Manuscript Monday—California y los Moscovitas

In this week's Manuscript Monday we travel back in time, from the Gold Rush to the eighteenth century, when Spanish anxieties about the Russian menace to California were at a high boil. According to Claudio Saunt in his book, West of the Revolution: An Uncommon History of 1776 (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2014), this manuscript map, drawn by Pedro Calderón y Henriquez, literally exaggerates the size and proximity of the Kamchatka Peninsula ("Tartaria de los Moscovitas"). It also charts the route from the Philippines to Northern California.

Memorial to Don Manuel de Roda y Arrieta,1768 Apr. 19, MS Vault 69, California Historical Society. 

This map forms a part of the California Historical Society's stunning Templeton Crocker Collection of rare books and manuscripts.

Marie Silva
Archivist & Manuscripts Librarian
msilva@calhist.org