CHAPTER 1Experiencing Climate, Observing People

Climate and Constitutions

In 1654, Cromwell's Commonwealth of England dispatched its first envoy to Russia, William Prideaux. Prideaux arrived in Arkhangel’sk to begin his overland trip to Moscow at an inauspicious time, as Russia was in the midst of an outbreak of the “contagious sicknesse” or, as we know it, the bubonic plague.³ In Prideaux's first report on the current conditions, the situation was bleak: “The plague entered the city of Moscow as soon as the emperour was gone forth of it to the warrs, of which there hath dyed and been buryed by register taken upward of 200000, besides some thousands of bodies, that have had no other sepulchers than the bowels of dogs and hogs, that have eaten them, as well in the houses, as in the streets.” The report went on: “This sickness hath passed (and is yet) in most places of this tract of the country for about 2000 miles in diameter, and now ‘tis reported, that the kingdoms of Cazan and Astracan are also infected, and the mortality to be very great. Of those that dye the major part are men and children.” Prideaux wrote to the English foreign secretary in hopes of receiving permission to remain in Vologda rather than proceed south to Moscow, as it “hath had less affliction by the sickness than any other in a great circuit thereabouts, here not having dyed past a thousand persons, and the most part of them poor people.”⁴ Without question, disease played an essential part in the relations among countries in the early-modern world.⁵

An educated, informed traveler in the seventeenth century, Prideaux's dispatches to London conveyed not only the information necessary for evaluating the success of his mission but also details for future English travelers to Russia how to navigate its distinct culture and unfamiliar climate. For centuries, educated Europeans knew that their health and well-being depended on residing in their native environment with their regular diet and activities. Deviating from the habits to which they were most accustomed could lead to their body becoming uneasy, if not diseased. The idea that the body was composed of four humors was unquestioned; these ideas had existed in Europe for more than a thousand years. For Prideaux to travel to a foreign climate and eat unfamiliar foods certainly would produce illness. To complete this trip in the middle of a pandemic only elevated the risks. In light of that knowledge, Prideaux's caution seems reasonable.

Reading Prideaux's correspondence about Russia with an eye toward its humoral language yields plentiful results. In his first letter when he wrote about the “contagious sicknesse,” he also provided complete descriptions of the constitution (or humoral features) of the local population: “That, which hitherto I have observed (and learned of others) of this people, is, that the men are rather of a tall then middle stature; they are withal gross, and stronge; and those strangers, that deale with them, find them subtle and crafty, but are very pusillanimous…. ‘Tis said, the men are much addicted and doe exercise the abominable sinne of sodomy with boyes, and use beasts; and in those vices not inferior to Turkes and Italians.” His letter continued: “For the matter of victuals, both flesh and fish are here in great abundance, and good cheape. Their drinke is beer, mead (made of honey) that's good and pleasant. Both men and women of quality, that have meanes to spend, goe rich in their appariall, and weare many jewels, and in particular pearle in abundance; especially of those that are fisht in the Scottish sea, and are called by the name of Scottish pearle.”⁶

Physical stature and descriptions of bodies, concern about sexual activity, and the quality of food served were all basic issues that future travelers would need to know. The mention that their accoutrements could be connected, albeit loosely, to Scotland suggested that a Scot might be a better choice for the position than an Englishman like Prideaux. Neither the choice of topics nor the implication of other, better adapted, servitors had to be explained. Any literate person in the seventeenth century understood this descriptive language, both for its humoral and nonnatural implications.

Humoral theory was an interlocking, complex system of description, capable of explaining health and climate. The core of the system was a person's constitution (also characteristic or complexion), which was the balance of humors within an individual. Medical practitioners and the general public in the early-modern era understood that a sanguine person was strongly associated with blood (wet and hot), a phlegmatic person with phlegm (cold and wet), a choleric person with yellow bile (hot and dry), and a melancholic person with black bile (cold and dry). If the cold climate was the primary feature of the Russian Empire, then its residents were likely to be either phlegmatic or melancholic peoples. The historian Rebecca Earle has summarized phlegmatics as “prone to apathy” and melancholics as “prone to sadness.”⁷ An empire composed of sad, apathetic subjects may have been easy to rule, but it was unlikely to prosper as it lacked the industry, energy, and overall initiative of men and women from warmer climates.

Foreigners like Prideaux arrived in Russia with a belief that Russians had a fundamental weakness because their climate was colder than “temperate” Europe. Although geography and climate are not necessarily features of the body's humors (the naturals in Galenic terminology), both were key features of the nonnaturals, conditions outside the body that affected one's health. The nonnaturals were air and climate; food and drink; activity and rest; retentions and evacuations; and sex.⁸ For a complete portrait of an individual, a bodily description would not be sufficient; one also needed to know what were the distinctive features of the climate, what type of foods were concerned, what type of work or leisure occupied the person, and what were their sexual preferences or how easily or not could they procreate.⁹ Lifestyle descriptions could become quite lengthy, involving dress, skills, occupations, and even attitudes. Travel writers in the early-modern world provided endless details about the entire life cycle of peoples around the world, typically beginning with physical descriptions of an average man and woman, but then tracking the group from birth rituals to funeral practices. In the nineteenth century (and modern era), this type of narrative might be framed as an ethnography, especially if produced by a naturalist or a physician, but in the seventeenth century, the information provided was a complete humoral portrait, functioning as medical description.

Humoral theory was the medical system of the Greco-Roman-Islamic world for centuries, but it was also a system of rhetoric. Rhetoric, in this context, is “an organized, consistent coherent way of talking about practical discourse in any of its forms or modes,” as the scholar Douglas Ehninger has defined.¹⁰ Relying on a system of rhetoric enabled physicians, naturalists, and other educated elites to better convey significant information.¹¹ This information contributed to the so-called republic of letters—that is, the exchange of ideas among the literate elites of Europe in the early-modern era.¹² When Prideaux described Russia's conditions in 1654, he was confident that the foreign secretary in London would understand the connections to humoral idioms and its significance. Working within a defined system of rhetoric, however, also limited the potential exchanges into set patterns: Certain pieces of information had to be included. For seventeenth-century Russia, the diverse peoples of the empire would be described in similar terms, as a result of European expectations of this common climate, diet, and lifestyle.

Prideaux wrote as many observers would, describing the lives of Russians as if they were a uniform group, but most educated people of his time recognized individuals could have different constitutions, even in a similar environment. The fundamental importance of not only understanding the people and their bodies but also the climate, diet, and activities is the reason why these humoral descriptions saturate early-modern texts. If one had a diet primarily composed of phlegmatic foods from a cold and wet environment, like fish, then that person would be phlegmatic, in the same way that someone whose diet primarily consisted of red meat (blood) would more likely be sanguine. Someone born in a mountainous region, with its cold and dry air, would be understood to be melancholic. Mountain and melancholy were synonymous.

Differences could be revealed through illnesses. In the classical understanding of the humors, any illness was a sign that the humors had become unbalanced. A change in diet or climate produced disease, as any traveler could attest. All foods were converted to humors during digestion; having too much red meat, for example, produced too much blood, which might be made apparent if the patient had a fever or, as they understood it, an excess of heat. Changing climates was always linked to altering digestion, either too fast in heat or too slow in cold. In the former, the body might fail to absorb sufficient quantities of one humor; in the latter, “putrefaction,” or the decay of material or humors inside the body, was possible. Both produced illnesses. Following this line of argument, removing excess humors to allow one's body to become naturally balanced was essential. Emetics or purgatives could be used to free the digestive system of potential putrefaction; bloodletting quickly solved excess heat in the body. By the early-modern era, anything consumable, whether chemical or herbal, might resolve an illness by offsetting the imbalance. If one had a fever, then white foods, which became phlegm, could be supplemented by rest to avoid heat or by cold baths to rebalance the body.

Any attempt to describe the humoral system at work in the seventeenth century is reductionist. It was a highly complex system with multiple factors influencing descriptions and treatments. Every physician believed their home environment was temperate and traveling anywhere beyond one's local environment risked ill health. A Scottish physician in Edinburgh would have a different conception of “temperate” than one from London, for example, not to mention those at work in southern France, northern Africa, or in the European colonies across the Atlantic. Prideaux was a diplomat and not a physician, but even he reflected the idea that Russia would be safer for a “northern” Scot than for a “southern” Englishman. Writing in the 1650s, Prideaux wrote with the confidence that Russia was a cold space.

Prideaux's conviction about Russia's climate was shared by naturalists. Robert Boyle, a fellow of the Royal Society of London, relied on information from Moscow for his analysis of cold air, which ultimately influenced what became known as Boyle's law on air pressure.¹³ In 1665, he published New Experiments and Observations Touching Cold, which included examples drawn from texts written about Russia to document its “extreme degrees of Cold,” which Boyle otherwise could not verify “in this temperate Climate of ours.” To inform his view of Russia, Boyle relied on Russian travel records published in England, including those by Fletcher, in the sixteenth century. Many of Boyle's borrowed traveler anecdotes were incidents in which water froze extremely quickly, but he was also fascinated by incidents in which “the extreme Cold of Winter” made “gaping chinks” in the ground sufficient “that a childs head might well have been put into the cleft.” Although it was not the central focus of Boyle's interest in the effects of cold on air pressure, he noted that these Russian visitors agreed that the climate was damaging to its people. Boyle quoted one merchant, a Captain James, who wrote that the cold “would be so extreme, that it was not endurable; no clothes were proof against it, no motion could resist it. It would moreover so freez the hair of our Eye-lids, that we could not see; and I verily believe, that it would have stifled a man in very few hours.”¹⁴

Boyle's study only confirmed an English impression of Russia's innate coldness. He was not alone, as English physicians began to pursue cures for diseases thought to emerge from the cold in Russia. One of the earliest examples of this was the expectation that Russia's environment must have provided a solution for treating rickets, which was known to be caused by the cold and increasingly widespread by the end of the seventeenth century.

Nutritional diseases were fundamental problems in the early-modern world. Scurvy, beriberi, and rickets, among others, were seasonal diseases with devastating consequences, especially for children. Russians had some benefits in this arena. Rye bread, the traditional staple of the Russian diet, was rich in thiamin (vitamin B1), providing some protection against beriberi, which had reached epidemic status in Asia.¹⁵ However, both scurvy (vitamin C deficiency) and rickets (vitamin D deficiency) were common. In an era before the discovery of vitamins, these diseases could be diagnosed only from their resulting symptoms rather than from an understanding of the underlying cause. Many cures that were proposed for either disease failed to address the vitamin deficiency, but if the patient's health improved, potentially from general improvements in diet, observers would reasonably assume that the treatment had addressed the disease.¹⁶

Rickets was first analyzed by English physician Dr. Francis Glisson, in his text De rachitide (1650), published the following year in London as A Treatise of Rickets. According to Glisson, rickets was a cold illness, the result of a “weak” (or cold-bodied) mother nursing her child to ill health.¹⁷ The first Russian study of the disease would not be published until 1830, which identified it as the “English disease” for its notorious incidence rate in Britain.¹⁸ It is possible that Russia's medical establishment considered rickets to be a foreign illness or a minor issue leading to this much later study; however, English physicians confronting a growing epidemic in the seventeenth century expected the coldest country in Europe to possess a local solution to this disease.

In 1694, another English physician, a Dr. Skinner, published the results of his investigation, that Russia did in fact naturally produce a treatment for rickets. It was a rare product from the Baltic Region: mannagrass seed. Mannagrass produces a small, edible seed; it grows naturally in northeastern Europe, from the Oder River at least as far east as Belorussia. The seed was harvested between May and July. Then the seeds were dried in the sun and finally were ground into a paste that could be used to produce a slightly sweet bread.¹⁹ According to Skinner, it was “a small white Seed that comes from Russia, by some called Seed Manna, I draw a Tincture, a Spirit and an Extract out of it, and give twenty Drops at a time in all the Childrens Meat and Drink.” Skinner suggested it was preferable to the other options currently available, as the children “take it with Pleasure, because it's not ungrateful to the Pallat; Morning, Noon and Night, is often enough.” According to Skinner, this mannaseed increased the body's ability to intake essential nutrients: “It opens Obstructions of the Liver and Spleen, strengthens the Brain and Spinal Marrow, and causeth a free Distribution of the Nourishments into all the Nervous Parts of the Body, whereby Nature becomes strong and vigorous, and the Spirits cheerful and lively.”²⁰ Skinner's analysis is humoral; this tincture was capable of defeating the putrefaction of the liver and spleen that he believed caused rickets.

In the modern day, no one links nutritional diseases to putrefaction; however, in the early-modern world, most, if not all, cold diseases were the result of putrefaction. The idea that a cold environment like Russia both produced a disease and its treatment had long been an accepted part of humoral theory. It was logical for physicians to assume that if rickets was endemic to Russia, so too would a cure have been. Skinner's theory was sufficiently convincing that another English physician, Samuel Dale, included mannagrass seed in his pharmacopoeia published in 1705, describing Gramen Mannae esculentum as the “commonly called Manna-Grass or Russia Seed,” and noting its “admirable virtues in the treatment of rickets.”²¹ Both the name “Russia Seed” and the idea that mannagrass seed could cure rickets began with Skinner a decade earlier, demonstrating that his idea circulated throughout the medical community. Decades later, British naturalists continued to recommend mannagrass seed as “a pleasant Food, proper for the Nourishment of Children and weak Persons,” in hopes of encouraging domestic cultivation to limit Britain's dependence on Russia's exports.²²

The optimism that Russia's environment produced a cure for rickets reflected a seventeenth-century idea: Russia's cold climate produced people with cold characteristics who suffered from (and ideally survived) cold diseases. This depiction was shared among diplomats and merchants working in Russia as well as by naturalists and physicians working outside the empire; the common idea uniting their discussion was humoral theory. This perception of Russia and its peoples had flaws, but Russia as a cold empire was not simply a negative assessment. As the hope for a cure for rickets revealed, part of this idea was that Russia should be generating cures for cold diseases that could benefit other Europeans. Russia might have been cold, but it could also be productive.

Humoring Russia

When Prideaux observed the plague's damage to Russia in the early 1650s, the notion that Russia suffered from its cold climate was hardly new. Nor did Prideaux's time in the country convince him that Russia had a healthy environment. For others like Boyle or Skinner, Russia's coldness was an asset for the advancement of science, because it offered a climate that could not be matched elsewhere. Following Boyle's publication, new publications about life in Russia notably increased. In English, the first of these texts would arrive from Boyle's correspondent in Russia, the tsar's personal physician, Samuel Collins. The depiction of Russia, both the land and its people, was far more complicated for those who spent more time in the country. Collins was among the first to observe that Russia was not simply a cold climate but rather was an expansive empire with a complex social system. Its people were not only phlegmatic and melancholic but also exhibited an entire range of characteristics.

After returning to England, Collins published his well-known description of life in the country, The Present State of Russia (1667). Any physician describing a foreign land had to address the nonnaturals (i.e., air and climate; food and drink; activity and rest; retentions and evacuations; and sex). Accordingly, Collins's text included details on each. The contents would have been logical to Prideaux and Boyle, but Collins's view of the land and peoples reflected his eight years in Moscow. To him, Russian was two distinct spaces: one for the Russians that was warm and productive, and one for the non-Russian subjects that was cold and dangerous.

Collins's description of the Russians highlighted their unexpected warm features. This description is first found early in his text when he describes Russian children as “commonly strong and hardy,” as opposed to weak, cold bodies. Even in Lent, the Russians “give themselves over to all manner of debauchery and luxury, and in the last week they drink as if they were never to drink more,” all assessments of an active or hot people. The Russians also diligently observed multiple fasts every year, which should have sapped their strength and energy: “They eat no Fish, but feed on Cabbage and Cucumbers, and course Rye bread, and drink Canasse [kvass], which is a Liquor one degree below our small Beer.”²³ Despite their diet and climate, the Russians remained healthy and strong.

Furthermore, Russians endorsed early marriage for their children, which again sat in opposition to the expectation of a typical cold person who should lack interest in sex and procreation, which were well-known as hot qualities. Without marriage to control the sexual impulses of Russians, their tendency would be for “Sodomy and Buggery, to which they are naturally inclined.” Nor were sexual activities of Russians limited to men, as it was “but a venial Piccadillo for a Russ woman to prostitute her self to a Stranger, for they say her issue will be educated in the true ancient Faith.” According to Collins, in having an active sex life, the Russians also struggled with venereal diseases, which were hot diseases, not well suited toward the climate. Venereal disease was a foreign acquisition, and therefore Russia and its people had no natural defenses nor solutions. As Collins summarized, “My Lady Lues Venerea…. gets into such a cold Countrey as this, she earths like a Badger so deep, that there's no driving of her out without a Pickaxe or Firebrand.”²⁴

Although Collins's Russians were active and strong, unusual for their climate, the other people of the empire were not. Collins described the Cherkassian “Tartars” as “a rude swarthy look’d people; their Women are very unhandsome, gross, and grossly given to drinking; so that at an Entertainment they will be drunk before meat comes on the Table, and with eating recover themselves, and after Dinner be drunk again, and then recover themselves by Dancing, which they love so much, that they count him a mean man who does not keep a Fidler in his house.”²⁵ His characterization of them as “unhandsome, gross” indicates innate weakness and inability to control the passions (for alcohol, in this case), confirming a total lack of temperate qualities. When Collins described their type of government as “perfectly Anarchical,” it underscored this assessment. In Collins's description, these Tatars were weak in body, and incapable of ruling themselves; in other words, they were cold. All of this was true despite their “Land” being “better and warmer” than the Russians, though it led them to be prone to excess, not control.

Siberia was a source of fascination for Collins, even though his account of the country relied on hearsay, having “spoken with one that was there.” Its main feature was “so excessive cold … that water thrown up into the Air will descend congeal’d into Ice. The most Northern parts afford no Bread, but Fish in abundance, which they eat dryed instead of bread, and yet they live to a great age.” Both the climate and the fish indicated that Siberia was populated by a cold people, which was confirmed by “no Beards but on their upper lip” on the men along the Chinese border.²⁶ Facial hair was one of the most visible signifiers of a hot (masculine) constitution.

Collins particularly identified the Samoyeds of northern Siberia as the more problematic of Siberia's peoples. The term Samoyed was part of the issue, as “Samogeda, or Tsamoeida, which signifies Canibals, or Men-eaters, for they eat those whom they conquer in battel.” In a cold climate, with a diet of “most Fish,” their cold constitution was inevitable. Therefore, “You can hardly distinguish the men and women by their visage, neither wear Beards, and both have faces like Baboons.”²⁷ With the extreme conditions producing men who developed feminine qualities, Collins concluded that the Samoyeds were the least developed people in the empire, with little hope of future success.

Collins's text established a precedent for English-language descriptions of Russia. It was first printed in London in 1667 and reprinted three times in the next thirty years, indicating a high circulation. His imagery and descriptive language would appear in other narratives of Russia, and not necessarily as a direct borrowing but rather from a shared sense of the appropriate language to use to describe a foreign group. Jan Janszoon Struys was a Dutch sailor and later diplomat who spent two periods in Russia, the first in the tsar's service as part of an effort to develop a Caspian fleet in 1668 and the second as part of a Dutch diplomatic mission to Moscow in 1676.²⁸ His travel narrative was translated into multiple languages and circulated across Europe within two decades of his transit, including an English edition, The Perilous and most Unhappy Voyages of John Struys (1683). His arrival in the city of Pskov began with strong criticism of Russia's cuisine: “As for their Bread it is not much unlike our New-castle Coal for colour, but how it is of Tast I know no more than Man in the Moon, for neither my Appetite nor Curiosity could move me to it, Cabbage they have in great abundance, which is of a Tast like Sorrel, but close and white like ours, That and Cucumbers are the main ingredients whereof these People seem to be compounded, but more especially the latter, for Cumber attends them from the Womb to the Tomb, being held in perpetual Slavery by their Lords.” He also discussed the climate, noting that “Moscou, and all the whole Countrey towards the North is capable of a very unwholsom Air, for those that are not brought up in it, being in the Winter exceedingly sharp and cold, and in the Summer hot and moyst.” Although some might have expected the cold to be troubling, the heat of summer was no better: “It is there so hot in the Summer that a stranger cannot endure it, at what time also the Marshes and standing Pools so stink that one is ready to faint away: besides the great annoyance of Gnats, Muskettos and other Vermin, against which there is no way to defend ones Face.”²⁹ Struys's Russia was not only extremely cold but also was extremely hot; either season made Russia's climate remarkably intemperate.

According to Struys, the extreme climate simply produced unbalanced people: “The Common people were formerly so irregular and void of Order that they would drink themselves full, and afterwards men and Women, setting aside all Reputation and Modesty commit sensual and beastly Actions together.”³⁰ Struys's observations on the excessive sexual activity among Russians was only one more piece of evidence for him about the lack of a temperate climate and reasonable diet. Russia was a land of humoral unease.

The question implicit in Struys's description is how Russians functioned in spite of the persistent difficulties of the climate. To overcome the extreme cold, “In Winter they muffle up their Nose and Ears in Furs, especially when they go upon a Journey. And in Moscou it is well seen that may of the Inhabitants have neither Nose nor Ear, which they say is by coming out of the bitter cold Air into a hot Stove.” In summer, Russians could eat fruit, most of which held cold and moist attributes, to offset the heat: “The Fruits they have are Pears, Apples, Quince, Medlars, Cherries Plumbs, and of these several kinds.” This did not produce a land perfect in balance, as excess both in terms of Russians’ sexual habits as well as their fondness for alcohol led to a variety of obstacles, but the state could intervene when necessary: “This great Disorder was lately remedied by the care of the Czar, who, by the advice of the Patriarch, put down all the small Tap-houses throughout the whole Empire, appointing in every Town and Village one public House, or Kaback, which they are to farm of the Emperour himself.”³¹

Struys's colorful observations on Russians’ lifestyle only confirmed the imagery and ideas already circulating from Collins's narrative. Struys was not a trained physician like Collins, but his descriptions operated along similar lines, because both relied on humoral tropes to depict a foreign land. Nor were these ideas limited to physicians and diplomats. Philippe Avril was a French Jesuit who became an Asian explorer. He traveled for six years through the Caucasus and Middle East, and spent time in Russia, traveling between Astrakhan and Moscow. After leaving Russia, he also wrote a travel narrative that was translated and published in English in 1693. Although the tsar denied permission for the Jesuits to travel from Moscow across Siberia to China, Avril took the opportunity to discuss the empire with the merchants in Moscow's markets. After being introduced to so-called Chinese merchants “though they were only Tartars, gave us great insight in to both Countries [Siberia and China], which had been but so obscurely known till very lately; and in regard they Traffick as well with the Chineses as with the Muscovites, and for that they had been both at Pekin and Moscow, both Roads were known alike to them.”³² Following this conversation, Avril detailed six routes crossing from Moscow to China, most traveling through Siberian cities but some moving through Central Asia, listing towns, peoples, and challenges for each route. Without tsarist permission to travel, these were only Avril's expectations, not his firsthand observations.

Avril, however, still had his personal experiences of moving through European Russia from Astrakhan to Moscow along the Volga River. As was the case with so many Europeans, Avril's interest was focused on the extreme climate. Leaving Astrakhan, for example, he wrote: “We began to feel the approach of Winter, and the difference of the Climate, of which the Artick Pole, toward which we were insensibly advancing, made us sensible in spite of our Teeth. And in regard we had not so well fortifi’d our selves, as we ought to have done before our departure from Astrakhan against the Cold, … we thought we should have been frozen to Death.” Avril noted the dichotomy of Russia's extreme conditions: “A North Wind, no less sharpe and cutting, then violent and boisterous arose, and in a little time stop’d the Course of the Volga, by freezing up the River” that “reduc’d me to a very low Condition of Body for want of good looking after,” but the resulting “extremely serene and clear” winter days eased the work for merchant caravans that found it easier to transport goods along the frozen river.³³

And if the winter was not sufficiently a challenge, Avril also raised concerns about the summer: “The Summer heats are not to be endured in that place; insomuch that the people are oblig’d to bath several times a day.” Aside from the difficulty of balancing one's humors in the extreme climate, the locality produced food that was inherently risky. “The Soils bears all sorts of Fruits, and in great abundance; nor does their deliciousness give way to the plenty. More especially their Melons are remarkable for their most exquisite taste; and it is as rare a thing to meet with a bad or a willowish Melon there, as it is unusual to find a good one in France.”³⁴ Although it is clear that Avril enjoyed Astrakhan's melons, Europeans had been involved for more than a century in a debate about whether too much fruit was dangerous for a European body. This was a recurring fear in the ongoing settlement in the Americas.³⁵ The fact that part of Russia had a similarly balmy climate brought the same tropical risks for Europeans.

Beyond his personal observations, Avril relied on the secondhand information gathered in the markets of Astrakhan and Moscow from traveling merchants to provide insight into the people and climate of Russia's Asian territories. He identified his best informants as Tatars, but that label could have applied to any number of Turkic and Central Asian peoples, including Tatars from Kazan’ and Siberia. Therefore, as a source for the people of Siberia, risks were associated with Avril's reliability, but given the relative dearth of information about this enormous territory, even the secondhand information he provided could be useful. He described “Siberians” as a diverse group, as “others who are called Ostiaki, Bratski, Jacuti, and Tongusi, who are scatter’d all along the Lakes and Rivers that lye between Siberia and the Country of the Monguls. But in regard they have all the same Physiognomy, and use the same Language as the Calmoucs, ‘tis very probable that they are only some separated Hordes, that having been domesticated by degrees, by conversation with the Muscovites, at length became subject to their Dominion.”³⁶

In Avril's assessment, the potential of the government to transform the inhabitants of Siberia into productive subjects was limited: “They are all swarthy complexion’d, but more inclining to Olive-Colour than Black. Their faces are usually broad, falling in below, and jutting out above; their eyes are small, but sparkling and full of fire; their noses short and very flat, with little hair either upon their upper Lips, or Chins: Their Status somewhat about the common size, well set, and clean limb’d, with an Air stern and resolute, without any thing of Cruelty or Savageness.”³⁷ Their “Olive-Colour” complexion suggested a choleric or melancholic disposition, but the lack of facial hair confirmed a cold body. The lack of “Cruelty or Savageness” made these groups better potential subjects than any that were violent or warlike (hot, in other words), but their lifestyle (i.e., the connection to the Russians), could transform the bodies only so far.

Although Avril drew on his personal experiences in European Russia and access to merchants to provide a more complete portrait of the Russian Empire, he also reacted to earlier narratives about the country. He criticized Struys for incorrectly positioning Astrakhan as fifty leagues from the mouth of the Volga River, when it was only thirteen. Avril also drew distinctions between his travels along the Volga and that of the diplomat Adam Olearius, who moved along the river more than five decades earlier.³⁸ Collins, Struys, and Avril may not have agreed on Russia's conditions, but they were part of a broader conversation about Russia's people and climate. The similarity of their depictions and the association with humoral principles is all the more likely because these men read the earlier narratives.

By the end of the seventeenth century, multiple narratives about Russia circulated throughout Europe. The most detailed of these were produced by those men who lived and traveled in Russia, but others still aspired to write about Russia without firsthand experience. This was the case for Jodocus Crull, in his Account of the Antient and Present State of Muscovy, published in London in 1698. Crull was born in Hamburg, received his medical doctorate from the University of Leiden in 1679, and was appointed as a fellow of the Royal Society in London two years later.³⁹ Throughout his text, he included similar details to Collins's work, citing the same events, people, and diseases, but in greater detail at many points, despite not having Collins's long career in Russia.

Unsurprisingly, the two physicians shared an interest in relating the people, climate, food, customs, and habits. Crull began his text with a sweeping declaration of Russia's climate as the most important feature of the country. Russia “is generally excessive Cold in the Winter, and the Heats in the Summer, during the space of two or three Months, very intense and violent. The Country is generally flat and Sandy, full of Trees and Woods, so that Muscovy, in a manner, appears to be one continual Forest.” Crull, however, also suggested that the cold climate was actually an asset for the Russians’ development: “The Muscovites are from their Infancy inur’d to all sorts of Hardship, their Children being seldom suckled above two or three Months; and this with the coldness of their Climate, and their sparing Diet, makes them very fit to endure the Fatigues of War, being especially very resolute in defending of Places; which they will maintain to the utmost extremity.”⁴⁰

With the cold climate producing a positive benefit, Crull was optimistic about the qualities of Russian men and women. “The Muscovites are of a middle Seize as to their Stature, strong proportioned, of the same colour as the other Europeans in the Northern Parts. But they much affect Corpulency, especially among Persons of Quality. Long Beards, and great Mustachios are in great request among them, which they look upon as tokens of Virility.” Russian women were also positively described, “of a middling Stature, neither too tall nor too little, and generally well proportion’d before they are married, but after they have had several Children, inclining to Fatness.” Agreeing with Collins, Crull noted the Russians’ propensity to drink excessively: “From hence also proceed these frequent Irregularities, Disorders and Excesses in Debaucheries, even to sin against the Course of Nature, not only with Men, but also with Beasts.” In spite of the criticism, however, Crull was generally positive about their characteristics: “The Muscovites are a People of great Wit, Cunning and Dexterity, not wanting Ingenuity in anything they undertake, as has been sufficiently experienced by those, who have had Opportunity to deal with them, either by way of Commerce or otherwise.”⁴¹

Crull's characterization only confirmed the Russians were a humoral enigma. The cold climate should have produced a people that were prone toward inactivity, and yet Crull and Collins believed the Russians were active and hardy. Crull suggested one solution to this issue: The Russians reliance on their banias (bathhouses), with their exposure to extreme heat. “These Baths are the universal Remedies of the Muscovites, not only for cleansing their Bodies, but also for the Preservation of their Health, which being thus from their Infancy inur’d to the greatest Extremities of Heat and Cold, makes them to be of a very strong and healthy Constitution, and for the generality long liv’d,” For Crull, the only challenge to their health was the recent introduction of venereal diseases from Poland, where the Russians “made a very intimate Acquaintance with the Venereal Disease, which, in so cold a Climate as theirs, sticks very close to them.”⁴² Crull's assessment of venereal disease in Russia borrows directly from Collins's text, but his interest in the role of the bania demonstrates his willingness to move beyond Collins's initial assessment.

Compared with the Russians, the other peoples of the empire did not fare as well. The Finno-Ugric Maris along the Volga River, for example, “are a Nation barbarous, treacherous and cruel, living upon Robbery, and addicted to Sorcery.” Furthermore, “Polygamy is used among them, even so as to Marry two or three Sisters at a Time.” Both features revealed a people whose habits only demonstrated excess, or an imbalance in the humors.⁴³ It could be the lack of the habit of the steam bath left their bodies ill-suited toward their local environs.

Russia's port on the Caspian Sea, Astrakhan, was populated by Tatars, who “are of an ill shape, low and fat, with large Faces, and little Eyes, of an Olive colour, full of wrinkles in their Faces, they wear little Beards, and keep their Heads shaved; but the Women are much handsomer.” This lack of facial hair (i.e., the “little Beards”) was long known as a sign of men with a colder nature. The “olive” color of their skin, however, suggested the other warm-blooded people of the Mediterranean. The Tatars’ confused characteristics may have been linked to the opposing extremes in the environment: “The Climate in those Parts is very hot, the Heats in the Months of September and October much exceeding our Dog-days; notwithstanding which, the Winter, which seldom exceeds two Months here, is so cold, that this large River is commonly frozen up, and bears Sledges” (figure 1.1).⁴⁴

Figure 1.1. This image, which was included in a Dutch merchant's account of traveling through Moscow to South Asia, highlights the Samoyeds connection to the cold north with their reindeer sleigh. Image from Cornelis de Bruijn, Reizen over Moskovie, door Persie en Indie (1714). “Samojeedse slede met hare Rendieren; Scheepsbouwery of werf buiten Archangel,” Rare Book Division, The New York Public Library, New York Public Library Digital Collections, accessed June 9, 2024, https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47e1-cdfa-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99.

Crull had an easier time describing the people of the empire whose residence was in the far north, which he believed lacked the experience of the extreme heat that troubled the people of the south. The Samoyeds, for example, garnered a lengthy depiction in his book. Their climate and diet were inextricably linked: “The length of the Winter Season making their Ground not fit for Tillage, they have no Corn nor Cattle, so that they are contented, to live upon what Nature affords them; their Food being Fish dry’d in the Wind and Sun, instead of Bread, Honey and Venison.”⁴⁵ Fish primarily had a cold, moist characteristic, producing excess phlegm in the body; people subsisting on a fish diet were likely phlegmatic. The physical description of the Samoyeds confirmed this diagnosis: “Their Stature is very low and mean, having very short Legs, … their faces large and flat without Beards, and their Eyes very little, like the Tartars, but not so sparkling. The Women here are very ugly, so that by their Faces and Cloaths; which are exactly like to the Men's, their Sex is not to be distinguished at first fight.” Short men, with an absence of facial hair, were clearly marked as cold figures. The lack of distinct sexual features between men and women drew a portrait of an appropriately sexless community, as cold men lacked interest in procreation. Despite this, Crull noted with surprise that Samoyed men “are very jealous of them [women], being extreamely nice in preserving their Wives for their own use.”⁴⁶ How Crull managed to comment on the sex lives of the Samoyeds without having any practical experience raises some valid questions about his observations on their sexual morality.

Although the conclusion of Collins, Struys, Avril, and Crull might have differed, without question, a humoral knowledge influenced their assessments of the bodies of the Russian Empire. The concern about the extreme climate and the negative consequences for its subject posed a clear obstacle for the Russian Empire. Whereas the men who worked for Russia, like Collins, observed some positive features at least for the Russians, the views of short-term visitors and foreigners who never entered the country tended to be negative. By the end of the seventeenth century, if the Russian government wanted to confront these pessimistic assessments, a more active publishing effort, driven by its employees, could shift the conversation.

A Healthy Empire?

There was not a European consensus about the nature of Russia's climate nor a single view of the types of bodies of its subjects. Collins may have been considered more knowledgeable based on his years in Moscow and service to the tsar, but he was not the only author commenting on Russia's conditions, much less the only physician to comment on the health of imperial subjects. By the end of the century, the idea that Russia was simply a cold climate with an unhealthy environment tended to dominate European assessments of the empire. When the eighteenth century began, the Russian government became more active in gathering and publishing information, thus sponsoring a narrative to combat the more sensational accounts of the cold that had become common.

The frequency of complaints about the extreme cold in travel narratives turned the experience of cold into an expected feature of any record of life in Russia. In 1697, for example, Thomas Allison, a captain for one of the ships of the Russia Company operating out of Arkhangel’sk, published a day-by-day log of the transit from Russia to England to explain his unfortunate wintering off the coast of Russia. Aside from the struggle of managing to secure sufficient supplies of food and fuel for fires, the crew struggled with frostbite and scurvy, other well-known cold illnesses.⁴⁷ Publishing the tale of survival in London two years later only added more evidence of Russia's unsafe climate.

Those who found Russia's conditions manageable were also there, but their records often remained unpublished, perhaps because their experiences in Russia did not conform to the expectations of readers back in the West. Another Russia Company captain, William Baker, for example, kept his own log of a voyage to Arkhangel’sk in 1702, only three years after Allison's cautionary tale was published. The merchants arrived in the summer and departed Arkangel’sk before the harbor froze in the fall. On this particular voyage, Baker arrived in September, unloaded his cargo over the course of a week, despite the challenge navigating the harbor in “fresh gales of rain.” He then supervised the provisioning of the boat for the return trip, loaded the exports from Arkhangel’sk, and departed in October without incident. It did snow on more than one day during the process, but this only served as an opportunity for Baker to enjoy the hospitality of the other English merchants living in the city, mentioning that “Mr. Pendlke and Mr. Lloyd made [him] very welcome.”⁴⁸ If Allison's text was a cautionary tale of the dangers of Russia's cold climate, Baker's notes demonstrate that it still was possible to thrive in these conditions, much like the Russians had obviously done.

Like other European powers, the Russian government had always relied on its diplomats to investigate its neighbors and trade partners; diplomatic missions to the Middle East or Central Asia had long been avenues for gathering information.⁴⁹ The attempt to open direct contact with China in the middle of the seventeenth century would do no less. The state commissioned a Bukharan merchant, Seitkul Ablin, to gather information on the China trade. Ablin's information provided data for the first official embassy led by Fedor Isakovich Baikov in 1653, and Ablin's return trips to China eventually informed the second embassy led by Nikolai Spafarii in 1675.⁵⁰ The reports from these expeditions and embassies were kept in Moscow and were not prepared for publication in Russia or abroad. Even political exiles in Siberia in this period, like Iurii Kirzhanich, generated reports of the people of Siberia, but their assessments remained protected information.⁵¹ Even as foreigners who had visited Russia published narratives about life in the country, Russians did not. Although former employees like Collins did publish when they left Russia for Europe, the Russian government was more invested in protecting information than in sharing it with a literate audience.

With publications such as Crull's or Allison's offering cautionary tales, Russia began to capitalize on its embassies as a source of information. In 1692, Tsar Peter I Alekseevich (r. 1682–1725) appointed a foreign diplomat, Eberhard Isbrand Ides, to act as his ambassador to China and appointed Adam Brand from Lubeck as the embassy's secretary.⁵² The embassy included more than 250 men, including nobles and merchants, both to negotiate new terms following Nerchinsk as well as to investigate the market in Beijing, “where Silk, Cloath, Gold and Silver, Jewels and all sorts of fine Manufactures, were sold.” Ides also toured “the Emperor's Dispensary, which I was willing to make some Scrutiny into, it being full stock’d with all sorts of Roots, Herbs, and Med’cines.”⁵³ Ides had no formal medical training, but clearly had an interest, which was typical for merchants and diplomats in the early-modern era (figure 1.2).

Figure 1.2. This panorama depicts the arrival of Ides's embassy at the border. The embassy travels through unsettled Siberia territory, while the Chinese side of the border depicts several communities. “The Embassadors entry through the famous Chinese wall which is 1200 miles long,” General Research Division, New York Public Library Digital Collections, accessed June 9, 2024, https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47e2-5bc0-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99.

Both Ides and Brand relied on the same humoral rhetoric in their narratives as their predecessors. Therefore, not all of their observations were positive. Outside of Tobol’sk, for example, Brand described the Ostiaks as “low of Stature, and very deformed; besides which, both Men and Women constantly are subject to a certain Weakness in their Eyes, the cause of which they attribute to a want of Bread; which being a scarce Commodity among them, they seldom are masters of it, unless they are by chance furnish’d with it by Travellers; which happening very rarely in so remote a Country, we supplied what we were able to spare; and instead of Bread, they make use of the same Fish dried.”⁵⁴ On the banks of the Ob River, Ides described the Ostiaks as “a poor People, and live very miserable in sorry Hutts…. They are all of a middle Stature, most of them Yellowish or Red haired; and their Faces and Noses disagreeably broad; they are weak and unable to labour hard, not at all enclined to Warrs, and utterly uncapable of Military Exercises.”⁵⁵ Ides was very clear that with a diet composed entirely of phlegm-induced fish, these cold men were weak and passive.

Brand drew attention to the persistent problem of the cold climate, following in the long tradition of Europeans complaining about the empire's extreme conditions. Nearing Nerchinsk among the Tungus, for example, the climate “proved very troublesome to us by reason of the Coldness of the Weather, which was so excessive, that our Victuals and Drink (which was only fair Water) froze, and turn’d to Ice, before we could bring it from hand to mouth.”⁵⁶ As for the Tungus peoples, “they were formerly a War-like Nation, governed by its own Princes, inhabiting a very large Countrey” until they were conquered by the Russians.⁵⁷ What Brand failed to mention, and may not have known, is that the Tungus had not been conquered but rather defected from China to the Russian side of the border for better treatment.⁵⁸ “As to their Persons, they are very lusty and well proportion’d, their Cloaths being nothing but the Skins of Beasts, with the Furrs on the outside of divers Colours, neither Sex being distinguish’d by the least difference in their Habits.” In other words, the Tungus were a contradiction. A warlike people implied a hot constitution, but the climate suggested otherwise. Brand, however, was certain he had discovered their secret: “For no sooner are their Children come into the World, but they lay them in the Summer in cold Water, in the Winter in the Snow; by which means they are so accustomed to Cold, that they are the hardiest People in the World,” providing them sufficient strength “to defend themselves against the Violence of the Cold.” Most important, this extreme weather training not only prepared Tungus men for their warlike futures but also provided sufficient heat that these men ardently pursued sex, as “all of them have several Wives,” whereas people with a cold constitution were more likely to be disinterested in sexuality and procreation.⁵⁹

Discussing the ability of the Tungus to overcome the quality of the climate implicitly criticized the Ostiaks, who had let the climate and diet define their characteristics. As a result, one group was active, sexual, and potentially aggressive, whereas the other was indolent and passive. In terms of managing Siberia, the Ostiaks should have been easy to control, whereas the Tungus would need more active intervention. The humoral composition of each people made this apparent to anyone reading Brand's or Ides's narrative. As accounts from a state-sponsored embassy, both Brand and Ides could be viewed as the response to Collins, Struys, or Avril. Although each offered criticism of imperial subjects, the story of the Tungus indicated that Siberians could overcome their environment as the Russians did. It was not that all of the imperial subjects were intrinsically weaker from the climate or diet; the nonnaturals could be overcome if the people were willing to take the necessary steps to harden their bodies for these extreme conditions.

Although the embassy was an official undertaking, it did not guarantee access to each community across the entire empire. Brand recorded one incident in which he paid an Ostiak village for access to the interiors of their homes, with a “small Present of Bread and Salt to the Owners.” Brand did not mention any difficulty communicating with the Ostiaks, but was confident that he had purchased an all- access pass to every part of the village: “One among them, somewhat bigger than the rest, and distinguish’d by certain Figures, invited my Curiosity to take a full View of it. Being entred, I found three Women lying upon the Ground, who at the sight of me arose from their places, and by their noddings and threatenings sufficiently testified their displeasure of seeing a Stranger interrupt them in their retirement; but being sensible that I had prepared my way by the Presents given to the Owners, I took, notwithstanding all their wry Faces, the liberty to search every corner of the Hutt.”⁶⁰ Brand seemed to lack any concern with intruding on sleeping women and then investigating every corner of the residence. Instead, he was quite confident that his small presents guaranteed his rights. This would one of the first such instances recorded by Europeans traveling through Siberia, but it would not be the last.⁶¹

Brand's casual disregard for the feelings of these women was certainly part of the expectation that Russia and its government officials could treat imperial subjects as objects of scientific inquiry. Their participation may have been necessary to gain access, or act as a translator to explain local customs, habits, or religious traditions, but only in a subservient role. Even an embassy official, such as Ides, did not treat Russia's subjects any more humanely than the others. Gaining access to Siberia may have produced firsthand accounts of the subjects of the empire, but this process provided no more respect for the people under observation than did the men who never left Moscow.

When Ides and Brand published their accounts, neither man rejected the assessments of earlier writers. In fact, at times, their accounts confirmed some of the earlier humoral stereotypes. They also demonstrated, however, a path to challenge the representations of Russia's climate and population being published by those outside its borders. When the Russian government created the Academy of Sciences in the 1720s, it was an official decision to generate information about the empire. If diplomats failed to refute negative depictions of the empire, perhaps physicians and naturalists working for the state could succeed?