Russia and the Pacific: expeditions, networks, and the acquisition of human remains

This chapter offers an overview of Russian engagement with the peoples of the Pacific during the nineteenth century, focusing on the acquisition of Ancestral Remains for Russian collections to highlight transnational networks of scientific communication and exchange. It is structured around three major themes. We begin with the commercial, diplomatic, and scientific ambitions of Russian naval expeditions to the Pacific, then consider the professionalisation of craniology and the expansion of the Anatomical Museum at the Academy of Sciences in St Petersburg under Karl Ernst von Baer, and conclude with the emergence of Moscow as a second centre of anthropological studies in Russia.