Bone Voyage

Russia joined the coloniser's club in 1741 when its Great Northern Expedition discovered Alaska. It remains the most grisly exploration in maritime history.

- Rajat Ghai

IN POPULAR imagination, colonialism is usually visualised and associated with the five western European seafaring nations—Britain, the Netherlands, France, Spain and Portugal. The others, Sweden, Norway and Denmark are footnotes in colonial history. Italy, Germany and the US too were colonisers, but they entered the game very late.

One country which is often overlooked in this regard is Russia, the world’s largest country by land area, stretching from the Baltic Sea to the Pacific Ocean. While reading Russian children’s books as a child, I used to often wonder: why is Russia so big? Then too, if it is one country, why are there so many ethnicities—from the Karelians near the Finnish border to the Chukchis near Alaska.

Island of the Blue Foxes answers some of these questions. Written by Stephen R Bown, the book is a riveting account of two expeditions undertaken by Vitus Jonassen Bering, a Dane employed by the Russian Empire, which was then ruled by Tsar Peter.

Peter’s reign was revolutionary for he changed a “barbaric backwater” Russia to a society on par with its western neighbours. During his dying days, Peter had become obsessed with another project—he wanted Russia to take a dive into colonial exploration. He also had a region in mind where this could be done—the Russian Far East.