If you hate to say it, then why say it? Do you just mean "taking on a serious challenge", or is that "seriously misinformed about the situation"? If it's the latter, then please could & would can you point me to your source for the boundaries (bearing in mind that I have neither the ability to read Russian, access to a university-level library, or [at present] the funds with which to purchase "university-level" textbooks...)?
The NextGen OTL Worlda Series
- Thread starter hadaril
- Start date
Don’t want to speak for @Library of Alexandria, but I think they just meant that the thing is very difficult to map and it’s causing them a lot of difficulties and that they are impressed with your effort/dedication to it.
yeah, no, it's the former, Russian maps before the 1850s or so were not very good. Ive been using a map from David Rumsey's archive for my version, and it's been a bit of a headache.
Trying to get accurate Governorate & Province boundaries from an old Russian map, as you are doing, would be a major challenge (that I wouldn't even attempt: I congratulate you on doing so...).
Trying to mark all of the cities & towns listed as falling within each Governorate & Province -- if I could even find lists for all of them -- and then trying o get accurate boundaries from their relative positions would be a major challenge... especially as this map's scale would place some of those marks in direct contact with each other.
All that I have done, however, is mark the capitals for the 12 out of 16 Governorates whose boundaries I couldn't fix from context (i.e. except for the Vyborg, Reval, Riga, & Kiev, Governorates, each of which consists of only a single province) and the 34 [or35: One's status is unclear from my research so far...] other cities or towns that are capitals of Provinces, and then draw verrry approximate boundaries -- in the shade for 'disputed or unknown' ones, dotted rather than solid as my way of showing that they're only sub-national rather than national -- just to show which Governorates contain which of the other cities & towns.
Anyway, here's the latest version of the map with all of those details for Russia -- and some other features, as well -- added. I need to do some more work on the description of all the changes that I've made since the last version posted, and don't have enough time to complete that tonight, so I'll just place the section about Russia under it for now and then [hopefully] add the rest of those notes at some point this weekend.
Russia: So, having added the rest of those high-level administrative boundaries for the PLC, it seemed illogical not to do so for Russia as well given that it's an even larger country... but I ran into a problem. When the original set of 'Governorates' were established by Peter the Great in 1708 he didn't define them in terms of boundaries on a map, just in terms of lists of cities with their associated territories: By 1749 the number of Governorates has doubled, and they now consist of anywhere from one to eleven provinces each (with a total of 50 or 51 provinces, so a mean number per governorate of just over 3...), but as far as I have been able to find out so far most of them are still defined in that same way... and I don't even have up-to-[that]-date lists of the cities included for each of those, let alone clear guidance on where their actual boundaries should be. The only governorates for which I've been able to draw boundary lines so far are therefore the four exceptions to that policy, all of which are single-province governorates who owe their existence to international treaties that defined the borders: Vyborg Governorate is the bits of south-eastern Finland that Russia had taken from the Swedes (in two stages, after two separate wars) by 1749; Reval Governorate [with Reval being the name then used for the city we now call Talinn] is 'Estland Province', i.e. northern Estonia; Riga Governorate is the province of 'Livland' [i.e. southern Estonia & all but the southern end of eastern Latvia], and 'Kiev Governorate' covers the same area as the 'Cossack Hetmanate' but with jurisdiction over the non-Cossacks resident (even though the Hetman is also its Governor ex officio). For the boundaries of the first three of these I am using the shade for 'Exists above/outside of normal admin. divisions', which was already being used here for the Hetmanate. Also, as the 'Sloboda Ukraine' autonomous area that's situated just east of the Cossack Hetmanate is outside of this system (answering directly to the national authorities in Moscow), I've recoloured its boundaries from the shade for 'Normal administrative divisions' to 'this one as well and have reinstated the boundaries for its next level of administraive units down -- which are the areas whose people are assigned to form different Cossack regiments -- too.
Estland and Livland have both been recoloured from 'Tsarist Russia' to 'Tsarist Russia with more autonomy' because that's actually the appropriate description of them (with government through their own pair of 'Landtags' [i.e. Provincial Diets], and some other privileges) all of the way from their acquisition by Russia through to WW1.
For the rest of the country, where my only guide to where the boundaries should be is the positions of various cities, I am NOT going to try marking the positions of ALL the cities listed as being in each Governorate or Province -- even if I could find appropriately-dated lists for each of them, which I doubt -- and then draw accurate boundaries as best I can based on those (and perhaps on later administrative boundaries that are mapped, where those seem relevant): I am just marking the positions for the capitals of the Governorates & Provinces, and placing dotted lines in the 'borders disputed or uncertain' colour where I think that viewers might need guidance about which Governor's jurisdiction a particular provincial capital falls under.
Governorate capitals are shown as crosses in the shade for 'Exists above or outside of normal admin. divisions', and provincial capitals [that are not also Governorate capitals] as crosses in the 'Normal administrative divisions' shade. There is also one site, in Siberia, marked as a provincial capital but with the centre of the cross "cut out": This is Yeniseysk, which was a provincial capital at one stage but about whose status at this particular date I am unsure (as its province was merged into that of Tobolsk in 1736 but split off again at some point before 1764). So far I have marked all 12 of these Governorate's capitals, and all of the other cities that are also the capitals of Provinces. These Governorates are St Petersburg [single province, directly under the Governor], Novgorod [5 provinces, so 4 other cities], Archangelgorod [4 provinces, so 3 other cities], Smolensk [single province, etc.], Moscow [11 provinces, so 10 other cities... although the scale means that in some cases their symbols overlap each other], Nizhny Novgorod [3 provinces, so 2 other cities], Kazan [6 provinces, so 5 other cities], Belgorod [3 provinces, so 2 other cities], Voronezh [5 provinces, so 4 other cities], Astrakhan [single province, directly under the Governor], Orenburg [4 provinces, so 3 other cities], and 'Siberia' which covers all Russian lands east of the Urals except for a relatively small area in the south-west that's run from Orenburg instead and perhaps also -- although I'm not sure about this, yet -- a relatively small area in the north-west that's run from Archangelgorod [capital = Tobolsk, possibly then called Tobolesk; either 2 or 3 provinces, depending on Yenisesk's "current" status, so with just 1 other city -- which is Irkutsk -- in addition to those two].
Also, in Archangelgorodsk Governorate I have used a single dot in the 'Normal administrative divisions' shade to indicate the town that's capital of an 'uyezd' or district that was transferred from Siberia Governorate.
Now having marked the position of Astrakhan with reasonable accuracy, because of its role as a Governorate's capital, I have also tinkered a bit with how I show the distribution of the Kalmyks in that area.
You will also see some crosses in the 'Russia with more autonomy' shade, which show the home bases for the various Cossack "Hosts" & suchlike bodies that existed in Russia along & east of the River Don at this date: From west to east there are five in a line formed by Cherkassk (near Azov & Rostov) for the Don Cossacks, Dubrovka (a little way north of Tsaritsyn [ = Stalingrad/Volgograd]) for the Volga [or 'Povolzhye'] Cossacks, Yaitsk (now called Uralsk, Oral, or Opan), on the Yaik [now = Ural] River in what is now western Kazakhstan) for the Yaik [or 'Ural'] Cossacks, Orenburg (where the "Orenburg Non-regular Corps" was formed in 1748, although not organised as an actual 'Host' until 1755), and the area now called 'Nagaybaksky District' where a group of christianised Tatars (later known as the Nağaybäk) who had been granted "Cossack" status officially were settled as border guards. In the case of Orenburg the cross showing it as a Cossack base is placed directly south-east of the one showing it to be a Governorate capital, and it is the latter that is -- as best I could manage -- in the right position for the overall settlement. To the south of this line there is one more cross, beyond the effective border of Russia, where the Terek Cossack Host lives in lands that otherwise belong to the peoples of the northern Caucasus. I have not shown the Cossacks who have been settled along the lower Volga, from Astrakhan northwards for part of the distance to Tsaritsyn, who are not declared a 'Host' until 1817; and neither have I shown those in Siberia, where they comprise a significant proportion of the European settlers, because the 'Siberian Host' is not formally organized as such until 1808.
EDIT (next day): Oops! I forgot to mention yesterday that it turns out Yekaterinburg is not the capital of Iset Province after all: That role was actually filled by the smaller town of Shadrinsk (situated some distance to its south-east, at a more convenient position on the [sparse] road network) instead, and this map had already been changed accordingly.
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Okay, here as promised are the rest of my notes about the above map.
____________________________________________________________________________________________
Americas _
The Frozen North: Just as I already removed the "hard" border around the Spanish claims north of the point where they diverge from the claims of the Hudson's Bay Company, so I have also now removed the "hard" border for the HBC's claims north of that point as well.
Mexico: The territory of the 'Tlaxcala' nation, who played a major role in helping the Spanish beat the Aztecs and were granted special privileges (that they then manged to keep all of the way through to Mexican independence fom Spain) in return, is now shown. It's the area a little way east of Mexico City that's depicted in the 'Spain with more autonomy' shade within a 'Feudal entity' border. Unlike any of the country's other native peoople the Tlaxcalans were allowed to adminsiter themselves autonomously, were exempt from forced labour, could own horses and guns, and were even eligible to become nobles: Furthermore, they were allowed to plant several [smaller] "settler colonies" of their own -- which are not shown on this map -- elsewhere in Mexico and their settlers in those retained the same rights.
Europe_
Lakes: in accordance with my stated policy of not showing single-pixel [& thus depicted only in black, with no blue] lakes, I have removed two such dots from this map, these being one that was in Livonia and one that was in 'Ducal' [i.e. 'East'] Prussia.
United Kingdom: I have now shown the four "palatine" counties within England in the 'Britain with more autonomy' shade, two of them with boundaries in the 'feudal entity' shade and the other two -- whose autonomy is less than that of the first pair -- with boundaries in the 'Normal administrative units' shade. The first two are Durham (on the north-east coast) and Ely (further south, inland in eastern England), both of which "belong" to their Bishops. The other two, both on the north-western coast, are Lancashire [the more northerly of them] and Cheshire: They "belong" to the Duke of Lancaster and the Earl of Chester respectively, although as it happens those titles are held by the King and by the Prince of Wales respectively.
Greece - Islands: Remember that one of the first changes I made to the earlier-created '1748' map was to recolour the two largest of the 'Ionian Islands' from Ottoman to Venetian, and that I commented then that the smaller islands associated with them were too small to show with colours? I've now placed two boxes in Venice's colour around them, one for the main group & the other around Kythera which is south-west of the Peloponnesus, to show their ownership.
Greece - Mainland (inc. Epirus): Additionally, I have now shown where eight small enclaves inside the Ottomans' territories in Europe were autonomous (de jure, or just de facto) to varying extents.
Three of these are shown actually in the 'Ottoman with more autonomy' shade, with borders in the 'Exists above or outside of normal admin. divisions' shade. These even had treaties recognising their status, and from west to east are: Himara (a Greek town on the coast of what is now Albania) & its hinterland villages (some also Greek, some Albanian); the 'Koinon of the Zagorisians' (Greek villages in the mountains to the former's south-east); and Mademochoria or Siderokausia (at the north-eastern corner of the Chalcidice peninsula). The first two of them were both too bravely defended & too poor to be considered worth the effort of complete subjugation, whilst the third was an area of rich mines with skilled miners & refiners who were granted self-government in exchange for one-twelfth of the silver extracted each year (and was actually home to one of the Empire's three main mints, alongside Istanbul and Cairo.)
At the southern tip of the Peloponnesus is the Mani peninsula, whose 'Maniot' Greek inhabitants also refused to submit to Ottoman control and whose rugged homeland wasn't worth invading: Its autonomy was not officially recognised, and nor was its land border, but although the Ottomans claimed it to be part of their empire the Maniots regarded themselves as free Greeks (and so I have given them a pixel in the 'Greece with more autonomy' shade, the latter aspect being because of course there was no Greek national government to claim jurisdiction over them there, behind a one-pixel border in the 'disputed or uncertain' shade, with Ottoman "claim" lines off of their coasts). A similar situation applies for the 'Suliote Greeks', mountain villagers (in fact partly of Albanian ancestry, and commonly bilingual, but all Greek Orthodox by faith) living west of the Zagorisians (except for the fact that not all of their borders are shown here due to limitations of the map's scale ), and also for the 'Mirdita' tribe of Albanians who live in part of the area between Lake Ochrid and Ragusa (although in their case the "home" pixel is, of course, in the 'Albania with more autonomy' shade instead...).
And then, finally, there are two separate single pixels in northern Greece that I have shown just in the shade for 'disputed or uncertain' borders, which were hotspots where the 'klephts' (Greek partisans/bandits) were often active and the Ottomans had handed jurisdiction over to hired Greek paramilitaries called 'Armatoloi' (some of whom were ex-klephts; some of whom changed sides to become klephts...): These areas are the Agrafa mountains (in the west) and the Olympus massif (in the east).
Limited autonomy was also possessed (for differing reasons) by the town of Dervenochoria in Boetia, the mountain-dwellers of Sfakia in south-west Crete, and the monastic community on Mount Athos, but this map's scale wouldn't let me show any of those -- even as a single pixel each -- without obscuring other & more important details.
Norway + Russia: There is a jointly-controlled area, shown here in vertical stripes of these two nations' colours, where their territories meet on the coast north of Finland. It was established by a treaty well before this map's date, and not partitioned until 1826.
Poland-Lithuania: Every time I've added some more detail here, I've said that I wasn't going to include all of the Voivodeship boundaries... Well, after deciding that there was one more detail "needed", I changed my mind about that... With the extra lines that I would be adding to show that extra detail, it seemed pointless to keep on omitting the rest. So, you can now see those extra boundaries depicted mostly in the 'Normal administrative divisions' shade but with two lines -- splitting the 'Poland' section of the PLC into three parts -- in the 'Exists above/outside of normal admin divisions shade instead: The longer of these lines is between the 'Province of Greater Poland' in the west & the 'Province of Lesser Poland' in the east, which are separate from each other for some judicial [ and parliamentary?] purposes. I have also used that shade for the boundary between 'Greater Poland' proper and 'Royal' [i.e. 'West'] Prussia, which has lost its former autonomy but is still -- although now divided into three Voivodeships -- recognised as a distinct unit for some purposes. Inside that region I have removed the 'Poland with more autonomy' colour that I formerly assigned to the 'Warmia' area, and replaced this with the standard 'Poland' shade instead, because apparently by this date the former Prince-Bishopric there definitely had been absorbed into the PLC's standard administrative system: I have, however, placed a single dot in the 'Poland with more autonomy' shade on the cast slightly to its west, to represent the city of Danzig which does still enjoy a degree of self-government (but without adding any borders around this, because [a] there's no room to show them, and that city's council is answerable to the local Voivode rather than -- as they'd prefer -- directly to the Crown. I took most of the boundaries from Library of Alexandria's patch for "The Commonwealth in 1764", as what research I could manage says that there were no significant changes during this period, but have redrawn the ones within Royal Prussia because I felt that LoA's version didn't show the relative sizes of the voivodates there as clearly as I thought they should be depicted.
Also, on the border between Poland and the Hohenzollerns' Duchy of Further Pomerania you might notice a single pixel in the 'Prussia with more autonomy' shade: This is the territory of Draheim, which was legally part of the PLC's royal demesne but had been pawned to Brandenburg-Prussia in 1657 and not yet reclaimed... In fact it was never reclaimed, although its actual ownership was not transferred either, until it was incorporated into Brandenburg-Prussia as part of the First Partition.
(The section about RUSSIA belongs here...)
Asia _
Transcaucasia: Western Georgia has now been split properly into its component statelets, all of which are -- like Abkhazia to their north-west -- Ottoman vassals.
Africa _
Sahara: I have added the Tuareg confederation of 'Kel Ahaggar', shown here with its boundary in the "tribal" shade & the territory within this in white, which is situated about halfway between the territory of Algiers and Bornu. Wikipedia says that it was founded "around 1750", so its existence at this time seems possible and even if it wasn't "officially" a confederation yet the tribes involved obviously might already have been considering the idea... Of course I'll be willing to remove it again if evidence that it really shouldn't be shown yet here comes my way.
____________________________________________________________________________________________
Americas _
The Frozen North: Just as I already removed the "hard" border around the Spanish claims north of the point where they diverge from the claims of the Hudson's Bay Company, so I have also now removed the "hard" border for the HBC's claims north of that point as well.
Mexico: The territory of the 'Tlaxcala' nation, who played a major role in helping the Spanish beat the Aztecs and were granted special privileges (that they then manged to keep all of the way through to Mexican independence fom Spain) in return, is now shown. It's the area a little way east of Mexico City that's depicted in the 'Spain with more autonomy' shade within a 'Feudal entity' border. Unlike any of the country's other native peoople the Tlaxcalans were allowed to adminsiter themselves autonomously, were exempt from forced labour, could own horses and guns, and were even eligible to become nobles: Furthermore, they were allowed to plant several [smaller] "settler colonies" of their own -- which are not shown on this map -- elsewhere in Mexico and their settlers in those retained the same rights.
Europe_
Lakes: in accordance with my stated policy of not showing single-pixel [& thus depicted only in black, with no blue] lakes, I have removed two such dots from this map, these being one that was in Livonia and one that was in 'Ducal' [i.e. 'East'] Prussia.
United Kingdom: I have now shown the four "palatine" counties within England in the 'Britain with more autonomy' shade, two of them with boundaries in the 'feudal entity' shade and the other two -- whose autonomy is less than that of the first pair -- with boundaries in the 'Normal administrative units' shade. The first two are Durham (on the north-east coast) and Ely (further south, inland in eastern England), both of which "belong" to their Bishops. The other two, both on the north-western coast, are Lancashire [the more northerly of them] and Cheshire: They "belong" to the Duke of Lancaster and the Earl of Chester respectively, although as it happens those titles are held by the King and by the Prince of Wales respectively.
Greece - Islands: Remember that one of the first changes I made to the earlier-created '1748' map was to recolour the two largest of the 'Ionian Islands' from Ottoman to Venetian, and that I commented then that the smaller islands associated with them were too small to show with colours? I've now placed two boxes in Venice's colour around them, one for the main group & the other around Kythera which is south-west of the Peloponnesus, to show their ownership.
Greece - Mainland (inc. Epirus): Additionally, I have now shown where eight small enclaves inside the Ottomans' territories in Europe were autonomous (de jure, or just de facto) to varying extents.
Three of these are shown actually in the 'Ottoman with more autonomy' shade, with borders in the 'Exists above or outside of normal admin. divisions' shade. These even had treaties recognising their status, and from west to east are: Himara (a Greek town on the coast of what is now Albania) & its hinterland villages (some also Greek, some Albanian); the 'Koinon of the Zagorisians' (Greek villages in the mountains to the former's south-east); and Mademochoria or Siderokausia (at the north-eastern corner of the Chalcidice peninsula). The first two of them were both too bravely defended & too poor to be considered worth the effort of complete subjugation, whilst the third was an area of rich mines with skilled miners & refiners who were granted self-government in exchange for one-twelfth of the silver extracted each year (and was actually home to one of the Empire's three main mints, alongside Istanbul and Cairo.)
At the southern tip of the Peloponnesus is the Mani peninsula, whose 'Maniot' Greek inhabitants also refused to submit to Ottoman control and whose rugged homeland wasn't worth invading: Its autonomy was not officially recognised, and nor was its land border, but although the Ottomans claimed it to be part of their empire the Maniots regarded themselves as free Greeks (and so I have given them a pixel in the 'Greece with more autonomy' shade, the latter aspect being because of course there was no Greek national government to claim jurisdiction over them there, behind a one-pixel border in the 'disputed or uncertain' shade, with Ottoman "claim" lines off of their coasts). A similar situation applies for the 'Suliote Greeks', mountain villagers (in fact partly of Albanian ancestry, and commonly bilingual, but all Greek Orthodox by faith) living west of the Zagorisians (except for the fact that not all of their borders are shown here due to limitations of the map's scale ), and also for the 'Mirdita' tribe of Albanians who live in part of the area between Lake Ochrid and Ragusa (although in their case the "home" pixel is, of course, in the 'Albania with more autonomy' shade instead...).
And then, finally, there are two separate single pixels in northern Greece that I have shown just in the shade for 'disputed or uncertain' borders, which were hotspots where the 'klephts' (Greek partisans/bandits) were often active and the Ottomans had handed jurisdiction over to hired Greek paramilitaries called 'Armatoloi' (some of whom were ex-klephts; some of whom changed sides to become klephts...): These areas are the Agrafa mountains (in the west) and the Olympus massif (in the east).
Limited autonomy was also possessed (for differing reasons) by the town of Dervenochoria in Boetia, the mountain-dwellers of Sfakia in south-west Crete, and the monastic community on Mount Athos, but this map's scale wouldn't let me show any of those -- even as a single pixel each -- without obscuring other & more important details.
Norway + Russia: There is a jointly-controlled area, shown here in vertical stripes of these two nations' colours, where their territories meet on the coast north of Finland. It was established by a treaty well before this map's date, and not partitioned until 1826.
Poland-Lithuania: Every time I've added some more detail here, I've said that I wasn't going to include all of the Voivodeship boundaries... Well, after deciding that there was one more detail "needed", I changed my mind about that... With the extra lines that I would be adding to show that extra detail, it seemed pointless to keep on omitting the rest. So, you can now see those extra boundaries depicted mostly in the 'Normal administrative divisions' shade but with two lines -- splitting the 'Poland' section of the PLC into three parts -- in the 'Exists above/outside of normal admin divisions shade instead: The longer of these lines is between the 'Province of Greater Poland' in the west & the 'Province of Lesser Poland' in the east, which are separate from each other for some judicial [ and parliamentary?] purposes. I have also used that shade for the boundary between 'Greater Poland' proper and 'Royal' [i.e. 'West'] Prussia, which has lost its former autonomy but is still -- although now divided into three Voivodeships -- recognised as a distinct unit for some purposes. Inside that region I have removed the 'Poland with more autonomy' colour that I formerly assigned to the 'Warmia' area, and replaced this with the standard 'Poland' shade instead, because apparently by this date the former Prince-Bishopric there definitely had been absorbed into the PLC's standard administrative system: I have, however, placed a single dot in the 'Poland with more autonomy' shade on the cast slightly to its west, to represent the city of Danzig which does still enjoy a degree of self-government (but without adding any borders around this, because [a] there's no room to show them, and that city's council is answerable to the local Voivode rather than -- as they'd prefer -- directly to the Crown. I took most of the boundaries from Library of Alexandria's patch for "The Commonwealth in 1764", as what research I could manage says that there were no significant changes during this period, but have redrawn the ones within Royal Prussia because I felt that LoA's version didn't show the relative sizes of the voivodates there as clearly as I thought they should be depicted.
Also, on the border between Poland and the Hohenzollerns' Duchy of Further Pomerania you might notice a single pixel in the 'Prussia with more autonomy' shade: This is the territory of Draheim, which was legally part of the PLC's royal demesne but had been pawned to Brandenburg-Prussia in 1657 and not yet reclaimed... In fact it was never reclaimed, although its actual ownership was not transferred either, until it was incorporated into Brandenburg-Prussia as part of the First Partition.
(The section about RUSSIA belongs here...)
Asia _
Transcaucasia: Western Georgia has now been split properly into its component statelets, all of which are -- like Abkhazia to their north-west -- Ottoman vassals.
Africa _
Sahara: I have added the Tuareg confederation of 'Kel Ahaggar', shown here with its boundary in the "tribal" shade & the territory within this in white, which is situated about halfway between the territory of Algiers and Bornu. Wikipedia says that it was founded "around 1750", so its existence at this time seems possible and even if it wasn't "officially" a confederation yet the tribes involved obviously might already have been considering the idea... Of course I'll be willing to remove it again if evidence that it really shouldn't be shown yet here comes my way.
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Pretty sure that's the Petsamo area, which was given to Finland after WWI.
It's the Petsamo area, Russian from 1826 until -- as you say -- it was given to Finland, plus a smaller area to its west that went to Norway in 1826 and has remained Norwegian territory ever since.
It's on the wiki, but we really do need a new one. I'm sure we could make one in gis with enough work, but I'm not sure anyone in this project is super familiar with the program.
It was posted on the map thread many moons ago, though I did change the colour palette to something that didn't burn my eyes out. We do need a new one, I should get to work on that sometime after I finish the Europe maps.
