ABSTRACT
Large-scale scientific expeditions are usually a state affair. As members of a stateless national movement, by contrast, nineteenth-century Ukrainian scholars had to carry out their cultural and political endeavors without the support of, and often in explicit opposition to, imperial state institutions. Nevertheless, they successfully produced nationally tinged knowledge about their homeland, culminating in the creation, by the end of the century, of institutions and networks dedicated to Ukrainian “national science.” 1 Deprived of state resources, Ukrainian science largely relied on the private initiative of its practitioners. Instead of large expeditions funded by imperial academies, Ukrainian scholars organized individual and small-group trips during the summer vacations to gather ethnographic and anthropological data about their territory.
