The Voyage of Semen Dezhnev in 1648. Bering's precursor with selected documents

Aims 'to draw together what earlier scholars, mostly Russian and Soviet, have uncovered and what interpretations and explanations they have advanced' concerning the voyage 'of a party of petty entrepreneurs' around the eastern tipof Asia in the summer of 1648, anticipating by 80 years the voyage of Vitus Bering. Of this earlier voyage Semen Dezhnev, an illiterate Siberian cossack, was the surviving leader. The author writes: 'Mere complication has not...been my intention. I have felt free to expand some of the arguments on controversial matters, to present my own conclusions in certain instances, and to take sides on disputed points or to suspend judgement...the final evaluation of the significance of the voyage is my own.'