Voyage round the World

An important work, being the official account of the first Russian expedition to circumnavigate the globe. Kruzenstern had a particularly noteworthy group of officers serving under him, all of whom published records of the voyage Lisianskii, Langsdorff, and Kotzebue. They were tasked with attempting to 'open relations with Nippon and the Sandwich Islands, to facilitate trade in South America, to examine California for a possible colony, and make a thorough study and report of the Northwest coast, its trade and its future' (Hill).

Like many Russian naval personnel before him, Kruzenstern had trained in the British Navy. His service during the Revolutionary War (1793-1799) gave him a valuable insight into English trade with China and the East Indies. His introduction shows just how much he learnt whilst at Canton and provides 'important observations on the state of Russian commerce, Russian voyages and discoveries in the northern Pacific' (Forbes), as well as his simple yet revolutionary ideas for the Russian fur trade.

The importance of this circumnavigation lies not only in the discoveries made during the voyage and the rectifications made to charts, especially in the North Pacific and on the North-West coast of America, but also for the detailed information recorded about Japan. Nikolai Rezanov, head of the first Russian Embassy to Japan, sailed with Krusenstern, and whilst his embassy failed to establish trading relations between the two countries the wealth of information published about Japan greatly increased the world's knowledge of what was still a closed country.