The Urge to the Sea: The Course of Russian History: The Role of Rivers Portages Ostrogs Monasteries and Furs (Hardcover)

The Urge to the Sea by Robert J. Kerner offers a sweeping reinterpretation of Russian expansion by centering the humbler infrastructures--rivers portages ostrogs (frontier forts) monasteries and the fur trade--that powered a continental urge to the sea. Moving across the long durée from the earliest chronicles to the Muscovite and imperial frontiers Kerner shows how waterways and portage chains linked interior heartlands to distant seas how monastic networks anchored colonization and how fur economies financed and incentivized movement across Eurasia. Geography economy religion and statecraft emerge not as siloed explanations but as interlocking mechanisms of mobility and control. Written as a focused monograph within a larger research program on eastward expansion the book advances a clear thesis: these material and institutional vectors formed the mechanics of empire-building steering Russian society from river sources to ocean outlets. Kerner situates his argument within and against classic historiography--acknowledging Z. Khodakovskii s early study of communication routes N. P. Barsov s chronicle-based geographic insights and S. M. Solov ev s seminal reflections--while probing V. O. Kliuchevskii s notion of a self-evolving colonization for evidence of deliberate river policy. The result is both synthetic and provocative inviting readers to reconsider causality in Russian state formation: not only grand strategy but also the routinized labor of portaging the siting of forts and cloisters and the commercial magnetism of sable and sea otter pelts. With extensive notes pointing to underused sources and avenues for new research The Urge to the Sea will engage historians of Russia and empire historical geographers and social scientists interested in how infrastructures and ecologies shape expansion. This is a model of rigorous agenda-setting scholarship--concise in scope ambitious in implication. This title is part of UC Press s Voices Revived program which commemorates University of California Press s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice reach and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893 Voices Revived makes high-quality peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1942.