45.Google Scholar

21 To Whitworth, December 11, 1711, S. P. 104/121.

22 Various projects for such a treaty can be found in State Papers Foreign, Treaty Papers, S.P. 103/61.

23 Moll, H., Map of Muscovy, Poland, Little Tartary and ye Black Sea (London, 1708)Google Scholar; Price, C., A Correct Map of Muscovy (London, 1711)Google Scholar; Senex, and Maxwell, , A Map of Muscovy (London, 1712).Google Scholar

24 Curson, H., A New Description of the World (London, 1706)Google Scholar (often reprinted), and Chancel, A. D., A New Journey over Europe (London, 1714).Google Scholar

25 Murray, J. J., “British Public Opinion and the Rupture of Anglo-Swedish Relations in 1717,” Indiana Magazine of History, XLIV (1948), 127–28.Google Scholar

26 Review (April 13, 1713), Cf. the issues of January 26 and 28, 1713, and his History of the Wars of His Present Majesty Charles XII, King of Sweden (London, 1715), pp. 147, 175.

27 For details see Murray, J. J., “Sweden and the Jacobites,” the Huntingdon Library Quarterly, VIII (1944–5), 259–76Google Scholar. Popular hostility to Sweden was undoubtedly encouraged by the Government to mobilize public support for George Fs territorial ambitions in North Germany.

28 The Northern Crisis, or Reflections on the Policies of the Czar (London, 1716),pp. 15–18.Google Scholar

29 “A Letter from a Gentleman at Hamburg to His Friend at Amsterdam” in Boyer, A., The Political State of Great Britain (1717), XIII, 506–15Google Scholar. Cf. J. F. Chance, George I and the Northern War, pp. 165–66.

30 “Letters and Documents Relating to Robert Erskine, Physician to Peter the Great, Czar of Russia, 1677–1720,” Paul, R., ed., Miscellany of the Scottish Historical Society, II (Edinburgh, 1904), 418–22.Google Scholar

31 In State Papers Foreign, Russia, S.P. 91/107.

32 “An English Merchant's Remarks upon a Scandalous Jacobite Paper Publish'd the 19th of July Last in the Post-Boy etc.” in Boyer, op. cit. (1716), XII, 305–20.

33 E.g., the account of the fortification of Reval in the Post-Boy of January 14-16, 1717.

34 Op. cit., p. 16.

35 Review, March 18, 1713.

36 Op. cit., p. 21.

37 The State-Anatomy of Great Britain (6th ed., London, 1717), p. 53 Google Scholar.; Reasons for the Present Conduct of Sweden … Set Forth in a Letter from a Gentleman at Dantzic to his Friend at Amsterdam (London, 1717), Preface. (The latter is Swedish-inspired.)

38 For examples of this attitude see Townshend (Secretary of State for the Northern Department) to Finch (Envoy to Sweden), March 12, April 1 and 11, i72i,S.P. 104/155.

39 See the almost servile letter of James III to the Tsar January 18, 1723 in Aleksandrenko, N. V., Russkie diplomatičeskie agenty v Londone v 18 veke (Warsaw, 1897), II 34–36 Google Scholar. On Jacobite influence at St. Petersburg at the end of the Tsar's life, see Thomas Consett to Townshend, July 11 and 28, 1725, S.P. 91/9, and Bruce, M. W., “Jacobite Relations with Peter the Great,” Slavonic and East European Review, XIV (1936), 343–62.Google Scholar

40 Jefferyes (Minister to Russia) to Craggs (Secretary of State for the Southern Department) November 18, 1719, S. P. 91/9.

41 “Truth is but Truth as it is Timed,” Boyer, op. cit. (1719), XVIII, 161.

42 Lortholary, A., Le Mirage russe en France au dix-huitieme siecle (Paris, 1951), p. 285 Google Scholar, note 4; p. 286, note 26.

43 Originally published in German as Das Veränderte Russland (Frankfurt, 1721).

44 Ibid., I, 70–73.

45 Whitworth, The Account of Russia as It Was in the Year 1710, pp. 29–30.

46 The Northern Crisis, pp. 9, 25.

47 See for example Swift's comments on him in the Introduction to A Complete Collection of Genteel and Ingenious Conversation (Dublin, 1738), in Works (Temple Scott Edition), IX, 226.

48 There is a good example of the conventional contrast between the harsh and warlike Charles and the pacific and constructive Peter in a play, The Northern Heroes, produced in London in 1748.

49 An impartial History of the Life and Actions of Peter Alexowitz the Present Czar of Muscovy (London, 1723), p. 3.Google Scholar

50 Gordon, A., The History of Peter the Great, Emperor of Russia (Aberdeen, 1755), I, Preface, xxiii–xxiv Google Scholar. According to Minzloff (op. cit., p. 53), Dilworth's, W. H. The Father of His Country, or the History of the Life … of Peter the Qreat, Czar of Muscovy (London, 1758)Google Scholar is the first life of the Tsar written “dans un but pedagogique.“

51 The Works of the Late Aaron Hill (London, 1753), III, 183.Google Scholar

52 The phrase comes from the epitaph printed in Boyer, op. cit. (1725), XXXV, 167–69. See also the epitaph in Historical Register (1728), X, 90.

53 Consett, Thomas, The Present State and Regulations of the Church of Russia (London, 1729)Google Scholar, Preface p. xiv.

54 Boyer, op. cit. (1731), XLI, 502.