Arkhangelsk, Russia

Map

The overlays that highlight 17th century London features are approximate and derived from Wenceslaus Hollar’s maps:

Open location in Google Maps: 64.569998, 40.529997

4 Annotations

First Reading

cumgranosalis  •  Link

A map was made in 1632 by Thomas James of Bristol, when searching for another route to the spices, there by not kowtowing to The Spanish and Portuguese, and other strange characters trading. Another Map was drawn in 1597 by the Dutch.
The seas were cod infested, Herrings and the walrus had first dibs. Flax, furs and timber were good for trading. Russia suffered from blackmailing from the Baltic lands so needed this port for commerce and freedom of political pressure.
It sits on the Artic Circle in a bay known as Mare Album at the mouth of Northern Drina river.

Terry Foreman  •  Link

Arkhangelsk (Russian: Архангельск), formerly known in English as Archangel, is a city in Russia. It lies on both banks of the Northern Dvina River near its exit into the White Sea in the north of European Russia. The city spreads along the banks of the river and numerous islands of its delta. Arkhangelsk was the chief seaport of medieval Russia, until 1703.

Three English ships set out to find the Northeast passage to China in 1553; two disappeared, and one ended up in the White Sea, eventually coming across the area of Arkhangelsk. Ivan the Terrible found out about this, and brokered a trade agreement with the ship's captain. Trade privileges were officially granted to English merchants in 1555, leading to the founding of the Company of Merchant Adventurers, which began sending ships annually into the estuary of the Northern Dvina. Dutch merchants also started bringing their ships into the White Sea from the 1560s. Scottish and English merchants also traded in the 16th century; however, by the 17th century it was mainly the Dutch that sailed to the White Sea area.

In 1584, Ivan ordered the founding of New Kholmogory (which would later be renamed after the nearby Archangel Michael Monastery). At the time access to the Baltic Sea was still mostly controlled by Sweden, so while Arkhangelsk was icebound in winter, it remained Moscow's almost sole link to the sea-trade. Local inhabitants, called Pomors, were the first to explore trade routes to Northern Siberia as far as the trans-Urals city of Mangazeya and beyond.

In 1693, Peter the Great ordered the creation of a state shipyard in Arkhangelsk. A year later the ships Svyatoye Prorochestvo (Holy Prophecy), Apostol Pavel (Apostle Paul), and the yacht Svyatoy Pyotr (Saint Peter) were sailing in the White Sea. However, he also realized that Arkhangelsk would always be limited as a port due to the five months of ice cover, and after a successful campaign against Swedish armies in the Baltic area, he founded St. Petersburg in 1704. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arkh…

Second Reading

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References

Chart showing the number of references in each month of the diary’s entries.

1663