Maizik Elena I.,
Postgraduate Student, Krasnoyarsk State Pedagogical University named after V.P. Astafiev, Krasnoyarsk, Russia, e-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Vdovin Alexander S.,
Candidate of Нistorical Sciences, Krasnoyarsk Regional Museum, Krasnoyarsk, Russia, e-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Women’s Viewpoint to the Yenisei North: Oxford Expedition of 1914–1915
DOI: 10.31518/2618-9100-2019-3-18
The article discusses the role of foreign researchers in the study of the North of the Yenisei Siberia – participants of the 1914–1915 Oxford expedition in the Yenisei province unique in its composition, goals and time. Its participants included three women: British ethnologist and the first woman anthropologist Maria Czaplitska, ornithologist of the National Museum of natural history in London Maud Haviland, an American painter and traveler Dora Curtis. Among the men, the expedition included Henry Hall, an American anthropologist, assistant curator and custodian of the Department of General Ethnography of the University of Pennsylvania Museum. On the basis of travel notes left by members of the squad the author determine the route of the expedition and living conditions of its participants, whose impressions are contradictory: from enthusiastic to gloomy and pessimistic. After the expedition Maria Czaplicka and Maud Haviland published works with descriptions of the life of the Nenets, Yakuts, Dolgans, Evenks. In the book by M. Czaplicka “My year in Siberia” there are chapters devoted to reindeer herding, fishing and hunting, cultural traditions, religious beliefs, weather conditions, Minusinsk archeology, descriptions of Siberians, exile, development of Siberia. M. Haviland in his travel notes pays more attention to the description of nature, ornithological observations. Along with ethnographic information about the Russian and indigenous population, the participants of the expedition did not ignore the situation of women in the North. Their work goes beyond the narrative and contains the results of many scientific observations, combining travel stories, research results and personal experiences of women scientists. Unique materials allow us to look through the eyes of educated European women at the state of Northern settlements, appearance, character, living conditions and traditions of both Russian and indigenous population of the Siberian North.
Publishing: 30/06/2019
How to cite: Maizik E.I., Vdovin A.S. Women’s Viewpoint to the Yenisei North: Oxford Expedition of 1914–1915 // Historical Courier, 2019, # 3 (5). Article 18. [Available online:] http://istkurier.ru/data/2019/ISTKURIER-2019-3-18.pdf
Links: Issue 3 2019
Keywords: the Yenisei province; Oxford expedition; international relations; foreign researchers; Marie Czaplicka; Maud Haviland; Dora Curtis; Henry Hall; Jonas Lead