Imagining the Urals: Academic Travelers and Russia's Europe-Asia Divide

This article examines the idea of the Urals as the boundary between Europe and Asia. First proposed in the 1730s, the idea was tested in the 1760s when the Russian Academy of Sciences sent four geographical expeditions to the region. While expedition members regarded the Urals as geologically significant, they also acknowledged the permeable nature of the region and the capacity of its indigenous peoples to assimilate into Russian culture or to resist it. Their conclusions suggested that the Europe-Asia divide was determined less by physical geography and more by the actions and choices of local communities.