Strategic Sketches: Russian Foreign Policy & Early Mapping of the Caspian Sea

The Caspian Sea, the world’s largest inland lake, was an important point for commercial and strategic reasons. Much of the historiography on the Caspian locates the emergence of this region as a site of competitive tension in the eighteenth century. But a map of the Caspian brought back to Europe by the Dutchman Nicolaas Witsen (1642–1717) in the mid-seventeenth century reveals that many of the dynamics that animated developments in the eighteenth century were afoot decades earlier. Focusing on early efforts to map the Caspian Sea region in the seventeenth-century invites us to consider early modern strategies of the Russian Empire vis-à-vis this important trade node and Western European actors as well.

About the Speaker: Erika Monahan is an Associate Professor of History at the University of New Mexico. She specializes in the history of Russian enterprise with a special interest in borders and frontiers. She earned a BA in history from Dartmouth and a PHD in history from Stanford University. Professor Monahan’s first book is titled The Merchants of Siberia: Trade in Early Modern Eurasia (Cornell University Press, 2016). She is currently working on another book tentatively titled Spinning Russia: Nicolaas Witsen and the Making of Russia’s Image in Europe.

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