Abstract
Reviewed by: David Moon, University of York, UK
In 1785, Empress Catherine the Great of Russia commissioned a British sea captain, Joseph Billings, to lead an expedition to explore her empire in the North Pacific. Russia’s possessions in the region extended from Kamchatka and Chukhotka at the eastern end of Siberia, via the Commander and Aleutian islands, to Alaska. The expedition’s purposes were threefold: to investigate the region’s natural resources; to survey the state of the fur trade; and to assert Russia’s claim to these lands, which was threatened by the appearance of other European powers in the North Pacific. Indeed, Billings had previously sailed with Captain Cook on a British expedition to these latitudes. Catherine’s explorers were guided by accounts produced by the Kamchatka expeditions earlier in the eighteenth century of an abundance of sea mammals, which sustained the indigenous population and provided fur for Russian hunters who engaged in lucrative trade with China. What Billings and his expedition were shocked to find after their long overland journey from St Petersburg was an ‘environmental catastrophe’: seals and sea lions were scarce; the sea otters were nearly gone; and the strange Steller’s sea cow (whose meat had tasted delicious, like ‘may butter’ or ‘almond oil’ [99]) was now extinct.
The extinction of the sea cow serves as an emblem for Ryan Jones’ fascinating exploration into Russia’s ‘empire of extinction’ in the North Pacific. This was not, of course, what the Russians had intended. Informed by the Kamchatka expeditions, plans had been laid for a profitable, commercial region, and even the development of European-style agriculture. The latter plans came to nothing as wheat could not grow in the harsh climate and it was reported that cows and pigs were eaten by ‘giant bears’. It is the fate of the sea mammals, however, that lies at the heart of Jones’ study. He explains their declining numbers as a result of over-hunting on the basis of his analysis of contemporary sources and also more recent scientific work on the ecology of animal populations and climatic change.
Empire of Extinction is not, however, simply another declensionist narrative of a European colonial power degrading the environment of its far-flung possessions, drastically reducing biodiversity and impoverishing indigenous peoples. The final chapter traces the development of attempts to conserve surviving stocks of sea mammals by regulating hunting by the Russian-American Company. The move towards conservation was influenced by romantic-sentimental attitudes to animals, the advocacy of some Russian Orthodox clergymen, and the hunting practices of the indigenous Aleuts. The results were mixed, and much damage had already been done, but some naturalists, such as the Baltic German Karl Ernst von Baer, characterized the Russian Empire as a ‘good steward’ of the environment of its North Pacific realms, in contrast to other European states in their colonies.
The book addresses a number of important themes, including the relationships between: the Russian Empire and indigenous peoples; the Russian and German naturalists, for example Stepan Petrovich Krasheninnikov and Georg Wilhelm Steller, whom the empire hired to study its natural resources; natural history and economic and commercial designs; and above all, between natural history, epitomized by the work of Peter Simon Pallas, and empire. A major theme, and important achievement, of the book is to locate the Russian experience of empire in the North Pacific in the wider context of European imperialism and European natural history around the globe. Jones adds to Richard Groves’ interpretation by investigating the apparent Russian discovery that it was possible not only to degrade a colonial environment, but to drive a large mammal, Steller’s sea cow, to extinction. This was something leading naturalists of the day, such as Pallas and Thomas Pennant thought not to be possible.
The book is based on impressive research in archives in several countries (a formal list with a key to the abbreviations in the notes would have been welcome), and a rich array of the published work of eighteenth-century naturalists. Jones skilfully interweaves his analysis of such sources with the results of present-day scientific research. This raises the interesting issue of the relationship between eighteenth-century and recent ‘science’: is Jones implying that the latter provides ‘answers’ to past questions, or that they are part of an ongoing dialogue? The author refers to his own visits to the region and presents a photograph of a ‘raft of sea otters’ (67), but could have said more about how his own experiences in the North Pacific contributed to his understanding of its environmental history.
This is an important contribution to the growing literature on the environmental history of the Russian Empire/USSR/post-Soviet Russia, which presents nuanced interpretations of the Russian encounter with the ‘natural world’ in their lands in a broader, comparative perspective.