00:00:04 Kelly
[background guitar music starts] From the Imperiia project at the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, I'm Kelly O'Neill. This is the MapMaker. [music stops]
This is the first installment of our three-part series exploring one of my favorite maps.
I think I could have happily talked about this map all by myself for hours on end, but I realized it would be much more fun to have some company. I have with me today, Lily and Sarah.
00:00:36 Lily
Hi everyone and thank you so much for having me here. My name is Lily. I am a junior at Cambridge Rindge and Latin, which is the local high school here in Cambridge. And I would say I was recruited to be on this podcast. It was more than I jumped on the opportunity to be here when I heard about it in
My world history class and I'm very happy to be here. I'm a big history nerd and I am excited to be learning with you all.
00:01:05 Sarah
I'm Sarah. I'm an educator in Cambridge and I'm also a student at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.
Kelly, thank you for having us.
00:01:16 Kelly
I am so glad that you are here. It is always fun to have someone who will share my enthusiasm for maps of various kinds. [Kelly laughs]
So here we are in the Harvard map collection. [Sarah: Here we are] [Kelly laughs] So maybe, Lily, could you tell us what you see when you look around? What kind of a space is this?
00:01:39 Lily
Well, Sarah just said it's kind of a 1980s office, and I have to agree. It's a lot of it's a few cubicles to my left. Umm, there is, there’s a big Microsoft screen TVs that kind of breaks the effect a little bit. But there's a lot of filing cabinets and shelves in the back. Of course, a lot of maps! [Lily laughs]
00:02:01 Kelly
Absolutely. So, one of the other things that's in the room that we're standing in there are large tables [Lily: yes] and the large tables are coming very handy, especially when you want to look at a large map. Right? So, we have a large map.
00:02:19 Lily
We, we have a very large map. [Kelly laughs] Um, I guess I can describe a little bit of what we're looking at here. So, this is my first time looking at it and I don't know anything about this map for disclaimers, but it's, like she said, there's a very large table and this map takes up about two thirds of it, and it is split in four separate quadrants, it looks like. It kind of has a more contemporary feel to it with, instead of being what I called a, a Johnny Depp pirate map from Pirates of the Caribbean, it is, it has the nice like blue background you might expect of a modern map and, the bottom shows the Black Sea. [Kelly: Mhm] The top right corner says part of the Sea of Azov A-Z-O-V. That’s what we're looking at right now. So, it's kind of showing Europe or, part of Europe, I guess here?
00:03:25 Kelly
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's kind of overwhelming to me looking at this map. [faint background static] So, it's about six feet, it's longer than, maybe longer about 6 feet long and about three, three and a half feet wide. So, it's really big, which makes it, you know, impressive, but umm it's not the kind of map that you can easily work with you. You have to kind of stand over it and lurk over out of it to kind of get your face close enough to, to what you want to look at. But yeah, it's split into four pieces, um, and there's water and there's land, and I suppose what we want to try to get a sense of is how old this map is? Who made it? Why they made it. And yeah. What, what does it show us?
00:04:12 Lily
Not to break the mystique of when was it? But I see a few pencil marks that date it at maybe to 1855? Umm, there is a pencil mark on the side that says 1855 and then also kind of smack dab in the middle of the map.
00:04:27 Kelly
There is, right in the very middle of the map. Some librarian put on the call number of the map right in the very center of the map. Absolutely. That is the call number, and it does say 1855, yeah.
00:04:36 Lily
I was wondering what that was. Oh, the call number [Kelly: yeah] is 1855. Does that mean when it that's when it was made or?
00:04:44 Kelly
I think that's an open question. [Lily: oh, okay!]
Let's go see what we can find out about that!
00:04:48 Sarah
This might be a silly question but still not sure where we are in the world. [Tss]
00:04:53 Lily
Well, if it borders on part of the Azov Sea in the Black Sea, like you said, it's likely a peninsula somewhere in the area of southern Europe perhaps? But oh, it's there's a little, I guess key here, not key, but [Kelly: inset map] inset map [Kelly: mhm] here that kind of gives you a perspective of where this peninsula may be.
00:05:23 Kelly
The Black Sea is not everyone’s favorite sea, it’s not the most famous sea in the world [Kelly chuckles], um, but it is one of those places that has cropped up recently in the news because this chunk of territory, this peninsula, you’re absolutely right, it’s a peninsula, sticks out into the Black Sea. It's a place called Crimea, which is part, arguably, of modern-day Ukraine and the reason why it gets a little bit in the news these days is the Russian Federation annexed it in 2014 and hasn't given it back, and this is one of those territories that's now part of the, the war that's been ongoing since last year. So, this map is not about the war, right? It's about a completely different war. Umm, but that's where we're sitting. We're sitting in southern Ukraine. Um, and at the time this map was made, whether we're talking 1816 or 1854-55, this part of the world is part of the Russian Empire. Sometimes, um [tsk] it feels like cheating to go to the obvious source of information, [yeah] but let, let's cheat. Let's go. Let's go right to the title of the map and umm have a look at that incredible amount of text that is jammed into the upper right corner of this map.
00:06:44 Lily
It looks to be in multiple languages.
00:06:46 Sarah
I see Russian. I see English. This is to her most gracious Majesty, Queen Victoria.
00:06:56 Lily
And the Allied armies of France and England as well. Umm, maybe again another date says at the bottom in the year 1817. So, that could be a more realistic date of the map.
00:07:09 Kelly
But you can't skip all the good stuff [Lily: oh yeah, yeah!] in between the top and the bottom! [Kelly laughs]
00:07:14 Lily
Here, let me, let me, lots of it's in Russian, but it's of the Krima Peninsula, K-R-I-M-A, constructed and founded on the most recent astronomical observations, verified, and completed from authentic military surveys of the staff of his Imperial Majesty's Q-Quartermaster. It's in very, it's in cursive, guys. [Kelly laughs] umm, General's Department by Major General Mukhin in the year 1816. And it says “Inscribed by her very devoted and faithful servant, Thomas Best Jervis Jericho.” That was the struggle, [Lily chuckles] OK. [Kelly: Oof]
00:08:07 Kelly
I know. [laughter in the background] Why did they have to make it so hard? [Kelly laughs] [Lily: I did my best guys!]
That was a lot of work. We should almost call it a day after that. [Lily: yeah] [Kelly laughs] Right. OK. So just to kind of put that into like, we'll pull out the pieces there. So, this is a map that was apparently presented to Queen Victoria, right? And to the Allied armies of France and England. So, in and of itself, that's a little bit interesting. Right? So we, but it wasn't necessarily made by an Englishman, right? [mhm]
The original version of the map was made, when?
00:08:40 Sarah
Was it 1817? [Lily: Right] 1816?
00:08:42 Lily
Right.
00:08:43 Kelly
Yeah, made in 1816 and published in 1817 by the, someone in the General Staff of the Russian Army. [hmm] And I suppose we're going to have to figure out who this guy, Thomas Best Jervis is because he seems to be quite proud of the role that he played right? [yes] in making the map, and understanding something about him might be useful in understanding how a map made by Russians in 1816 ends up getting presented to Queen Victoria in 1855, which is a strange thing because the Russians and the English were at war. [mhm]
Hmm. So the question is, why would the Russians hand over a really great map to their enemy? [music fades in and then fades out]
00:09:35 Lily
Sarah, you asked a question about, um, there are these lines kind of going down the map. Do you want to describe them a little?
00:09:45 Sarah
Yeah. So, it looks like, umm every, I don't know, four or five inches, there's like, it almost looks like tape between panels. It feels a little bit like, um, the tape you use for bandages in a hospital? Like it's flexible and it's weird because it makes everything into these sections, but I'm guessing there's a purpose.
00:10:09 Lily
Um, just to add on to that description, the map itself is kind of a, a nice paper, but if you, you can kind of fold it back on itself and you can see the whole back is lined with this, like you said, this kind of medical tape that shows through these little [hmm] lines running. [Sarah: yes] Yeah, it's like a fabric, a, maybe scratchy linen. I don't know.
00:10:35 Kelly
Yeah, it's canvas [Lily: canvas]. Yeah, exactly. Spot on. And so it's been cut, right? Ahem, and you can kind of tell when you feel, stare at this thing long enough, it wasn’t, it, it's cut in order to make folding easier, but it's not cut a long latitude and long-, like longitude lines or anything like that, so it was cut and mounted using an adhesive to the canvas, and the adhesives like, they, there's a history of glue
00:11:05 Lily
Is this rabbit skin? [laughter in the background]
00:11:09 Kelly
Ahh, I think it's goat. Yeah. So one of the, the most popular form of adhesive in the Russian Empire was actually fish glue. They don't start using horse until the 19th century. So I'm not exactly sure. But Russians tended to use fish glue until now. So it's a little bit, uhh, up in the air.
But it was definitely cut so that it could be folded. And why would you fold it?
00:11:36 Lily
Transport it?
00:11:37 Kelly
Yeah. To carry it around. So someone wanted to carry this thing around with them.
00:11:42 Lily
Do we know when this map was, like, cut? Or when these were added? [Kelly: so]
00:11:47 Kelly
Well, so there are a bunch of copies of this map, and I don't know exactly when this one was cut because this is a pretty fancy version of this map but this map was produced in large numbers, cut into pieces, glued on canvas, folded up, packed in boxes and sent to the coast of Bulgaria to be put on ships belonging to the British Navy [mhmm] as the officers were about to sail to Crimea to invade it. [oohh]
00:12:21 Lily
And then somewhere along the way it ended up in the hands of the, the Russians, oh, yeah.
00:12:27 Kelly
Well, in, it's in a funny way, right? It was originally a Russian map but, you can read it, right? [Lily: yeah] It's not actually in Russian [Lily: mhm], which is weird. The English get a hold of it. They bring it to Crimea [wow, yeah] somehow, right? And they, they bring it to Crimea and the British officers who were fighting this war, who were invading Crimea have it with them. And the Russian officers don’t.
They have not been given this map and they start hearing rumors about there being an amazing map of Crimea that would be really helpful when they're trying to figure out how to fight the British [yeah] who have invaded their territory. And the officers, we have their Diaries, and you get little mentions, and they're like, why did the British get the map? And we don't get the map? [background amused noise] [Lily: yeah]Like isn't our, aren't our generals going to give us the map? [yeah]
And their generals, the commander says we don't need a map. We are Russian and Crimea is part of our empire. We know Crimea. [mhm] As if you somehow just know a place [yeah] because you, you know, you’re subject of the Czar. So, the poor Russians are out there with absolutely, who’ve, none of them are from Crimea and they have no idea where they're going, but the British do. [yeah] [laughter]
So there's one thing I would love, Lily, if you would [Lily: yeah] take a look at one of the fun things about this map. As you, you pointed out, it's very modern looking, [mhm] it has latitude and longitude, there's a key, there's a legend. In a way, it looks really familiar and very, like, authoritative, right? [Yeah] They know a lot.
Um, but one of the fun things to think about is like where, where does information come from, [Lily: Yeah] right? What are your sources? And there are little bits and pieces on this map where Jervis added notes and some of his notes are just hilarious. [laughter] And so I wanted you to look at this note here, [Lily: ok] and I’ll get out of your way.
00:14:11 Lily
It says the existence of this military road is very questionable. It is given on the authority of a Tartar chief Ali Bei and is not unlikely strategic deceit to divert the attention of the Allies regarding attacking the isthmus of Perekop, as the only means of communication with southern Russia. So. [muffled laugh] Yeah, he wasn't sure about everything. [Kelly laughs]
00:14:41 Kelly
He wasn't sure about everything, and they're not, they've got informants running around. There are these guys who seem to be trying to, like, sell them information. And is it the right information? Is it good information? So, Perekop is kind of at the top of this map and it's a place, it's the only land connection [mhm] between the Crimean Peninsula and the mainland, but this Tatar chief is trying to convince the British that there really is another overland connection, [yeah] right? So, you know.
00:15:11 Lily
The phrase, “the certainty of this military road is very questionable” and the saying, I'm going to have to show up next time I cite Wikipedia I think that's a really good, good way of putting it. [Kelly laughs]
00:15:23 Kelly
There's one other thing that we should [maps shuffling in the background], umm, look at, especially on the sheet with lots of mountains and villages, if you look closely, umm, at the villages with your young eyes, of course, I need my glasses, but they're little numbers.
00:15:40 Lily
Yeah, I noticed that when I was looking. It’s, like, 20, 10, 25, 24 and the key for villages, it looks like, are these little kind of square boxes with dots in them, like teeny, teeny tiny.
00:15:57 Kelly
Yeah. [mhm] Yeah, it's almost like the human beings have been shrunk down to the most minuscule [Kelly laughs] [Lily: yeah] representations imaginable, [mhm] but those numbers, [mhm] there's an explanation over here. I was really curious about the numbers, um [mhm].
Oh yeah. There you go.
00:16:18 Lily
Um, the numbers opposite the towns indicate the number of houses there. So that's interesting. So they, so they've supposedly gone into these towns, or at least had people go into these towns and count up the number of houses so, that, I can imagine also that would be helpful if you're going to invade somewhere, you know, you know how many people are there but.
00:16:41 Kelly
Absolutely. [Lily: Yeah]
00:16:42 Lily
Also, how reliable is something so specific like that, I don't know.
00:16:48 Kelly
Mhm, that's a good question [yeah] for us to think about because the map was made in supposedly 1816 by a Russian map maker, [mhm] and we're looking at a version made by an English map maker, you know, a few decades later. And so, one of the things that we have to figure out is whose version of the information is on the map? Is this the original? [mhmm] 1816 stuff? Or has it been updated? You know, what really are we looking at? What version of Crimea are we looking at? [Lily: Yeah] Because probably things have changed over a couple of generations. [mhm]
00:17:21 Lily
You'd imagine, yeah. And, so I'm assuming they didn't adjust for population growth or anything.
00:17:29 Kelly
They didn't have really sophisticated [Lily: yeah, yeah] models, demographic models [Kelly laughs], no.
00:17:29 Lily
Yeah, yeah.
00:17:34 Kelly
No, he has all of these notes, right? And it's a little bit tedious to make our way through them, but um, but he has an explanation of where his information comes from. And, the funny thing is, for all the work that this Englishman did clearly to get this map in, right? to London, right? and then down into the hands of British officers, he didn't know everything there was to know about Crimea and some of the information here is from the original version of the map. Um, so, one of the things that we can think about is, you know, how did this guy, this Thomas Best Jervis, even claim to know anything about how many people live in Crimea? He's got that crazy, beautiful, like, technicolor geological inset map over in the lower right-hand corner where he claims to know something about the deep history [Lily: yeah] [Kelly laughs] of Crimea.
00:18:32 Lily
Just, just for, because people are listening, I want to say this inset map, it looks like it's colored in marker [Kelly laughs], like it is just, if you can imagine, like, a little kid got a coloring book of the world and just filled it in like that's, that's what it really resembles.
00:18:47 Kelly
Yeah, it really, it sticks out like a sore thumb on this otherwise kind of very sedate map. Yeah. This inset map, umm, we will have to take a closer look because, um, I'm sure you've been waiting for the moment in your life when you'd be able to have a conversation about mud volcanoes.
00:19:06 Lily
Oh yeah. Oh, mud volcanoes are a key on the inset map, and there seemed to be a good number of them too [Kelly laughs] Oh no. [laughter, music fades in and then fades out]
So, if just looking at the map the topography is kind of shaded with the higher versus the lower regions and, I guess, I'm wondering how did they use that to their advantage when looking at?
00:19:33 Kelly
Oh my goodness, you're so correct [unintelligible voice] and there are so many fun things to say about it. So, showing elevation change, showing topography to us, I think it's maybe not so shocking because that's something, that's something that a map ought to do, right? But cartography, the art of map making was, it's a science really. And it had been incorporating new techniques and it was pretty recent, um, that the idea of creating a topographical map like this had kind of come on the scene. And this was considered to be, this was the first serious attempt by Russian map makers, and all the Russian mapmakers work for the Russian army or the Academy of Sciences to create a really high end, super impressive topographical map of any part of the Empire. They started here. They chose Crimea as their place to, to kind of show off their cartographic skill. You know, it's got an incredible amount of detail and you asked another question too about “Well, what do you do with all of this information?” Right? “And what does it tell us?”
We're looking at the southern coast of Crimea, basically from its western tip all the way across to the east, but especially in the southern kind of central part of the peninsula, that coastline is just abrupt cliffs that fall to the water. It's really spectacular and romantic. Really, really high areas, there are lots of plateaus. This is a plateau here. There's lots of really dark kind of elevation lines that show you, and then there's a white space that sits on top of it. That white space is basically the top of a plateau and it was used, if you can see the text there, you can, [unintelligible background noise] I think you can see what it was used for [background voice].
00:21:21 Lily
It says, affording rich pasturage for flocks of sheep and cattle?
00:21:26 Kelly
Yep! So, the British don't get all of the place names right, but this is called the Yayla. This is that, that basically the high area of Crimea and you get a little bit of sense of detail, right? that at the top of these mountains you get pasturage for, so there's full of sheep and goats. So, that's kind of a fun thing to know about this place, but the whol- [sound interruption] huge, huge parts of the Crimean Peninsula don't have mountains. Um, it's completely different. So we already start to see that this space isn't uniform, right?
00:21:59 Lily
Yeah, there's a lot of mountains, like you said, by the coast here. But then as you go further inland, it gets a lot flatter. There's these very tiny little marks on the map that indicate certain things. Looks like there's some grapes, it says here, in these river valleys?
00:22:20 Kelly
Absolutely. There are a few sizable rivers that are flowing out of the highland regions in the South, and they're flowing kind of northward and then westward toward the coast of the Black Sea. And there are three rivers that were known for having lots of orchards, lots of fruit trees and lots of vineyards. So, that's one of the reasons why paying attention to the non-mountainous parts of Crimea can lead you in a pretty interesting direction. We've got some pretty glorious vineyard terrain here.
00:22:55 Lily
So it says here the Muscat grape-making, I guess would make Muscat wine, but the majority of the population here is Muslim. Is that something that they would themselves be drinking or maybe be exporting?
00:23:09 Kelly
I think that's a really great question. We've mentioned the fact that people are keeping goats [mhm] and people are traveling along roads and through mountains, they're cultivating grapes. It might really be time to talk about who these people are. [Sarah and Lily: Yeah] Get to know a little bit [Kelly chuckles] about their lives and how they're experiencing the 19th century.
00:23:29 Lily
That's something we should dig into in the next episode. [music fades in and out]