From London to Cape Town, or how to run a successful empire -- Pineapples in Petersburg, cabbage soup on the Equator -- Prying open Japan, prospecting Korea -- Eastward ho! -- Russians confront human diversity -- The bestseller and its afterlife.
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Novelist Ivan Goncharov was secretary to the naval commander of an 1852 secret mission to open trade relations with Japan. Bojanowska uses Goncharov's gripping travelogue [past Cape Colony (South Africa), Dutch Java, Spanish Manila, Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong , Shanghai, Siberia]---a bestseller (1858) in nineteenth-century Russia--as a unique eyewitness account of empire in action. Slow to be integrated into the standard narrative on European imperialism, Russia emerges here as an assertive empire eager to emulate European powers and determined to define Russia against them.--
Russian voyage of the frigate Pallada
Goncharov, Ivan Aleksandrovich,1812-1891-- Criticism and interpretation.
Goncharov, Ivan Aleksandrovich,1812-1891., Fregat "Pallada."