When People Become Instruments: Using Soldiersʼ Sons in the Topographic Surveys in the Russian Empire

In 1916, right after the end of the Napoleonic Wars, an Imperial order was issued to begin working on a new map of the Russian Empire, based on the exact mathematical principles. The Vilno Governorate was selected as a testing ground and colonel K. I. Tenner was put in charge of the survey. To increase map precision, it was intended to carry out triangulation first and then to conduct a topographic survey based on this triangulation. However, while triangulation could be successfully performed by a small number of officers, a topographic survey demanded a significant number of participants who were lacking. Tenner suggested using as surveyors the ablest soldiers’ sons, students of military orphan schools (cantonists). This initiative was rather doubtful from the standpoint of anthropological criteria for being capable of producing reliable knowledge. The epistemological regime of the early 19th century demanded a cautious attitude to evidence produced by children, servants, the sick and the insane. Nevertheless, the experiment proposed and carried out by Tenner was deemed successful. Three years later, the Corps of Topographical Surveyors was organized where practices that enabled making a disciplined and reliable surveyor out of an uneducated and low-born soldier’s son became institutionally implemented. The article analyzes how the conditions formed for according a legal status to the topographic knowledge generated by hundreds of poorly educated adolescents. Particular attention is given to the development of the Regulation on the Corps of Topographical Surveyors, practical application of the rules for the organization of education in this institution, and to how the criteria and procedures were developed that enabled turning half-educated soldiers’ sons into competent surveyors who became instrumental in many civil projects and military operations.

Keywords

cartography, topography, Corps of Topographical Surveyors, Russian Empire, cantonist, military education, General Staff, mensula

Received

27.06.2022

Publication date

27.06.2022

Number of characters

40153

Cite

GOST	Ivanov K. When People Become Instruments: Using Soldiersʼ Sons in the Topographic Surveys in the Russian Empire // Voprosy istorii estestvoznaniia i tekhniki – 2022. – V. 43. – Issue 2 C. 273-290 [Electronic resource]. URL: https://vietmag.org/S020596060020602-4-1 (circulation date: 26.04.2024). DOI: 10.31857/S020596060020602-4
MLA	Ivanov, Konstantin "When People Become Instruments: Using Soldiersʼ Sons in the Topographic Surveys in the Russian Empire." Voprosy istorii estestvoznaniia i tekhniki 43.2 (2022):273-290. DOI: 10.31857/S020596060020602-4
APA	Ivanov K. (2022). When People Become Instruments: Using Soldiersʼ Sons in the Topographic Surveys in the Russian Empire. Voprosy istorii estestvoznaniia i tekhniki 43(2), pp.273-290 DOI: 10.31857/S020596060020602-4

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