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Description

Magnificent View of Macao From the Original Russian Edition of Krusenstern's Important Atlas

Fine example of this skillfully-engraved view of Macao, based upon drawings taken by Wilhelm Gottlieb Tilesius in 1805-6, which appeared in the atlas to accompany Ivan Federovich von Krusenstern's account of the first Russian circumnavigation.

The view is drawn from the work of German naturalist and illustrator Wilhelm Gottlieb Tilesius (1769-1857), who accompanied Krusenstern on the expedition. Knowing that his expedition would result in new findings, Krusenstern included Tilesius to serve as an illustrator for biological research. Tilesius effectively became the official illustrator and later published many specialized scientific articles regarding the expedition.

The view shows Macao as if seen from a ship in the harbor. The city’s buildings stretch into the hills, with large factories and warehouses along the shore. Macao was an important entrepot for Europeans in China; foreign ships had to stop here first, before proceeding to Canton. A line of vessels—big and small, European and Chinese in origin—are arrayed in the water.

The Krusenstern expedition spent three months in Macao, after having narrowly avoided a pirate fleet as they entered the harbor. While there, the Russians sold furs gathered in Russian North America and took on tea to sell upon their return to Russia.

The first Russian circumnavigation of the world: Krusenstern’s voyage (1803-1806)

Russian officials had avidly followed the news of circumnavigations performed by other nations, including those of George Anson, James Cook, and Louis-Antoine de Bougainville. All of these had also enhanced the geographic and ethnographic knowledge of the Pacific, an ocean which Russia bordered and which it saw as a possible location for imperial expansion. Russia also sought a Northeast Passage for trade with China.

In the late 1740s, Russian fur trading posts were established on the western coast of America, following in the wake of Vitus Bering’s expeditions. By the 1790s, some of these had become permanent settlements. Eager to protect and expand this trade, a circumnavigation was planned in 1787, but it was called off due to wars with the Turks (1787) and the Swedes (1788).

Over a decade later, Russia had become a major naval power and their sights turned again to the east and the Pacific. The newly-created Russian-American Company and Emperor Alexander I approved the plan for a circumnavigation and appointed as its leader then Captain-Lieutenant Krusenstern, who had returned to Russia in 1799 after six years with the British Royal Navy. While with the British, Krusenstern had visited North America, South Africa, the East Indies, and China. This experience, and his three written proposals suggesting a Russian circumnavigation, qualified him for the appointment.

The voyage was to ferry a diplomatic contingent to Japan in search of favored trading status. In this vein, Count Nikolai Petrovich Rezanov was appointed co-commander along with Krusenstern; he was also to be Russia’s ambassador to Japan. The ships were additionally meant to bring supplies to and receive cargo from the settlers on the North American coast. The Nadezhda and Neva, renamed English ships purchased especially for the circumnavigation, departed Kronstadt on August 7, 1803 with Krusenstern in command of the former and Yuri Lisyansky in the latter.

The ships headed west to Copenhagen, Helsingor, and Falmouth, then entered the open Atlantic. They stopped at Tenerife and then Brazil before rounding Cape Horn. In the dangerous waters of the Cape, the two ships were parted. The Neva waited for Krusenstern at Easter Island, but the Nadezhda had already sailed to the Marquesas. Lisyansky joined Krusenstern there in May of 1804. They sailed together to Hawai’i and then on to the Russian settlements in what is today Alaska.

In Alaska, Lisyansky came to the aid of Russian settlers at Sitka, who were besieged by Tlingit Indians. Krusenstern picked up a cargo of goods and delivered them to Kamchatka before continuing to Japan. He anchored in Nagasaki harbor for six months while negotiators tried to gain approval for a Russian Embassy on Japanese soil. The negotiations failed and the Nadezhda returned north to Kamchatka, where Rezanov departed to serve as Imperial Inspector and plenipotentiary of the Russian-American Company in North America. Then, Krusenstern explored the coast of Sakhalin, trying to discern whether or not it was an island.

The ships reunited in Macao, where they spent three months selling furs and taking on tea. From China, the ships crossed the Indian Ocean, rounded the Cape of Good Hope, and entered the Atlantic. Lisyansky sailed straight home, but Krusenstern stopped at St. Helena briefly. He sailed back into Kronstadt on August 19, 1806.

Legacy of the voyage

Not only was this the first Russian circumnavigation, it was also one of the first scientific voyages commissioned by the empire. The accompanying naturalists gathered many new and rare specimens, while the navigators made important advancements in oceanography. For example, Lisyansky proved the existence of equatorial counterflow in the Atlantic Ocean. Ethnographic descriptions, particularly those from the Marquesas, were pivotal for the study of Pacific peoples. Two men who served on the expedition, Otto von Kotzebue and Fabien Gottlieb von Bellingshausen, would later lead their own voyages: Kotzebue a circumnavigation and Bellingshausen, with Lazarev, the first successful Antarctic exploration.

Krusenstern and his men were excellent sailors who surveyed many places with more accuracy than previous attempts; these included Easter Island, the Marquesas, Sakhalin, Hokkaido, the Tsushima Islands, the west coast of Japan, and other locations. They also discovered passages through the Kuril Islands. Krusenstern relied on maps from fifteen different authors in various languages while at sea. His own maps are renowned for their accuracy and his latitude calculations deviate from modern data by no more than two angular minutes and in longitude by no more than four minutes—a monumental feat.

Publication of the voyage

Upon his return to Europe, Krusenstern threw himself into revising his papers and preparing an account of the voyage. He was not alone, Lisyansky and other members of the voyage would also eventually publish their version of events. Krusenstern, however, was the most prolific.

In 1809 he published a three-volume account of the voyage in Russian, while a German version appeared in 1810 in three volumes with an accompanying atlas. Reise um die Welt, in den jahren 1803, 1804, 1805, und 1806 proved popular and was quickly reprinted in Leipzig and Berlin and translated into Dutch, Swedish, Italian, French, and Danish. In 1813, the English translation was published by John Murray, who specialized in the publication of travel and exploration books.

In England, the book struck a chord with a reading public that was then obsessed with the Northwest (or Northeast) Passage and the Arctic. Krusenstern was required reading for the Polar explorers that would venture north in the 1820s, including John Ross, William Edward Parry, and John Franklin. In fact, John Ross would edit a memorial to Krusenstern in 1856, translated from German and written by Krusenstern’s daughter.

The atlas of Reise um die Welt

This view appeared in the atlas volume that accompanied Krusenstern’s account. Dedicated to the Czar, the magnificent atlas is a great rarity. Krusenstern's account of the circumnavigation has been described as:

an example of the extraordinary labour and perseverance of the author, as well as his superior talents as a navigator and astronomer. None of his statements have ever been called into question; while the discoveries and nautical corrections are universally acknowledged to have been of infinite service to navigation . . . .  (Dawson, Memoirs of Hydrography, Eastbourne, 1885)

The atlas volume is widely-recognized as a tremendous cartographic and printing achievement and its contents are rare on the market. This is the first time we have offered this view.

Condition Description
Minor foxing.
Reference
Gloria Clifton, Directory of British Scientific Instruments Mapkers 1550-1851 (London: Zwemmer and NMM, 1995); Olga M. Federova, “Krusenstern’s Circumnavigation (1803-06),” The Journal of Pacific History 46, no. 3 (2011): 381-392; Roy Howgego, Encyclopedia of Exploration, 1800 to 1850 (Potts Point: Hordern House, 2004); A. J. Krusenstern, Beyträge zur Hydrographique der Grossen Ozeane als Erläuterungen zu einer Charte des ganzen Erdkreises nach Mercator’s Projection (Leipzig: Paul Gotthelf Kummer, 1819); Sir John Ross (ed.), Memoir of the Celebrated Admiral Adam John de Krusenstern the First Russian Circumnavigator Translated from the German by his Daughter Madame Charlotte Berharndi (London: Longmans, Green, Brown, and Longman, Paternoster Row, 1856); Frieder Sondermann, “Tilesius in Macao und Canton 1805/6,” Tohoku Gakuin Daigaku Kyoyogakubu Ronshu no. 165 (2013): 1-32. KAP
Ivan Fedorovich Krusenstern Biography

Ivan Fedorovich Krusenshtern, also known as Adam Johann von Krusenstern (1770-1846) was a Russian naval officer and hydrographer. He led Russia’s first circumnavigation and published numerous charts, particularly of the Pacific Ocean region.

Krusenstern was born in Hagudi, then part of the Russian Empire but now in Estonia. At the age of seventeen he joined the Russian Imperial Navy and first saw action in a conflict with Sweden. He was seconded to the British Royal Navy during the Napoleonic Wars. Between 1793 and 1799 he served in British vessels and traveled to North America, China, South Africa, and beyond. He then returned to Russian service and lobbied the Imperial Navy to support a voyage of exploration that would also serve as Russia’s first circumnavigation.

Under the patronage of Alexander, Count Nikolay Petrovich Rumyantsev and the Russian-American Company, Krusenstern led the first Russian circumnavigation of the world from 1803 to 1806. This mission was aimed at enhancing the fur trade with Russian America, notably Alaska, and sought to establish trade relations with China and Japan, explore trade possibilities in South America, and survey the coast of California for potential Russian settlement.

The expedition consisted of two ships: the Nadezhda (formerly the British Leander), commanded by Krusenstern, and the Neva (previously the British Thames), under Captain-Lieutenant Yuri F. Lisianski. Departing from Kronstadt in August 1803, the voyage spanned the globe, passing Cape Horn, exploring the northern Pacific, and returning via the Cape of Good Hope, with Krusenstern arriving back in Kronstadt in August 1806.  The expedition made important contributions to oceanography and hydrography in the Marquesas, Japan, Sakhalin, and the Northwest Coast of North America. Upon his return, Krusenstern was celebrated as a pioneer of Russian science and was awarded an honorary membership in the Russian Academy of Sciences. He would later also be named a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and the Royal Society of London.

Following the expedition, Krusenstern documented the journey in a comprehensive report titled "Reise um die Welt in den Jahren 1803, 1804, 1805 und 1806 auf Befehl Seiner Kaiserlichen Majestät Alexanders des Ersten auf den Schiffen Nadeschda und Newa," first published in Saint Petersburg in 1810. This report was later translated into multiple languages and published in various European cities. Krusenstern's contributions to geographic knowledge were further highlighted in his 1827 publication of an atlas of the Pacific.

His geographical findings and contributions to the field brought him recognition, including honorary membership in the Russian Academy of Sciences and foreign memberships in the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and the American Philosophical Society.

Krusenstern devoted the rest of his life to improving the Russian Imperial Navy and navigation. For the first years after his return he devoted himself to writing a voyage account and compiling an atlas of his voyage. Then, he acquired new instruments for the Imperial Navy on a trip to London in 1814 and 1815. He served as director of the Imperial Naval Academy from 1824 to 1842.

He continued to publish throughout his life. As part of his ongoing project to make Russia’s navy one of the best in Europe, he often looked to others for examples. He was an admirer of the Royal Navy and corresponded with many officers, but he also appreciated the Spanish Navy and its Hydrographic Service. He published several articles about the Malaspina expedition, for example, in 1815 and 1824-7.

Krusenstern also played a significant role in naval education as the director of the Russian naval school and was involved in the scientific committee of the marine department. His work in improving maritime navigation, specifically in developing a method to reduce the impact of a ship's iron on compass readings, was adopted in the navy. He was promoted to admiral in 1841 and received the Pour le Mérite in 1842.  

His most notable publication is his Reise um die Welt, in den jahren 1803, 1804, 1805, und 1806, published from 1810-12 in three volumes with an atlas. In 1824, he published his famous Atlas de l’Ocean Pacifique, the most complete hydrographic representation of the Pacific Ocean region to date.