Voyages et Decouvertes Faites par le Russes le Long des cotes de la Mer Glaciale & sur l'Ocean Oriental, tant vers le Japon que vers l'Amerique. On Y a joint l'Histoire du Fleuve Amur
Author: Gerhard "G" Friedrich Muller (1705-1783)
Year: 1766
Publisher: Marc-Michel Rey
Place: Amsterdam
Description
Two volumes bound in one. [i]-xii, [1]-388; [i]-iv, [1]-207; Table of Contents; [3] publisher's ads. Folding map showing the lands touching the Arctic Circle, including a large portion of Russia and parts of America, including California. Duodecimo (6 ¾" x 4") bound quarter tan leather with contemporary patterned paper boards with gilt decorative rules, gold spine label with gilt lettering; all edges speckled red. (Howes M-875. Sabin 51286. Streeter VI) First French edition of this work originally published in German in 1758.
Gerhard Friedrich Müller was a Russian-German historian and pioneer ethnologist. Müller participated in the second Kamchatka expedition, which reported on life and nature of the further (eastern) side of the Ural mountain range. From 1733 till 1743, nineteen scientists and artists traveled through Siberia to study people, cultures and collected data for the creation of maps. Müller, who described and categorized clothing, religions and rituals of the Siberian ethnic groups, is considered to be the father of ethnography. On his return from Siberia, he became historiographer to the Russian Empire. He was one of the first historians to bring out a general account of Russian history based on an extensive examination of the documentary sources. His accentuation of the role of Scandinavians and Germans in the history of that country – a germ of the so-called Normanist theory – earned him enmity of Mikhail Lomonosov, who had previously supported his work, and dented his Russian career.
Müller, was appointed by theRuling Senate of Empress Anna Ioannovna as one of the leaders of the "Second Kamchatka,” also known as the “Great Northern” Expedition. The other members of the expedition included, naturalist J. G. Gmelin, the astronomer Louisde l’Isle de la Croyér, and navigator Vitus J. Bering who had led the First Kamchatka Expedition (1725-1730). As a newly appointed professor of history at the Academy of Sciences in 1731, Müller was to report on the manners, customs, religions and histories of the inhabitants of Siberia. He was also to observe and comment upon its geography, its commerce, its military and political institutions, as well as the history of Russian geographical discoveries in Siberia, the Arctic and Pacific oceans. As dictated by the Ruling Senate, all of his findings were to be recorded in Latin and kept secret, only to be published with permission by the Ruling Senate. In 1750 accounts of his travels in Siberia were published as the Opisanie Sibirskogo Tsarstva. Some official documents of the expedition were also published in Ezhemesiachnyia sochineniia, VII in 1758, however Müller's full account of the trip, Zur Geschichte der Akademie der Wissenschaften Petersburg, was not published until 1890.
Condition:
Joints, corners and edges professionally restored; insect damage to spine label, rear pastedown; remains of label on front pastedown; large paper loss on fly leaf expertly renewed, paper lose to corners on next few pages; ownership marks; else about very good.
