2026/07/21 by Valerie A Kivelson, Valerie A. Kivelson
Arts and Humanities · #History of Science and Medicine #Diverse Historical and Scientific Studies #Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis
paper · doi:10.1093/ehr/ceag130
Reconnoitring Russia is the culminating work of Denis J.B. Shaw’s distinguished career in the field of Russian geography. The book was clearly a labour of love. Sadly, he passed away in March 2024 during the production process, before seeing it in print. The book pulls together elements that he developed in articles over the years. In a clear, confident voice, drawing on decades of research, it provides an overview of the development of geographic knowledge in Russia across two centuries. Shaw set himself the task of understanding geographic practices in the political, social and economic contexts of their time, rather than as a disembodied forward march of science. He notes that he derives this approach from ‘a modern view of the history of science’ (p. xii). He defines his subject expansively, including not only maps and measurements but also exploration, descriptive texts, statistical surveys, ethnographies, natural histories and land cadastres. A major contention of the book is that although these are usually considered separately, they ‘are all the interlinked product of this new, empirically based perspective on the world’ (p. 5).