Challenges in exploring the Arctic; historical maritime exploration and current realities

Hybrid seminar – Embassy of Estonia, Stockholm, May 5

HAIN REBAS

On the Russian early 19th century exploratory background

1. Introduction

In the year 1800, Europe had been drawn into the Napoleonic wars, and Russia’s Czar Paul I still had some months to live before his assassination. The Czar’s influential Grand Marshal of the Court was count Fyodor Rostopchin, an Army general, later distinguished as Moscow’s unhappy defender against Napoleon.

At a meeting of the Russian Foreign Policy Committee in 1800, count Rostopchin stood up and proclaimed prophetically that Imperial Russia will become the Hercules of international politics. – Hercules! – Therefore, Russian sea power should be established in new oceans far beyond the neighboring Baltic Sea.

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