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“By the Remotest Parts of the Inaccessible and Abandoned Wild Sides”: the Research Expedition of Admiral L.M. Serebryakov in the Northwest Caucasus in 1851
The article address the study of the remote terrain of Caucasus highlands and gorges led from the Black Sea littoral to the Caucasus interior. It focuses on the report writ-ten by admiral Serebryakow about his explore expedition performed in August – September 1851 to the Maruck mountain pass.
This article explores the vague mass of primary sources like the handwritten report of the admiral Serebryakow, his published papers about his activity as the Commander of the Black Sea Coastal Line and articles published in the Imperial official press.
Some methods developed by Contemporarry Empires Studies were applied to the current research. Having declared the idea of pacifying people inhabited the Black Sea coastal zone by constructing a chain of forts on the littoral, the Empire run into massive communicational problems for supply the garrisons with all they need. Then again claiming to subdue local inhabitants the need to explore the terrain to run military operations was of an utter need. The Imperial planners
gained information about abandoned territory via applying different methods and the article focuses on the most straightforward one. It included a high rank authority – the Commander of the Black Sea Line – to run the investigation om the frontier personally and with no disguise.
Although L.M. Serebryakow casted himself in the role of rather sabretooth Empire builder by his highhanded actions toward the unpacified Circassian tribes, his role of an explorer in Abkhazia was quite different. The report of the expedition performed by the Commander personally shows his enchantment with natural wild sides, nature and people of the region.
Thus, by performing the detailed story of his voyage through the Caucasus Mountains Range and adding scrutinised descriptions of everything he saw L.M. Serebryakow payed good impact into the foundation of the Caucasus studies.
He either added some analytics to the report about the political situation in the remote sides of Abkhazia-Circassian frontier, the characteristics of local strongmen and de-scriptions of the activities of Russian district officer in mediating clash between local rulers.
The research underlines the importance of the scrutinized studying of the Imperial ex-plorers’ input into the Caucasus studies foundation in the shade of new lands acquisition. The report distinctly shows that L.M. Serebryakow belonged to the certain type of military explorers who drove into the remote regions as investigators interested in gaining some new knowledge about nature and people, but came back to the office as empire-builders concerned how to subdue these people.
This article explores the vague mass of primary sources like the handwritten report of the admiral Serebryakow, his published papers about his activity as the Commander of the Black Sea Coastal Line and articles published in the Imperial official press.
Some methods developed by Contemporarry Empires Studies were applied to the current research. Having declared the idea of pacifying people inhabited the Black Sea coastal zone by constructing a chain of forts on the littoral, the Empire run into massive communicational problems for supply the garrisons with all they need. Then again claiming to subdue local inhabitants the need to explore the terrain to run military operations was of an utter need. The Imperial planners
gained information about abandoned territory via applying different methods and the article focuses on the most straightforward one. It included a high rank authority – the Commander of the Black Sea Line – to run the investigation om the frontier personally and with no disguise.
Although L.M. Serebryakow casted himself in the role of rather sabretooth Empire builder by his highhanded actions toward the unpacified Circassian tribes, his role of an explorer in Abkhazia was quite different. The report of the expedition performed by the Commander personally shows his enchantment with natural wild sides, nature and people of the region.
Thus, by performing the detailed story of his voyage through the Caucasus Mountains Range and adding scrutinised descriptions of everything he saw L.M. Serebryakow payed good impact into the foundation of the Caucasus studies.
He either added some analytics to the report about the political situation in the remote sides of Abkhazia-Circassian frontier, the characteristics of local strongmen and de-scriptions of the activities of Russian district officer in mediating clash between local rulers.
The research underlines the importance of the scrutinized studying of the Imperial ex-plorers’ input into the Caucasus studies foundation in the shade of new lands acquisition. The report distinctly shows that L.M. Serebryakow belonged to the certain type of military explorers who drove into the remote regions as investigators interested in gaining some new knowledge about nature and people, but came back to the office as empire-builders concerned how to subdue these people.
Tsebelda, the Maruch Gorge, military survey, travelogue, military Caucasus Studies, L.M. Serebryakov