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105 results
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Irtysh River, Ferry Crossing at Bol'sherech'e, Russia
This photograph of the Irtysh River at Bol'sherech'e was taken in 1999 by Dr. William Brumfield, American photographer and historian of Russian architecture, as part of the "Meeting of Frontiers" project at the Library of Congress. The Irtysh, one of Siberia's mighty rivers, is in fact a tributary of the still greater Ob' River. The Irtysh originates in the extreme northwest part of China, near the Mongolian Altai Mountains. Over its length of 4,248 kilometers, it passes through Kazakhstan and western Siberia before its confluence with ...
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Constantinople
This colored travel sketch of Constantinople (present-day Istanbul) as seen from the eastern part of the town of Scutari (present-day Üsküdar) across the Bosporus Strait is by the Danish painter Martinus Rørbye (1803–48), a central figure in the "Golden Age" of Danish art (circa 1770–1900). After training at the Kunstakademiet, Rørbye travelled widely, to France, Italy, Greece, and Turkey. In 1833 he was one of the first artists to paint in Skagen, in the far north of Denmark, some 45 years before it became an artists’ haven. He ...
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Journal of the Voyage of Laurent Lange to China
Swedish born Lorenz Lange was among the many West Europeans to enter Russian service during the reign of Peter the Great. In 1715, he was sent to China as a special envoy to promote Russian commercial interests. This book recounts his overland journey through Tobol'sk, Tomsk, Eniseisk, Irkutsk, the Trans-Baikal region, and northern China. He remained in Beijing for two years. Based on his excellent reporting, the tsar sent Lange back to Bejing as consul in 1719 to supervise the Russian caravan traders in the Chinese capital. His mission ...
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Nepal and the Himalayan Countries
Isabelle Massieu (1844–1932) was a French writer and traveler who became the first French woman to visit Nepal. Beginning in 1892, she undertook a series of journeys from her native Paris that took her to nearly all parts of Asia and resulted in the publication of several popular books. Népal et pays himalayens (Nepal and the Himalayan countries) is a first-hand account of her 1908 voyage from the Sutlej Valley in northern India across Nepal, Bhutan, and Sikkim to Tibet. Massieu describes the people, landscape, and architecture of the ...
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Journal of a Tour through Part of the Snowy Range of the Himālā Mountains, and to the Sources of the Rivers Jumna and Ganges
James Baillie Fraser (1783-1856) was a Scot who in 1813 went to Kolkata (Calcutta) to join the family firm of Becher and Fraser. He remained there until 1820. In 1815, he accompanied his brother William, who was taking part in the Anglo-Nepalese War of 1814-16, on an expedition into the Garwhal Hills to find the sources of the Jumna and Ganges rivers. James and William Fraser were the first Europeans to reach many of the places they visited, which James vividly described in this account of the journey. He characterized ...
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Mongolia
In preparation for the peace conference that was to follow World War I, in the spring of 1917 the British Foreign Office established a special section with the responsibility of preparing background information that might be needed by British delegates to the conference. Under the leadership of Sir George W. Prothero, director of the Historical Section of the Foreign Office, experts were engaged to write briefs covering the geography, history, and economic, social, and political characteristics of countries and territories with which the delegates might be concerned. In all, more ...
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A Voyage to the East Indies: Containing Authentic Accounts of the Mogul Government in General, the Viceroyalties of the Decan and Bengal, with Their Several Subordinate Dependencies
This two-volume work is the third edition of a book first published as a single volume in 1757, expanded to two volumes in 1766, and republished in 1772. The author, John Henry Grose (active 1750-83), was born in England and went to Bombay (present-day Mumbai) in March 1750, to work as a servant and writer for the British East India Company. The book contains Grose’s descriptions of 18th-century India, including his account of the war of 1756-63, in which the British East India Company largely eliminated France as a ...
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The Province of Burma; A Report Prepared on Behalf of the University of Chicago
Alleyne Ireland (1871–1951) was a Fellow of the Royal Geographic Society in London who, in 1901, was appointed by the University of Chicago to head a commission to study colonial administration in the Far East. Ireland’s first major project, published in 1907, was this exhaustive, two-volume study of Burma, at the time under British rule as a province of the Indian Empire. Volume one contains a general description of Burma, a history of Britain’s acquisition of the colony, and chapters on the people, government, general administration, civil ...
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A Voyage in the Indian Ocean and to Bengal, undertaken in the Years 1789 and 1790: Containing an Account of the Sechelles Islands and Trincomale
Louis de Grandpré was a French army officer who made an extensive tour of the Indian Ocean region in 1789-90. This account of his voyage is an English translation of the original French version, which was published in Paris in 1801 under the title Voyage dans l’Inde et au Bengale fait dans les années 1789 et 1790, contenant la description des îles Séchelles et de Trinquemaly. Grandpré began his voyage in the French-controlled Île de France (Isle of France), as Mauritius was called, passed by the Maldives, and visited ...
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Bahrain and Jemama
Heinrich Ferdinand Wüstenfeld (1808–99) was a German Orientalist who specialized in Arab history and literature. He studied at the universities of Göttingen and Berlin, and taught at Göttingen from 1842 until 1890. This work is an analysis, based on Arab sources, of the geography of Bahrain and of the province of Yemama, located in present-day Saudi Arabia. Wüstenfeld noted in his introduction that Bahrain and Yemama were the least-known parts of the Arabian Peninsula. Only three Europeans—in 1819, 1862–63, and 1864—were known to have traveled through ...
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View of Beirut, Looking Towards Body of Water
This image by the firm of Maison Bonfils depicts the city of Beirut, Lebanon, sometime in the last third of the 19th century. Maison Bonfils was the extraordinarily prolific venture of French photographer Félix Bonfils (1831-85), his wife Marie-Lydie Cabanis Bonfils (1837-1918), and their son, Adrien Bonfils (1861-1928). The Bonfils moved to Beirut in 1867 and, over the next five decades, their firm produced one of the world's most important bodies of photographic work about the Middle East. Maison Bonfils was known for landscape photographs, panoramas, biblical scenes, and ...
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Aerial Panoramic View of Beirut
This image by the firm of Maison Bonfils depicts the city of Beirut, Lebanon, sometime in the last third of the 19th century. Maison Bonfils was the extraordinarily prolific venture of the French photographer Félix Bonfils (1831-85), his wife Marie-Lydie Cabanis Bonfils (1837-1918), and their son, Adrien Bonfils (1861-1928). The Bonfils moved to Beirut in 1867 and, over the next five decades, their firm produced one of the world's most important bodies of photographic work about the Middle East. Maison Bonfils was known for landscape photographs, panoramas, biblical scenes ...
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Fabric Merchant. Samarkand
At the beginning of the 20th century, the Russian photographer Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii (1863–1944) used a special color photography process to create a visual record of the Russian Empire. Some of Prokudin-Gorskii’s photographs date from about 1905, but the bulk of his work is from between 1909 and 1915, when, with the support of Tsar Nicholas II and the Ministry of Transportation, he undertook extended trips through many different parts of the empire.
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Melon Vendor. Samarkand
At the beginning of the 20th century, the Russian photographer Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii (1863–1944) used a special color photography process to create a visual record of the Russian Empire. Some of Prokudin-Gorskii’s photographs date from about 1905, but the bulk of his work is from between 1909 and 1915, when, with the support of Tsar Nicholas II and the Ministry of Transportation, he undertook extended trips through many different parts of the empire.
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Emir of Bukhara. Bukhara
At the beginning of the 20th century, the Russian photographer Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii (1863–1944) used a special color photography process to create a visual record of the Russian Empire. Some of Prokudin-Gorskii’s photographs date from about 1905, but the bulk of his work is from between 1909 and 1915, when, with the support of Tsar Nicholas II and the Ministry of Transportation, he undertook extended trips through many different parts of the empire.
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Turkmen Man Posing with Camel Loaded with Sacks, Probably of Grain or Cotton, Central Asia
At the beginning of the 20th century, the Russian photographer Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii (1863–1944) used a special color photography process to create a visual record of the Russian Empire. Some of Prokudin-Gorskii’s photographs date from about 1905, but the bulk of his work is from between 1909 and 1915, when, with the support of Tsar Nicholas II and the Ministry of Transportation, he undertook extended trips through many different parts of the empire.
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Samarkand. Portion of Shir-Dar Minaret and Its Dome with Tillia-Kari
At the beginning of the 20th century, the Russian photographer Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii (1863–1944) used a special color photography process to create a visual record of the Russian Empire. Some of Prokudin-Gorskii’s photographs date from about 1905, but the bulk of his work is from between 1909 and 1915, when, with the support of Tsar Nicholas II and the Ministry of Transportation, he undertook extended trips through many different parts of the empire.
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This Chart was Compiled on the Siberian Expedition under the Command of Navy Captain Bering from Tobolsk to the Chukotkan Corner
Vitus Jonassen Bering (1681–1741) was born in Denmark but spent most of his adult life in the Russian navy. In 1725, Tsar Peter I (Peter the Great) instructed Bering to undertake an expedition to find the point at which Siberia connected to America. In what became known as the First Kamchatka Expedition (1725–30), Bering traveled overland from St. Petersburg via Tobolsk to the Kamchatka Peninsula, where he had a ship, the Saint Gabriel, constructed. In 1728 he sailed north along the coast of the Kamchatka Peninsula. In August ...
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A Voyage Down the Amoor: With a Land Journey through Siberia, and Incidental Notices of Manchooria, Kamschatka, and Japan
Perry McDonough Collins was appointed the American Commercial Agent to the Amur River in March 1856. He arrived at his post in Irkutsk in January 1857 after a 35-day overland journey from Moscow. On June 4, 1857, he began a trip down the Amur River, which forms the border between the Russian Far East and northeastern China. On July 10, he arrived at the mouth of the river, becoming the first American to sail its course. In March 1858 Collins sent a report to the U.S. Department of State ...
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This [is being produced] so that all can know the route of the travels [of the Israelites] 40 years in the desert [through] the width and length of the Holy Land from the Nile to the city of Damascus, from the Arnon Valley to the Mediterranean Sea, and in it each individual tribe was given its own portion of the land
This 1695 copperplate engraving of the Holy Land is one of the earliest printed maps in Hebrew. The map was drawn by Abraham Ben-Jacob, a convert to Judaism, based on an earlier map by Christiaan van Adrichem (1533-85), and reproduced in the Amsterdam Haggadah. The map features Biblical illustrations, among them depictions of the story of Jonah and the whale, King Solomon’s fleet carrying the cedar trees for the construction of the temple in Jerusalem, and beehives and cows symbolizing the milk and honey of the Promised Land. The ...
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Map of the Lands Where the Sage-Emperor Yu Left His Traces
This rubbing is of a Chinese map engraved in stone in the seventh year of the Fouchang era of the Qi state (1136). The stele survives in the Forest of Steles in Xi’an. The map is oriented with north at the top and south at the bottom. Over 500 place names are plotted on the map, which represents a panorama of China in Song times. The engraving of the hydraulic systems is especially detailed, with nearly 80 rivers named. The courses of the Yellow and Yangtze rivers are very ...
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