Whitworth, Charles, Baron. An Account of Russia as it was in the year 1710. London: Strawberry-Hill Press, 1758.
The author, Baron Charles Whitworth was an educated, wealthy Englishman, assigned the position of a delegate to the Russian throne in 1710. He was granted land in Ireland and the title of Baron for his continued service to the English crown. Part of his service to the crown, presumably was the collecting of information about the Russian Empire in 1710. Sir Whitworth’s book presents the brief history of Russia and defines its borders. Russian Empire was in 1710 bordered by China in the East, by the Ottomans and various Turks in the South, by Lithuania and Poland in the West, and by Sweden in the North. While the Russian Empire consists of many ethnicities, the main one is the Moscovites. There is approximately 6.5 million Moscovites in Russia and they are the only peoples that pay significant taxes to the Czar.
In 1710, Peter the Great was the Czar and Russia was finishing up with the Great Northern War (1700-1721) against Sweden. The war took place on the East shore of the Baltic Sea and in the Western (European) part of Russia. Sir Charles mentions the main change in the Russian Government under Peter the Great, which was the division of Russia into 8 different economic zones and the assigning a Governor to each of those zones. As well as the history of Russia, the most important generals and Government officials are described, among which are Menshikov, Peter’s right hand; Golovkin, Chancellor of the Russian Empire; Apraxin, the High Admiral; Sheremetiev, the Felt Marshall, and a few others.
A significant portion of the book is dedicated to the description of the army and the navy. Such information as how big the army is, how many men are in each regiment, what kind of regiment (grenadier, musketeer, hussar, etc), as well as the salary of each officer and each recruit in the Army and the Navy is described in detail in this section. The Russian Standing Army at the time consisted of 109,000 soldiers. Meanwhile the Navy was being built at Ladinpole and Olonitz (pg. 87). Both of those sites are located in the North-East part of Lake Ladoga. Sir Charles suggests the conquest of a fairly large portion of the Baltic region by the Russian army by demonstrating that one of the 8 economic zones was the “Livonia, Ingria, Plescow” zone (pg. 29). Baron Whitworth mentions the conquest of Nyenschatz, a fortification near the foundation site of St. Petersburg, by the Russian army. The source is a secondary source, as most of the information mentioned by Sir Charles Whitworth had to be acquired from the Russian upper class, the Russian historians and accountants. (AY 2006)