Ein Imperium wird vermessen

Maps are instruments for measuring the world. The spatial images they produce document historical developments in all their continuity and dynamism. They reflect the permanence of natural conditions as well as the shifting of power relations and borders. It is especially in times of war that spaces are remeasured and maps are redrawn to be used for public information.

This book is about the surveying and mapping cartography of the Tsarist Empire in the nineteenth century and thus contributes to comparative empire history. The topographical and cartographic development of the largest country on earth is understood as an aspect of Russia's territorialisation and examined in terms of the significance of cultural transfers from Western Europe. The topographical map as a time-bound representation of geographical space is understood as a special form of imperial self-description. The study examines which institutions and with which motives were involved in the surveying and cartographic development of the Tsarist empire, which regions came into the surveyors’ focus, which "language" the cartographers used in the representation of the surveyed space and which role was played by foreign models. The analysis concludes that the tsarist government ultimately did not succeed in creating a comprehensive topographic map of the entire empire based on survey data because their main interest lay in securing Russia's peripheries.