ABSTRACT
Our knowledge of eighteenth-century Siberia is both considerable and unsatisfactory. Significantly enough there is ample material available dealing with administrative measures, economic conditions, social structure, and institutional problems. By dealing with the geography of Russia's Asiatic realms, a number of other works prove useful, although they do not deal directly with travels and descriptions of central Siberia, but are rather indirectly related to Siberian journeys and the fruit these bore. Accompanying texts bear witness to the improvements in map making as well as the more practical issues of Russian road building, travelling methods, and settlements, and furnish with an indirect approach to a study of Siberian travellers and the accounts of their journeys. In 1876, Modest Bogdanov published in the Russische Revue a survey of voyages of the Aral and Caspian Sea region which included many travellers who have described parts of Siberia as well.
