Semyon Ulyanovich Remezov (russian: Семён Улья́нович Ре́мезов) (ca. 1642,

Tobolsk Tobolsk (russian: Тобо́льск) is a town in Tyumen Oblast, Russia, located at the confluence of the Tobol and Irtysh rivers. Founded in 1590, Tobolsk is the second-oldest Russian settlement east of the Ural Mountains in Asian Russia, an ...

- after 1720,

) was a Russian historian, architect and geographer of

Siberia Siberia ( ; rus, Сибирь, r=Sibir', p=sʲɪˈbʲirʲ, a=Ru-Сибирь.ogg) is an extensive region, geographical region, constituting all of North Asia, from the Ural Mountains in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east. It has been a ...

. He is responsible for compiling three collections of maps, charts and drawings of Siberia, which effectively became atlases of the area. Remezov's atlases were important to Peter the Great's imperial expansion into the eastern territory of Russia as they provided the Tsar with information on the Siberian landscape and the location of its indigenous communities. Such knowledge became necessary for future administrative and military projects in the area. Remezov's cartography of Siberia blends traditional Russian map-making practices with those of modern science and the Enlightenment that were beginning to influence Russian culture at his time. For instance, Remezov's maps followed the Russian pattern of using river systems as a basis for design instead of astronomical points. This resulted in many of his maps being oriented to the south instead of the north. Yet he “wrote excessively in praise of the compass” and used universally accepted scales and measures in his atlases. Remezov's cartography also shows the spread of Christianity across Siberia. In his maps, newly founded cities are represented by elaborate churches, and, as Remezov boasts in his writing: the Russians brought the “light of inexpressible joy” to Siberia. To Remezov, the Tsar's imperial conquest had a religious and missionary component as well, where land gained for Russia was likewise gained for God and his Church. Remezov's lively and extensive body of work make him the preeminent, if not exclusive, source for Russian cartography in the late 17th and early 18th Centuries.Valerie A. Kivelson, “Exalted and Glorified to the Ends of the Earth: Imperial Maps and Christian Spaces in Seventeenth and Early Eighteenth Century Russian Siberia”, in The Imperial Map: Cartography and the Mastery of Empire, ed. James R. Akerman (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), 63.

References

V.K. Ziborov (В.К.Зиборов),
Семен Ульянович Ремезов
(Semyon Ulyanovich Remezov), in ''Словарь книжников и книжности древней Руси''. (Dictionary of Book People and Book Culture of Old Russia), Vol. 3 (17th century), Part 3 (letters P through S). Saint Petersburg, Dmitry Bulanin Publishers, 1988. pp. 195–196.

Resources

(The 17th-century Siberia seen by a man of the times. S.U. Remezov and his "Siberian History") (many illustrations) *''The Atlas of Siberia'' by Semyon U. Remezov, facsimile ed., with an introduction by

Leo Bagrow Leo Bagrow (1881 Saint Petersburg – 9 August 1957 The Hague), born Lev Solomonovich Bagrow, was a historian of cartography and the founder of the journal ''Imago Mundi ''Imago Mundi'', or in full ''Imago Mundi: International Journal for the His ...

(S.-Gravenhage: Mouton, 1958) {{DEFAULTSORT:Remezov, Semyon Historians from the Russian Empire Male writers from the Russian Empire Cartographers from the Russian Empire Explorers from the Russian Empire Explorers of Siberia 1640s births 18th-century deaths Year of birth uncertain Year of death unknown 17th-century cartographers 18th-century cartographers 18th-century male writers 17th-century male writers