This is a nice 1834 first edition map of European Russia by David H. Burr. It covers the European part of Russia from Poland to the Ural Mountains and from the Arctic Ocean to Circassia. It includes in whole or part of the modern day nations of Russia, Ukraine, Moldova, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. Poland is also included, as it was divided and its constituent parts were absorbed into Russia, Prussia, and Austria following the Napoleonic Wars. Towns, rivers, mountains, important battle sites, and various other important topographical details are noted.
In 1825, a few years before this map was drawn, Russian army officers, called the Decembrists, protested against Nicholas I's ascension to the throne. The Decembrists, so named because their revolt started in December, favored Nicholas's brother, Constantine, who seemed amenable to a British style constitutional monarchy. When Constantine abdicated the throne in 1825, the Decembrists refused to accept the more autocratic rule of Nicholas I. Had Constantine not abdicated and the Decembrists been successful, the bloody Bolshevik Revolution may never have occurred.
According to Ristow, although Burr is credited on the title page, he left this atlas incomplete. He was appointed as topographer to the U.S. Post Office, and of the siin xty-three maps finally included in this atlas, only completed eight. The rest of the maps were then completed by Illman and Pilbrow in Burr's style. This map was ‘Entered according to act of Congress in the year 1834 by Thomas Illman in the Clerk's office of the District Court for the Southern District of New York', but was not published until the atlas was released in 1835. Published by D. S. Stone in Burr's New Universal Atlas.
